By Brandi Cummings - bio | email
COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - Columbia's family shelter is asking for urgent help. It helps homeless families with children while they get back on their feet, but now the shelter needs $100,000. Without it, families will have nowhere else to go.
One third of Columbia's homeless population includeS families with children. Cynthia Hayes and her boys are in that number. "At times, you just get very sad because you just want to work and provide for your family," said Haynes.
For this mother, basic needs are hard to come by. Unemployed and homeless, Columbia's family shelter was her only option. "If the shelter wasn't here, I think that we all would be struggling to find a place to stay," she said.
Up to 15 families at a time live at the shelter. Last year, 140 families called it home, while nearly 1,000 others could not be helped. "It's gotten, unfortunately, to what we consider to be a crisis situation here," Executive Director Jon Artz pleaded for help.
The goal is to raise $100,000 in six months. "That will enable the family shelter to do what it's done through it's 30-year history which is stay here, stay open and be that resource, be that last resort for families that have nowhere else to go," said Artz.
If the donations don't come, the Family Shelter may have to close its doors, regroup and perhaps reopen with half of its current services, but that would only magnify the homeless problem, according to Artz. "The more unemployed families we have, the more children that end up in foster care or as wards of the state," he said. "That continues to tax our whole community."
Haynes searches for a job every day, but with 30 applications submitted, she's had no luck. Her last day at the shelter is June 22. "I have no idea what I'm going to do right now," she said.
But she's hoping you do, and will help families like hers get back on their feet.
Copyright 2011 WIS. All rights reserved.
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2012 WorldNow and WISTV, a Raycom Media Station. 