Let me explain

I have heard a lot of questions about why we have not find shelter. Let me try to explain the obstacles we are facing. Most shelters are geared to single men or women, usually with substance abuse or mental health issues (untreated), there are shelters for unwed moms from bad domestic situations and there are even family shelters. However, to live in a family shelter BOTH adults need to be healthy and capable of working full time! Seriously! There is NO shelter for families who may have an adult who has mental illness, even well treated! Think about this, when you think of homeless people and then think of our family, do we seem to meet your criteria of "homeless". And then there is the interesting equation that Shawn and I are married and YES the girls are both of ours! It is a sad state of our country to have more benefits for single, unwed mothers. I am quite truthfully and deeply sad to tell you that if we left Shawn untreated, encouraged him to give me a couple good whacks (Only once would he, then I would kick his butt!) and I could prove at least 1 of the girls wasn't his and then Shawn left us the system would "award" us more benefits! Even worse, and yes, I am completely aware how awful this sounds and wish I didn't  have to say it, if we were not Citizens of our country housing would be more readily available and financed! Throw in a substance abuse issue and we would be all set. See our situation confuses the system! Because simply put, we should all ready be working and have a house, that's it, all there is too it! Make any sense? It is just the truth of the matter! As the questions about churches, well there are some great and helpful churches. But I think too many people have taken advantage and so now churches aren't as willing to help out as much or at all. And to make matters worse most town funds are small and often used up very quickly by those first in line Even in large cities, the State doesn't give enough finances to cities to properly aid people in need. Think about how many times we have complained that school programs have been cut, property taxes have gone up, yet the Town just built a bigger city hall.When money is cut from State or City it is always at the bottom. And trust me, homeless issues are bottom! They say all the right things on TV, exspecially at this time of year, but it is all window dressing! When you are homeless you have to dig deep and often in unusual places to find help! I don't care what State you live in! If we were homeless in New Hampshire, let me just tell you that the options are even LESS! Trust me, we have been homeless before (just a reminder!) and it was in New Hampshire. In smaller towns it is a whole lot worse, because the attitude is that there are NO homless in  "their community". I actually know for fact that many small towns will have the police ship people they know are homeless to the town line. That way they will be the other town's problem! Well, I hope that this has shed some light on some of the questions you may have. If anything else maybe I can educate in a positive way the issues of homlessness and along the ways, how not to be homeless!