Jacob was hanging out at a local library when he came across my business card, which I left a stack of in the foyer. Jacob called the YOP SHOP and told me his story and that he needed help finding housing. He asked if he could come to the YOP SHOP to meet me to share more of his story. Jacob is 18 years old, tall and lanky, and when he showed up, his huge, child-like smile greeted me as soon as he walked through the door. We sat down and he continued to tell me how he came to his current circumstances.
Jacob was only 15 when he lost his mother due to cancer. With no next to kin, only smaller siblings in tow, FCCS sent him to West Virginia, where his biological father lived, but with whom he had no relationship with. With the partnership of his grief from losing his beloved mother and anger for his father not being there, his relationship with his dad struggled. Jacob ended up in foster care in West Virginia, where he saved up his money for a Greyhound bus back to Columbus the minute he turned 18. He hoped to return to Ohio to find his younger siblings and a sense of normalcy.
Jacob was determined to defy the odds and enrolled himself in school. At school, he met some friends who told him about an abandoned apartment building in their neighborhood. This apartment became Jacob’s living arrangement. He spoke of hiding his things in a closet, using materials as a pallet and praying that contractors didn’t come in and find him night to night. To make his situation even worse, one-day Jacob was leaving a friend’s house and was shot in the hip. He was shot just because he was not known in the neighborhood. Because Jacob didn’t have insurance or any adult to seek guidance from, Jacob hobbled around town for a week until we, at Huck House, saw him and made him go to the hospital.
At Huck House, we linked Jacob to services such as counseling to deal with his grief, healthcare, food benefits and bus passes to get to and from appointments, but he never could land on both his feet. I spent many hours with Jacob and worried extensively about what his time unsupervised would bring him. Unfortunately, there were times when Jacob stole from grocery stores to eat and got caught, which resulted in going in and out of court for misdemeanors. With misdemeanors and court, comes fines, more cases and probation, which makes it increasingly difficult to maintain a decent job and any hope for the future.
Jacob has been robbed and beat up several times and because of his transient lifestyle, there were often weeks that I didn’t hear from him, with no phone and no address to consistently locate him at. Upon waiting for his name to come up on the many waitlists for housing that he was on, Jacob met a woman, with whom he had a child and is now trying to figure out how to end the cycle for his son. Jacob has been working full time consistently for about 4 months now and decided to finally go into an adult shelter to seek assistance for his new family. Homelessness is real and the many facets that come along with it are even more real. Because of their situations, they are subjected to vulnerabilities most wouldn’t know how to handle. As a society, we failed Jacob and must prevent young people from continuing to fall through the cracks.
Written by Kyra Crockett-Hodge, Youth Outreach Program Team Leader
Note: Name has been changed for the sake of privacy.
