jdarling@s-t.com
The only piece of furniture in Mellisa Macomber's third-floor New Bedford apartment on Brock Avenue is a small wooden kitchen table.
The working single mother of three couldn't be happier about it.
"We have a roof over our heads," she said. "A place to call home."
The Macombers didn't have a place to call home for a few months. Starting in late September until a few weeks ago, the family called the Capri Motel in Dartmouth home, then stayed with friends and family until moving to the South End.
"It was awful," Mellisa said. "I don't wish being homeless on anybody."
The troubles started early in 2011 when Mellisa moved from an apartment on Davis Street to Jouvette Street.
"There were rats coming out of the walls," she said about her Davis Street apartment. "We had to get out of there."
After saving up enough to move, her finances took another hit. She said the father of her three children has stopped sending the money he was giving her to help with the bills.
The stove was broken in her new apartment on Jouvette Street, and she said the landlord promised to fix it. Months later, and still no stove in sight, she started giving her rent money to a city attorney specializing in housing cases to get her out of her lease.
"People take a stove for granted," she said. "We were living off a microwave for months. That's not healthy for my kids."
Her job as a stitcher at the Niche factory in the South End allowed her to save some extra money — funds she was going to use to move into a new apartment. But another stroke of bad luck hit just weeks before she was moving out of her Jouvette Street apartment; she missed work for two weeks with the flu, and the loss of wages left her short of first, last and security needed to move.
While her oldest daughter, 13, stayed with a friend so she would be close to her school, Melissa and her two youngest daughters, Kaitlyn, 4, and Shannon, 6, planned to spend a few days at the Capri Motel in Dartmouth.
"A few days turned into a few weeks," said Melissa, who was put on a waiting list at a homeless shelter. "I didn't qualify for some of the programs because I was working and not on welfare. I had used all the money I saved up on the motel and had nothing left."
She was working less hours at the factory and had trouble finding day care for her youngest daughter.
"I had people telling me to just quit my job and go on welfare so I could get free day care," she said. "I don't want to be on welfare. I love my job. My boss is like an angel. I'm comfortable there. I want to provide for my kids."
Unable to afford the Capri anymore, she moved in with a family member in Wareham, bringing her two young children into a two-bedroom apartment that already had five people living in it.
"We slept on the floor in the parlor," Mellisa recalled.
Finally, she was able to save enough to move to Brock Avenue. Times are tough but she is happy the family has a safe, warm place to lay their heads at night.
Kaitlyn and Shannon sat around the kitchen table on a recent evening, cutting folded pieces of paper to make snowflakes. There is an empty parlor with some Christmas decorations in boxes on the floor. Mellisa and Kaitlyn share an air mattress in mom's room while the other girls each have their own air mattress in their rooms.
Mellisa applied for holiday assistance from The Salvation Army to make the holidays brighter for her children. She will receive two toys for each child and a small food voucher for a holiday meal.
"I couldn't believe they were going to do all that for us," she said. "I was getting tears in my eyes. The gifts mean so much to us. In years past, I've told the kids that Christmas isn't until next month to give me time to save up, but now they're too old. That doesn't work anymore. Shannon just started kindergarten and they talk about it in school."
She also didn't hesitate to share her story with Standard-Times readers through The Neediest Families Fund.
"I've read the articles in the past. There were people who were in really rough shape, much worse then us, and they got through it. That gave me hope," she said. "Hopefully, our story will give someone else hope too. Things will be OK."
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