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Finding herself homeless was only the start of truly difficult decisions for this Kamloops mom.

She is on a disability income and roughly a year ago got behind on rent. While she tried to find a new place, she also sought to stay under the radar of the Ministry of Children and Families, fearing she might lose her kids.

“It was a terrifying time, it was the harshest thing,” she said. “Fortunately, I wasn’t approached (by family services), no one did call me. My children were provided for with shelter, food, and heat, although they did have periods of not being in school.”

She left the city and stayed in a temporary shelter on a friends’ property with her kids. But those fears are being shared by a growing number of mothers and families just trying to scrape by with high inflation and higher rents.

It took four months of uncertainty before she was able to secure housing and employment in a different city but has lasting financial and emotional effects from the stress of her ordeal, and debt acquired by running up lines of credit to get through it. Some details in this story are being kept intentionally vague, and her identity is being withheld so she would be more comfortable explaining her situation.

“I have debt and a low credit score due to homelessness, so I’m not quite digging out of the hole,” she said. “By the grace of God I didn’t default on my vehicle payments or loans. Losing my community and the homelessness increased my PTSD. It’s been hard to rebound from that.”

The mother said her heart breaks for other parents going through homelessness who are forced to sleep in tents and vehicles, and who don’t have access to lines of credit to “buffer their homelessness.” She said being homeless is more expensive in many ways than being housed is.

“You have to pay more for gas, trying to be warm in your vehicle, keeping the kids warm,” she said. “You pay more for foods that don’t need to be cooked, like fast food. There is therapeutic impulse buying where if the kids want something you buy it out of pure guilt.”

The number of hidden homeless are on the rise in Kamloops and the Okanagan, along with the numbers of parents “hiding” their children from authorities, constantly moving along. In a previous interview with iNFOnews.ca the founder of All Are Family Outreach Society in Kelowna, Clary Lausnes said she’s seeing a “steady increase of hidden families living on the streets.” This includes young parents with children.

“Those families living in a tent don’t want to be seen because they don’t want to get caught by family services and get their kids taken away,” she said. “They are constantly moving from place to place to overnight and are hard to keep track of.”

All Are Family Outreach Society responds to suicide calls, and marital and child abuse calls for the homeless, along with helping to provide clothing, fuel, medical costs and rent. 

The unnamed mother said having her kids removed would be “traumatic” for herself and her kids, and never considered being apart from them. She said affordable housing solutions are needed, not separating families.

“No one should be removing kids from their parents,” she said. “They should be providing a motel room for them. It breaks my heart for these families, I can’t imagine the fear they live in every day that they’re going to lose their kids.”

READ MORE: Rent on the rise for one-bedroom apartments in Kelowna

She has thought about solutions for homelessness that would keep families on fixed incomes together and safely housed.

“It’s cooperative tiny home communities,” she said. “There are municipalities in the states already doing this and you can do it for any demographic. Each village has 10 or 20 tiny homes and a hub in the middle for community kitchens and other resources.

“Why are we spending millions of dollars building monolithic housing that takes years to break ground and build when we could be taking crown land and building affordable housing villages.”

READ MORE: Number of homeless people dying in Okanagan, Kamloops rising dramatically

The mother has found herself surrounded by more supports from local churches and nonprofits in her new location and is working two jobs. But several houses, like the one she’s renting out of, are going up for sale in the area, and she lives in constant fear she’ll be searching for an affordable rental again.

“My goal is to get a winter tent or a trailer to tow behind the van as a backup plan, just to be safe, there are a lot of places to camp on the forest service roads around here,” she said.

Her message to other struggling homeless families is "don't give up, and don't lose hope." 

READ MORE: Almost half of those in Interior Health waiting for a family doctor are in Kamloops

The Ministry of Children and Family Development focuses on supporting children in BC to “live in safe, healthy and nurturing families and be strongly connected to their communities and culture.” The organization provides several different services to help kids and families when they are going through challenges.

If there is reason to believe a child is abused or neglected, social workers have the authority to look into the situation and take action to keep the child safe which is delegated by the Child, Family and Community Service Act. These actions can include arranging for support services for a family, supervising a child in their home or removing the child and placing them with relatives, a foster family or "specialized residential resources." 

According to the Homeless Hub, which is a homelessness research library developed by the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, “numerous children are removed from families simply because parents lack the resources to provide stable housing and other necessities of life.”

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