As recession deepens, families become the new face of homelessness

SALT LAKE CITY — It's 6 a.m., and David Brown peers through the early dawn shadows at his wife and four small children, dreaming about better days as they lie on mattresses all around him inside a classroom at St. Catherine's Newman Center.

While the room is filled with University of Utah students fall through spring, the Catholic student center houses homeless families for a week each summer as part of the local Family Promise program. Participating churches in the national program offer space and volunteers all year long to care for families who have run out of options, offering shelter, meals and moral support that keeps them together and off the street.

The Browns are representative of a new kind of homelessness that is a result of the deepening recession. They, like others who take part in the Family Promise program, are facing homelessness for the first time, says Jennifer Hare, the executive director of the organization's Salt Lake office. Hare says she is seeing more of these families showing up at the shelter than ever before.

Most days, the Browns will all be up, dressed and out the door by 7. If things go like clockwork, they'll eat downstairs in the student center's kitchen before they leave for the day. If not, they'll snag some breakfast at the Family Promise day center, where the six-member clan spends waking hours as David looks for jobs online, creates and sends out résumés, and hopes for a job interview.

Brown's wife, Nicole, will do laundry and supervise the children — ages 10, 8, 4 and 1 — as they while away the hours, hoping the day will bring word of any new possibilities for their future. Like millions of other American families who are one job, one injury or one paycheck from the street, the Browns had only known homelessness by watching TV. The abstract had become overwhelmingly real.

It's been eight months since David was injured at home in November. He lost his full-time job at Walmart, found himself under a pile of medical bills without health insurance, and by early December, the Browns had to move in with a family friend for three months. They thought things were looking up when a large tax refund arrived, and they moved into an apartment with the hope that David would soon find a job. But the recession's grip held fast on the family and their finances, forcing them out again after only a few weeks when he was unable to secure employment.