CINCINNATI — April Austin cooks dinner for her kids. It’s chili spaghetti — without the cheese. And maybe, without the chili. It might turn out to just be hot dogs.
It all depends on their mood.
“We always have options,” she says with a laugh.
A few months ago, Austin wasn’t laughing. Because it seemed like there were no options.
“At times, it's just totally out of your control,” Austin said. “You can do everything you know to do and life just happens.”
For her, life was her children getting sick. One of them had a stroke. Another was diagnosed with endometriosis. And because of that, the single mom couldn't work.
"It's not because I was lazy," Austin said.
Ultimately, she spent several months living in a shelter.
That’s where Austin found out about Cincinnati’s Homeless Congress, a new way for people experiencing homelessness to advocate for themselves.
Meet some of the members of the Homeless Congress in the video below:
And that’s when she met Rico Blackman, the director of community organizing for the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition.
It’s his job to go into emergency shelters and talk to people. To find out what's going on. And to see if he can help. But to have real impact, Blackman tells me, it has to be more than just him.
“To figure out solutions to homelessness, the people experiencing it should be at the forefront,” Blackman said. “The congress to me has always been about 'how do we provide that voice?'"
Blackman helps facilitate the group, which now has more than a dozen members. Sometimes, that means picking people up. Other times, that means recruiting. Often, that means letting them use the coalition's building.
When I ask Blackman to explain his job, he laughs. He says it usually takes a lot of words.
He has a much easier time explaining the importance of the congress. For this, he uses a statistic: At least 145 people experiencing homelessness died in Cincinnati last year, according to the coalition.
“We are losing people to homelessness,” Blackman said, wiping his eyes. “And in order for that to end, for people to understand the severity of it, they need to hear directly from the people experiencing it."
That's why the congress meets once a week, and why they recently took two vans to D.C. for a rally about affordable housing. Some of the members had never been outside of Cincinnati before.
“There are many people that fall through the cracks,” said DeShawn Thomas-Booker, a member of the congress.
She moved into an apartment in February after living in a woman’s shelter for months. She told me most people don’t understand how easy it is to end up in a situation like that.
“People have such a stigma against homeless people,” Thomas-Booker said. “I was in the shelter, and my roommate was a nurse studying to get her master's degree.”
The congress helped Thomas-Booker get her own place. A place she says is so nice it looks like a hotel. In her room, Thomas-Booker turns on the lights and screams, “This is my place ya'll!”
Blackman is there. And they talk about the congress’s next meeting. The group is working on a letter to Cincinnati City Council about their recommendations for affordable housing plans and funding for shelters. They plan to speak in front of council in the future.
Across town, April Austin shows me her backyard and the trampoline she recently bought her kids. It’s something she didn’t think she’d ever be able to do. Then, she shows me videos of one of her daughters singing.
"I believe," her daughter sings.
Austin begins mouthing the words, thinking about what she's overcome. And how she can help others do the same thing.
“I just try not to cry,” Austin said.
