Moving to Nowhere: Children’s Stories of Homelessness

The number of homeless families in the United States continues to increase at an alarming rate. There is little doubt that becoming homeless and living in shelters has had significant effects on the lives of the children in these families. While many empirical studies have documented the effects of homelessness on one or another aspect of children’s lives, Moving to Nowhere looks at the experience of losing one’s home and living in a shelter from the perspective of the child. Children who are homeless tell their own story. They speak of life in a shelter as they have known it. It is through these stories that human service professionals can come to see homelessness as the children themselves see it and can learn what living in a shelter is like. In their stories, these children describe how they became homeless, why they think it happened to their family, what their expectations and concerns were as they realized they would be moving to a shelter, and what the shelter was like when they arrived. They speak often of missing their old neighbourhoods, their friends, and their extended family. They report their fears, their worries about their family’s future, the absence of money and resources, and, for some, the presence of violence or substance abuse in their families. They repeatedly tell of their embarrassment about being homeless; this profoundly colours their relationships to friends, schoolmates, and teachers. And, in each of their stories, these children provide clear and moving examples of how they manage to survive on a day- to-day basis while they wait for permanent housing. Health care professionals as well as psychologists and teachers, should find this work poignant and instructive, as should students and the general public.