Stories

M.N.'s Story:

"I’m a 32-year-old mother of 4 kids. I would like to be identified as M.N. I’ve been living in Anacortes for around 5 years. My occupation is cleaning houses. When I first moved to Anacortes I lived in an Apartment it was until the summer of 2018 when they came to my apartment and started taking pictures, they didn’t tell me why, I asked them why and they told me it was because they were looking for someone to buy it. After they left I knew what this meant. We had to move out of our apartment that we been living since May 2014. It was a struggle, places were very expensive for only 2 bedrooms or 3. I didn’t want to move out of Anacortes, my daughters go to school here. Besides moving they would deal with changing schools, that would be a lot of things in their shoulders. We looked for places, and we would call. The homes in Anacortes were so expensive that I wanted to give up, I remember telling my daughters that we might have to sleep in our car or move out of state. Until one day I found out about the Family Center and their Shelter. It was amazing that meant we could stay in Anacortes. When I told my daughters it was hard for them to process it, they’ve heard so many bad things about them [homeless shelters] but I told them this was an opportunity to start fresh because in that Apartment it brought bad vibes. We lived in the shelter for 3 months, but before our time ran out something amazing happened. Two owners of a house who donate told the family center that they had a house that was available until their son moved in which was going to be around July of 2020. They asked if they had a family that needed a home, they didn’t want their house to just be sitting there, and we were the chosen family. We were so grateful my daughters were so happy, even though it was a temporary home they were happy, after going through a lot of things we found a home to live in. The time passed very quickly and we were in November. I realized that once we moved out we didn’t have anywhere to go. I got an application for the Launch Apartments [the Anacortes Family Center's new affordable housing complex] and after some time we received a letter saying we got accepted. In December of 2019, we moved into the new apartments, at last, we had a stable home that was affordable. My kids got to stay in Anacortes and attend school here."