The Catskill Chronicle

Story and photos by Ted Waddell

Sharon Dodd, a homeless mother of two with her 4-year old son Fredrick, who attends Project EXCEL.

SULIVAN COUNTY – “I don’t want to be living like this forever,” said Sharon Dodd, a 44-year old mother of two who lives in one small room with her kids at the Delano Hotel outside Monticello. “It’s very depressing living in one room with my two kids who drive me crazy all day.”

Sharon Dodd, in her family’s one-room $1,690 a month social-services rental at the Delano Hotel, holds a photo of her two young sons.

Dodd has resided in the local social services-funded rental for a little over a year now, and has been without, in the parlance of social workers, living in ‘fixed, regular and adequate’ housing since 2005 after encountering problems with her first pregnancy.

Before becoming homeless, she “had a good job and a new car” while working for an office warehouse outfit in Middletown. That was before she reportedly got tagged at work with “three occurrences” for missing work due to what Dodd said were medical problems.

No work, no pay. No car, no place to live. No place to call home for her kids.

At the Delano, the county social services department shells out $1,690.00 per month for one cramped room in the local hotel, a figure that was prominently displayed on government-issued paper work.

“I was living in Sleepy Hollow, and she (the landlord) didn’t want any new mommies,” recalled Dodd of being asked to leave the large subsidized housing complex along Route 42 by Monticello High School.

So as Christmas Eve 2009 draws close, Dodd and her two children Fredrick Cederlund, a four-year old enrolled in Project EXCEL, and Robert Cederlund , 6, who attends Cooke Elementary School try to find enough room to live in just one room.

Unlike a lot of other social services funded temporary housing in the county, the Dodd family can consider themselves blessed. Sort of.

Jamie Latimer, a student support specialist with Sullivan County BOCES A.S.K. looks over some paperwork from social services as Sharon Dodd looks on.

In addition to a couple of beds, they have a stove, a refrigerator and a dresser, even though the a few drawer fronts have fallen off. Have some food? Store it on any flat surface you can find. How about your clothes? Store them in black plastic garbage bags, pile your duds on the beds, or leave the dirty stuff on the floor. A tiny plastic Christmas tree and a photo of her two young sons taken at
Walmart, a while ago tries to lighten their spirits.

But, when Robert comes home from school, there’s no place to study. Except maybe a bed or the floor, and doing your homework over the blare of a television isn’t the best of circumstances when it comes time to get a start on your education.

“It’s hard because Robert brings his homework home and Fred wants to watch TV,” said Dodd. “It’s big distraction.”

“It’s a cramped life-style, she said. “There’s no space that they can go to…it’s a fairly good hotel, but there’s no space.”

Asked what she wants for their future, the single homeless mother of two replied, “I want to be out of here and in my own apartment, the kids especially where they can do their homework and stuff like that.”

“I want to get my GED, get and job, and get back to the life I want to lead,” added Dodd.

With an eye on bettering their situation, Dodd is studying for her GED at the local BOCES, while keeping an eye on some additional knee surgery. But the folks over at Sullivan County BOCES A.S.K. (Academic Support for Kids), a program for families in temporary housing, have a mantra – “Fixed, Regular & Adequate”, that spells out in three words what drives them to help students in the county who are living in temporary housing, let’s not mince words, and call it what is really is, and that’s homeless, to stay in school and complete their education.

If you don’t fit into these pigeonholes, then in the real sense of the word in an all too real world filled with living in emergency housing, beat up motels often run by slumlords, or kicked out of your home by eviction or foreclosure, they (ASK) strive to make people aware of federally mandated rights for students in these dire circumstances: the right to attend school. Students don’t need a permanent address to enroll in school, they have the right to stay in their home school if the parents choose, they cannot be denied school enrollment just because school records or other documentation is not immediately available, and they have the right to transportation services to and from the school of origin.

“We have a place to stay, we’re not outside in a cardboard box…the landlord is very nice; and that’s really cool,” said Dodd.

To view more photos from Homeless in the Land of Plenty: Part II visit the Chronicle on Zenfolio.