‘I’m not going to be broke’: Former homeless mom shares strategies in Joliet

Last week, two women with a connection to Will County shared tips and resources with mothers experiencing homelessness at Daybreak Center in Joliet.

One speaker was Diane Nilan, an author, national speaker, homeless advocate, alumnus of the former College of St. Francis in Joliet (now University of St. Francis) and founder of the one-person nonprofit Hear Us, which gives “voice and visibility to homeless children and youth,” according to the Hear Us website.

Nilan also spent 20 years traveling across the U.S. in her van, interviewing and filming people experiencing homelessness.

She also is a founder of the former Will County PADS, “a model of sheltering the homeless at various spots in the community – usually churches, which would generally change each night, said Maggie Snow, director of communications and advancement at Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Joliet.

“[PADS] was the first way the Catholic Charities provided shelter in Joliet,” Snow said. “But it transitioned into the permanent Daybreak location in the current building.”

Nilan said she “stumbled” into serving people experiencing homelessness in the early ‘80s.

“I was out of work and got connected with Catholic Charities on a temporary job,” Nilan said. “At the time, homelessness was really just exploding. So my boss said to me, ‘We need to get a homeless shelter started.‘”

The other speaker was Melissa Agunloye of Bolingbrook, the mother of seven children who experienced homelessness for many years.

Agunloye shared her story in “The Three Melissas: The Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness,” by Nilan and Diana Bowman. The book contains “tips and strategies to help parents experiencing homelessness navigate difficult paths while keeping their children safe,” according to the Three Melissas website.

“People don’t realize you’re homeless when you live in a motel. But when you’re homeless, you don’t have a place of your own. It’s a room of your own.”

—  Melissa Agunloye of Bolingbrook, the mother of seven children who experienced homelessness for many years

Nilan said she met all three Melissas during her years on the road documenting the experience of homelessness.

All proceeds from “The Three Melissas: The Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness” will be shared among Agunloye and the other two Melissas, Nilan said.

Ending the homelessness cycle

Agunloye said she first experienced homelessness as a child, when her mother went through financial difficulties. Consequently, Agunloye, along with her mother and two of Agunloye’s siblings, lived in one room at a series of motels.

“People don’t realize you’re homeless when you live in a motel,” Agunloye said. “But when you’re homeless, you don’t have a place of your own. It’s a room of your own. But it’s not stability. You can get kicked out at a moment’s notice if you don’t have the room rate.”

Agunloye said she had her first child at age 13, which added another person to the single-room arrangement. So she “decided to venture out on her own,” perpetuating the cycle, she said.

Through the years, she experienced “a lot of heartaches and setbacks” from running away and living place to place, which included “other people’s houses,” where she was not always treated well, she said.

“I decided to make a change,” Agunloye said. “This was not what I wanted for my children.”

Agunloye said she was living in a motel with five children when she met Nilan in 2010 through a mutual connection. Soon afterward, Agunloye moved to Wisconsin – because she’d heard it was easier to get Section 8 housing – and “went through a lot of domestic violence in Wisconsin.”

She’s lived in a homeless shelter twice, she said. The last time – when her five children were ages 2, 5, 6, 8, 13 – Agunloye was finally able to save money for rent and a security deposit, she said.

Until then, saving money was impossible, Agunloye said. But surviving by eating “junk food” and working several part-time jobs to pay motel fees only keeps people in that situation, she said.

“It’s critical to save your money when you’re experiencing these things,” Agunloye said. “Spending $10 a day on junk food is $300 a month toward utility bills.”

Nilan feels the advice in “The Three Melissas: The Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness” is powerful precisely because it comes from women who learned it firsthand.

“I don’t want to be the one preaching those things,” Nilan said. “I know a lot, but I’ve never been homeless – other than living in a van, which wasn’t real homelessness.”

Agunloye hopes some of the strategies she learned the hard way – such as saving money on food by couponing – will help other families in similar situations.

“Sometimes people are ashamed of being homeless, afraid of saying they went through things because they might be judged,” she said. “But we are who we are because of our experiences. They either make you or break you. And I’m not going to be broke, that’s for sure.”

For more information, visit 3melissas.org and hearus.us.