KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A local family service center is seeing an influx of homeless mothers. The co-founder of Operation Breakthrough says at a time women and children need help the most, they are being turned away.
“I’m stressed out, I cry about this every day,” said 24-year-old Amanda Coleman, who is homeless, jobless and desperate for help.
“I’m out here by myself, I really don’t have many friends or family, I really only have one friend that’s in my corner, my family isn’t there for me,” Coleman said.
She has three kids, and one more on the way.
“By me being pregnant, I can’t find a job,” she added.
She says she was in a bad relationship and everything she had was taken away from her.
“I try to look to their dad and stuff for help, but he laughs, he thinks it’s funny,” said Coleman.
She came to Operation Breakthrough about a month ago for help, after someone referred her to Sister Berta Sailer.
“There’s no recourse for them anymore,” said Sr. Berta, co-founder of Operation Breakthrough. “That’s the scary part.”
Sr. Berta has been working at Operation Breakthrough, a family service center, since 1967. She says it serves about 100 homeless children a day.
“Our kids, when you talk to them, and you say, ‘where do you live?’ They’ll tell you, ‘I stay here,'” added Sr. Berta.
She says the average age of a homeless person in Kansas City is seven. In the United States it’s nine, so she says the metro fares worse than the rest of the country.
“If you happened to fall down on your luck and be homeless, used to be you could get in a shelter,” said Sr. Berta. “And you can’t do that anymore.”
While she says shelters do a wonderful job, using every ounce of space they have, the number of homeless mothers in the metro is growing, and she says it’s a huge issue.
“If you call the homeless hotline now, everybody’s full,” Sr. Berta said.
Coleman says she’s even tried different cities, but to no avail.
“I try to call the same places over and over again every day and they tell me the same thing, is they don’t have any help,” said Coleman.
If you know of any helpful resources for homeless mothers like Coleman, please contact Operation Breakthrough at (816) 329-5215.
