By MARVIN ANDERSON
Elizabeth Johnson-McKinney surprised her son, Xavier, when she told him they were moving to a bigger house.
“I told my son a lie,” she said. “I couldn’t tell him the reality.” Ms. Johnson-McKinney — homeless, hungry and one month pregnant — was actually moving her family to a HELP USA shelter in Brooklyn.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she recalled. That first night in the shelter, she sat next to her husband, James McKinney, 30, watching her two sleeping children — Destiny Johnson, 3, and Xavier Johnson, 6 — and rummaging through their belongings, reliving their eviction. In April, Ms. Johnson-McKinney, 25, had lost her full-time job as a case manager for Community Access, a social services organization. Her $40,000 salary had been the family’s main source of income.
“We were one paycheck away from being homeless,” she said. “We never thought this would happen to us.”
In May, the financial strain become so overwhelming that they could not afford the rent, and they were forced to leave their apartment in Queens, where they had lived for three years. At the shelter, every possession they owned had to fit into eight bins, the allotted limit. The bulk of their photographs and furniture was trashed or sold as the family began a new life with practically nothing.
“Most people would have given up,” said Fia Sarmi, a caseworker at Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens who helped the family. But Ms. Johnson-McKinney said she had a mission.
“This isn’t our home,” she recalled telling her family at the shelter. “Don’t get comfortable. We’re getting out.”
Every day, she left the shelter — infested with roaches and water bugs, she said, and in need of repair — to take Xavier to school before searching for jobs. The employment hunt turned desperate, she said, because she feared her family members were becoming like some of her neighbors, adjusting to life in the shelter instead of trying to leave.
“We didn’t want that,” she said. “My goal was to get us back to where we were — at home, eating together like a family.”
The family faced another blow when Mr. McKinney was laid off from his part-time job as a security officer with Global Security Associates at Kennedy International Airport. “That’s when things went downhill again,” Ms. Johnson-McKinney said.
For the first time, the family had to get help for its basic needs and turned to the food pantry at Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens. Ms. Johnson-McKinney and Mr. McKinney began to argue more, and the fabric of the family seemed to rip at the seams.
“I didn’t know if our marriage would survive,” she said. But somehow, they grew closer as they navigated the financial straits.
“This made our family bond stronger,” Mr. McKinney said. “We began to argue less. We worked together.”
Tensions eased even more with the thought of a new baby or when they were in the presence of their children. Xavier and Destiny’s smiles and joy were the glue that maintained the relationship, both parents said.
“We hear, ‘You’re the best parents in the world,’ and we knew we couldn’t give up,” she said.
Ms. Johnson-McKinney eventually landed a job as a security officer at Broadway House Women’s Shelter in Brooklyn, making $10 an hour. It was not her dream job, but it was a new beginning, one in which she has the opportunity to inspire women who face similar obstacles.
She says she tells them: “My family keeps me dedicated. Never become satisfied here.”
Mr. McKinney has had no luck finding another job, and he baby-sits for Destiny while Xavier — who has a learning disability, for which the family receives $697 a month in Supplemental Security Income — attends school. With Ms. Johnson-McKinney constantly working overtime and stretching every dollar, the family moved out of the shelter and into a $1,400-a-month three-bedroom apartment in Brownsville, Brooklyn, four months after the eviction.
“We couldn’t have been any happier to leave,” Ms. Johnson-McKinney said in her new living room. But all the family could afford was a bunk bed for the children, as well as a large red sofa and a love seat used for family dinners and gatherings.
Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, drew $500 from the fund to buy the family a queen-size bed frame, a box spring and a mattress for the family. Ms. Sarmi, the caseworker, said the agency was also planning to help the family find baby sitters and other services during Ms. Johnson-McKinney’s pregnancy. Mother and father are hoping for a boy and have already picked out a name: Elijah.
Recently, Ms. Johnson-McKinney had a tea party with her daughter. The two spread a toy tea set across the tile floor and sipped from empty cups. They used plastic knives to cut away at the air in their living room, bare except for the red two-piece furniture set, a small television and a portrait of a sunset.
They are reclaiming their lives with small steps, Ms. Johnson-McKinney said, adding, “We are starting over.”
She wants to repaint the apartment, add more furniture and replace family pictures lost during their eviction.
“I’m going to get everything we lost back,” she said. “All of it.”
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