Poor sliding into homelessness

OREM — The dim one-bedroom apartment in the back of a defunct cleaning business just off State Street beats living out of dingy motels as Chris and Mandi Larsen did in the summer.

But at $510 a month rent for a place with moldy walls and limited hot water, the jobless couple and their 2-year-old and infant daughters might be homeless again in January. They figure they'll be $900 behind by then.

"I've been out walking all day looking for a job," said Chris Larsen, whose broken-down van sits outside waiting to be repossessed. "We don't even have money for the bus."

Chris Larsen, 25, was laid off from a job loading trucks two months ago. Mandi Larsen, 21, was told to take two weeks off from the survey research firm where she is employed. She hopes to get hired as a telemarketer at another company in the meantime.

"I didn't picture life being as hard as it is," she said.

The Larsens are getting by on food stamps and the kindness of others.

"I'm at my wits' end, really," Chris Larsen said. "I don't know what to do."

Homeless people are not just grizzled men with duffle bags living under viaducts or in city parks. The face of homelessness has changed. Many are two- and single-parent families who, for whatever reason, have fallen on hard times. They never imagined they would be struggling for life's basics.

"Homelessness is just a symptom of people being in low-paying jobs and not being able to find affordable housing," said Myla Dutton, executive director of Community Action Services.

Community Action provided shelter in local motels for 203 households last year, 89 of them single-parent families and 59 two-parent families like the Larsens. Of the 659 total people in those homes, 341 were under age 17. The number of those assisted was half that of the previous two years, only because a government grant ran out, limiting the program's services.

Dutton tears up when talking about the people she describes as resilient despite their stress, frustration, exhaustion, fear and anger.

"They're not broken people," she said. "They're doing everything they can to take care of their families."

Chris Larsen did well while working as a flagger on the I-15 reconstruction project. "Once that ended, that was it. Everything pretty much went downhill for me."

After stints as an ironworker and truck loader, Larsen, a high school graduate, said he's willing to take any job, whether it's washing dishes in a restaurant or the graveyard shift at a convenience store. At least it would provide some income, though maybe not enough to keep from them being evicted.