Life at a homeless shelter when you're 6 -

Friends & Neighbors

Life at a homeless shelter when you’re 6

Taliah has a whole speech prepared to give to the kids who live in the homeless shelter she’s going to run one day. “I want to talk to them about pushing through it—how if they put their minds on what they can do, they can make it there.”

She ought to know. As a young child, Taliah spent several years going from one shelter to another alongside her mother, who lost her home for a number of reasons. The six-year-old had been living with her father when one day she was told she was going to the zoo—then found herself in a shelter with her mom, who was struggling to overcome a drug addiction.

“I want to talk to them about pushing through it—how if they put their minds on what they can do, they can make it there.”

“My dad understood that my mom needed me, and that I needed her,” says Taliah, who at first wasn’t happy with the arrangement. “But I knew that my mom needed me there to keep her strong, so I stayed.” The two spent time in three different shelters before they landed at Hilliard House, the interim shelter at Housing Families First, and Taliah immediately felt the difference as soon as they arrived.

Taliah

Taliah Connor

A home, not a shelter

With more kids her age, more devoted attention from the staff, and an array of activities to help the children stay engaged and active, she felt more like she was part of a community. Today, at 19, she credits her time at Hilliard House with shaping who she is today: a young woman with a dream and the drive to see it through.

“I felt like I was going home,” says Taliah about her time at Housing Families First. “Not like I was going to a shelter.”

Taliah attends Old Dominion University these days, and speaks with the confidence of a person with a plan. She’s double-majoring in women’s studies and business, a course she felt would lay the best groundwork for her life’s ambition, run a shelter for women and their children. To her, those are a shelter’s most vulnerable demographic, and she’s impatient to give back, starting by volunteering this summer at Housing Families First and learning all she can.

As a child, living in a shelter was a lot to go through, difficult to explain to your friends, and hard for a young mind to wrap itself around. She remembers feeling angry at her mother, feeling helpless, and feeling like this was the path her life would inevitably follow. But the staff  helped alter her train of thought. They asked her how she was doing at school, took an interest in keeping her mind active, and encouraged her to do activities with other children. Soon, her friends even felt a little envious that she got to stay within such a tight-knit community.

“I felt like I was going home,” says Taliah about her time at Housing Families First. “Not like I was going to a shelter.”

Strength, hope, and the wisdom of experience

She felt strong with the staff behind her, and she won’t forget the time they took to make sure her mom had all the help she needed to find a job and a home. Even once they were settled in their new apartment, Taliah remembers one individual, “Miss Peggy,” who made it her personal mission to follow up with visits and phone calls.

As she got older and started to set her sights on college, Taliah turned to Miss Peggy to help her figure out the application process. Looking back, she feels for her parents’ helplessness when faced with such a situation. Without their own education, they just didn’t have the experience to help Taliah move forward, although they weren’t lacking in emotional support. Taliah wants to be someone else’s Miss Peggy—preferably a Miss Peggy to a lot of people, starting with her own brother. “Over the years, I watched my family struggle because they didn’t have an education,” she remarks. “They couldn’t sit down with me to help with my homework or my applications, and I want my little brother to have someone tell him how to do this kind of thing. If I don’t do it, no one will.”

“They couldn’t sit down with me to help with my homework or my applications, and I want my little brother to have someone tell him how to do this kind of thing. If I don’t do it, no one will.”

Taliah remains very close to her father, stepmother, and her mother, who now lives in New York City. She never quite realized how guilty her father felt until the day she thanked him for giving her the experience of living in shelters with her mother. He was brought to tears, and that’s when it dawned on her that he’d never been comfortable with his own decision. But Taliah knew that it had made her stronger. “I used my mom’s experience to see where I didn’t want to be,” Taliah says. “I used it as a push to get better. But I stuck by my mother’s side, and that’s what I want to tell children like me.”

“People think about homeless people being on the street,” she explains. “They don’t know that there are people living in shelters. It doesn’t mean you’re dirty, you’re dumb, or you’re a drug addict.”

At her university, Taliah has met a lot of first-generation college students, but she’s the only one she knows who has lived in a homeless shelter. This doesn’t discourage her—she’s happy to talk about it to anyone who asks. “People think about homeless people being on the street,” she explains. “They don’t know that there are people living in shelters. It doesn’t mean you’re dirty, you’re dumb, or you’re a drug addict. Homelessness can mean that you were in the wrong place at a bad time, and now you’re trying to get back on your feet.”