Becca says the best day of her turnaround journey was in October 2019 in top right photo in montage when she left the family shelter at Record street, ending a months long chapter of being unhoused with three kids in tow.
Since then, the journey has had challenges, but Becca, a widow who had nothing five years ago, has been relentless to make a better life for her family.
“You have to grind really hard,” she says.
Her story is illustrative of the hustle that’s needed and also how family can both be an impediment or a lifeline or both, how if you push the right doors and do the right things and get help from different organizations in town homelessness in Reno doesn’t have to be a life sentence.
Now a hospice worker, Becca had just worked a 55-hour week when Our Town Reno interviewed her recently following a comment she posted on another story, as she prepared her youngest and nieces to go to school. ‘
“Remember that no one cares more about you than yourself! Create the life you want! Save yourself [be]cause no one is coming to save you. I was homeless five months with three kids and now steady on my feet my fifth year,” she wrote giving advice to a neighbor currently struggling.
Becca says one major challenge she has had to surmount in her life was falling “in love with a felon who had a criminal record and all that other stuff. And I helped him actually. So that's the most beautiful part. When I met him, he was a piece of shit. And when he died, he was a volunteer firefighter and got baptized in the church. Like it was the most beautiful thing. He worked in construction. But when he died I had nothing.”
Formerly a Reno local Becca decided to return to the Biggest Little City while grieving her husband and scrambling to find supplies for her type one diabetic daughter.
“We took a Greyhound bus from Texas back after my husband died and our stuff got misplaced so we couldn't find some of her diabetic supplies. And I'm like, we just gotta get reestablished here.”
The wheels started spinning off though when Becca says Renown called the CPS on her when she was looking for her daughter’s medical supplies, which did arrive two days later.
Staying with her brother, nine people in a two bedroom house, created unfortunate family fireworks, as did a short stay with her mother-in-law. Her kids were 15, 14 and 6, agitated with the sudden change and grieving their father.
Becca immediately started to work at Smith’s in the deli section cutting lunch meat.
A CPS staff told her if she really wanted help though, she should go “broke and homeless.” After cops got involved following a family altercation, Becca and her kids were finally accepted into the family shelter, after days of trying to get in and being told there was a waitlist.
“It is an uncomfortable place to be because you're with random people,” she remembers of her arrival. “I actually thought it was pretty decent of a place though because it was not like a hotel room, but it was like a motel room. Like you walked in and there was a bathroom. And there was a microwave, a mini fridge, a countertop, a sink. I had a table for the kids to eat at.”
Since her kids were going to school and they were unhoused, she got help from the Washoe County Children in Transition program.
“The schools give you like free stuff and I didn't know at the time I could have upped my food stamps, but I never did. I think I had like $250 a month, which my daughter that's sick with type one, she has Celiac disease also, so she can't eat gluten. And a lot of the stuff that they would put meals out in common area for everybody … was weird. Like, I don't know, I've never seen it before, but I guess if you're hungry you'd eat anything. But because my son was picky, my daughter had an allergy and I just didn't eat because I was always so stressed.”
Her five months in the family shelter were “humbling” but it worked, even if it was uncomfortable. “They make you save money and you have to show them your savings or your checking account all the time. Like they're all in your business. You like sign your rights over to the state when you stay at a homeless shelter like that.”
She also remembers the walls were paper thin and there was violence among other families as well as on the compound.
“We would walk home down from the bus station over on Record Street and then like 30 seconds later it was filled with cops because there was a stabbing. So honestly, I think like the rawness of what we saw and went through humbled my children as well.”
A case worker helped her set ambitious personal goals, including finding her own place. She got additional help from the Bridge Church, which she had come to know through their Project 150 helping her kids get clothed for school.
“They paid $200 for my deposit and then I had to come up with the other 200. So I was able to get that deposit. So that's why I always tell people to reach out to churches. There's money in churches, you know what I mean?”
Becca was open about her predicament at work at Smith’s, and when she finally found an apartment she could afford, her colleagues helped her furnish it entirely. “You have to suck up your pride. And a lot of people don't want to do that. But you know, to me, I had three kids and I was a widow,” she said.
Becca moved into an apartment in Sparks in October 15th, 2019, and has stayed housed there since then. Her rent was initially $1,025 per month and only went up to $1100 recently, so it’s been manageable.
Interacting with CPS also became a blessing. “CPS didn't scare me because I'm a good mom. I mean, they ended up giving my daughter a trip to diabetic camp up in Lake Tahoe and paid like a thousand dollars for her to go. And they told me I was a good mom and I’ve never seen them since. I've never done drugs and I'm not like an alcoholic or anything, so that probably helps too.”
Therapy for herself and her kids, while focusing on family priorities, were other key components of the turnaround. “Therapy is where it's at,” she said of being able to manage the dark clouds and sadness in her life. “My number one priority was my kids. Nothing else mattered. Not even friends I grew up here with. Nothing.”
Change is now afoot, as a recent cockroach invasion in her apartment as well as new romance in her life is making her move.
“I’ve moved my stuff into a storage unit. I'm actually gonna end up moving in with my boyfriend,” she said. “We went to high school together and he wanted, you know, he's known me for a long time, so I figured it's okay to move on.”
One daughter is going to TMCC, while her other daughter is working for her brother’s painting company, and her youngest is in middle school. She reconnected with her brother a year ago, and they now help each other.
Becca also has retail jobs as backups just in case and has her daughters work in the retail industry as well. She makes $19 an hour as a hospice caregiver and even though money is always tight she’s proud of the turnaround she’s accomplished and the work she does, including with dementia patients.
“There's not room for very much extra. I just went to St. Vincent's and picked up a holiday meal,” she said, not afraid of still seeking help.
Becca still pays bills for her diabetic 19-year-old while waiting for her disability to go through. “It’s not easy, even at $19 an hour. I’ve thought about getting a second job, but instead I'm opting to move in with someone and you know, share their rent and share their bills.”
For those who look down on the unhoused, Becca says: “it's just like anything that we come across in this world, nobody knows what it's like until you go through it yourself…. I was yelled at and people would say, ‘why would you put your kids through that?’ And I'm like ‘the only thing that happened was my husband died and we didn't have any money. I was taking care of him dying. So I didn't have a job. What was I supposed to do?’ You know what I mean? But when it comes to hate and all this stuff, don't worry about what people think. Like I put that away a long time ago. It's hard though, after coming from nothing to something, you're like, I don't wanna give it up. You just have to work very hard and it's so hard to actually maintain, like barely get by in Northern Nevada. It's so hard. I feel like I'm making decent money that life shouldn't still be this hard.”
Our Town Reno reporting, December 2023
