Contents

love story A cigarette

A pregnant homeless woman, a violent ex-husband, and a sandwich-making boyfriend

Stephanie Summer distributes the Homeless Voice infront of Lynx bus station while 6 months pregnant. Photo by Noelle Haro Gomez

By Jordan Gass-poore

Flick.

The lighter’s flame warmed Stephanie Summers’ lips as she relit her cigarette, burned down to a nub.

Embers fell onto Summers’ neon yellow T-shirt, the back of which was purposefully tied into a knot to accentuate her bulging stomach. The State Plus Inn resident is 6 months pregnant with her fourth child.

Flick

Summers’ fresh cigarette was perched between two fingers with chipped blue fingernail polish in one hand. In the other was a copy of The Homeless Voice newspaper that she was waving to no one near a street corner in downtown Orlando.

Backaches from a kidney infection and pregnancy were supposed to prevent Summers from vending. Then a Stay Plus Inn employee knocked on her door at 7 a.m. and told her to jump in a van with other vendors.

Tenants there choose to hock copies of The Homeless Voice for donations on various street corners in Orlando. The money is divvied 40/60 between vendors and the inn to help pay for food and accommodations.

Cory Anderson, Summers’ boyfriend and roommate, handed The Homeless Voice to passersby alongside Summers. In the interim, he arranged wrapped sandwiches on a pile of ice in a red water cooler to keep the couple’s lunch fresh.

As Summers popped mini-donuts into her mouth, Anderson encouraged her to eat a sandwich. Later, she replied. Two more packs of mini-donuts remained in a paper bag beside her.

She and Anderson simultaneously, almost telepathically, pulled out identical green packs of cigarettes from the pockets of their blue jeans.

Flick

They took deep drags on their cigarettes as they paced back-and-forth inside the “blue box,” a rectangular space delineated by blue tick marks on the brick sidewalk where cash solicitation is allowed.

“I don’t like asking for money,” said Summers, exhaling a steady stream of smoke from her nostrils.

Copies of The Homeless Voice were stacked beside Anderson. He handed a free copy to an elderly man with a cane that walked by him. Have a good day.

“Nine times out of 10 they’ll come back and give a donation,” said Anderson, a friendly military brat, of his distribution practice.

This was the couple’s first time vending. In their five day stay at the Stay Plus Inn they had previously carpooled with fellow tenants to help navigate the streets of downtown Orlando, Cory’s hometown.

But Anderson said they would do anything to help financially support their unborn child, including standing for hours in the sun vending – and selling drugs, and turning tricks.

Whoosh

A bus rounded the corner in front of Summers, who stood in the shade of a small tree with wispy limbs. She rubbed her stomach. No more kicking. Sleep came seldom for Summers and Anderson, now that their unborn child kicked her stomach and his back while they spooned in bed at night.

“It’s a boy,” Summers said. A Florida doctor told her she was having twins. A doctor at Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center told her she was carrying “one large baby.”

This will be Summers’ fourth child, the second with Anderson. The Philadelphia native moved to Orlando in 1997. She met Anderson about a year later at an Extended Stay Hotel there, where she was staying with her husband. Summers ran away from her husband, who she said was physically and emotionally abusive, to be with Anderson.

Ding Summers flipped her phone open and scanned the text message. It was from her husband of a decade, her soon-to-be-exhusband. He wanted to know why her brother didn’t show up to work on a construction project with him.

“I was wondering how he got my number,” Summers said. Her brother had given it to her husband. Anderson prickled at the mention of the men. There was bad blood between them.

The Florida Department of Children and Families gave Summers’ children – a 2-, 5- and 9-year-old – to her husband’s mother in Orlando. Her husband lives with his mother, she said.

This has prevented Summers from contacting her children, she said.

Flick

Summers’ daughter turned 5 on Sept. 1 and she intentionally did not call her to wish her happy birthday because she didn’t want her husband to have her phone number.

“I have a 9-year-old and a 5-year-old with him, and I’ve missed numerous birthdays ‘cause every time he gets my number it happens: he’ll get drunk, high, we’ll get harassed,” Summers said.

Neither Summers or her husband are legally allowed to live with the children.

She said her husband tried to hit her and Anderson with a cement block about 16 months ago. So, she said she called the cops. Now her husband’s on felony probation, she said.

“Every time he gets locked up his mom drops the kids off [with us],” said Anderson of Summers’ husband. The Florida Department of Children and Families cleared Anderson to care for the children at his mother’s house, he said.

“If you ask her kids who they’re dad is they’ll tell you me,” he said, beaming. His smile exposed a row of missing and rotting teeth, a reminder of the life he and Summers escaped – a life they want their children to avoid.

“We’re clean now,” said Anderson. Except, of course, for the cigarettes. Flick

The four brothers in room 223 are a team. They play together, comfort each other and stand up for one another. They have plenty of obstacles, and for the most part, they know that. They know, but they’re not sad. They’re sweet and energetic and smart, and their home, or lack thereof, doesn’t change that.

‘Love is Free’

Being a kid in a homeless hotel

By Allyson Krupinsky Photos by Shannon Kaestle

Harold likes to lie politely. “Here, I made this for you,” he says, handing a Will Write For Food reporter a “talking stick,” his name for the used popsicle stick in his small hand.

But he’s honest about where he lives. “I live in a hotel!” he declares happily during breakfast.

He also likes to hug. Nearly every WWFF reporter got a hug and some got an “I love you.”

He spends his days in the pool, playing with his family’s two kittens and watching TV in their single hotel room, which has a mattress on the floor for his parents’ two bunk beds for the four boys.

He’s too young to know this isn’t how all little boys live. At five:

Gabe is a storyteller. After sprinting to the pool from his room while wearing Spiderman swimming trunks and no shoes, he yells, “Wanna see some impressive stuff?!” Before waiting for an answer, he executes a sideways bellyflop.

He also shows off “cannonball explosions,” “whirlpools,” “triple flippers” and “dragon ball supers.”

He keeps busy swimming, running and exploring with his older brother. And since a sex offender moved into the inn, he has no other choice, since his parents won’t let him play alone.

“Sometimes it just makes me scared,” he says of the “cho-mo,” the term the boys have coined a child molester.

And if anything else bad happens — “I tell mom.” At eight:

Wesley is all about his brothers.

He says that if his family ever gets kicked out of Stay Plus Inn, he’d be fine living on the street, just as long as Harold and Gabe have a home. He says he tickles and hugs his brothers when they cry about having nothing to do.

He ignores the kids that tease him at school. His interview with WWFF reporters was riddled with phrases like “I’m fine with it” and “I’m used to it.”

While he’s at the pool, another boy of about the same age walks by. He tells Wesley that he got free soda. After calling the boy a liar, he says, “I get love for free. Love is free.” At ten:

James doesn’t want to be like his dad.

When he gets angry, he gets flashbacks from those times when he was young. He says his mom’s voice is what calms him down.

His sister, who he still talks to, was adopted by a wealthy family. But he wouldn’t trade places with her, because, he says, “I don’t want her to deal with what I’m dealing with.”

He spends his time at Stay Plus Inn with his friend Nick, usually on the Internet. He sings and raps — something he’d like to keep pursuing as a possible career.

He also consoles his younger brothers, even if they’re saying and crying about the same things he’s thinking.

He fell asleep in math class the day after he woke up to yelling at 2 a.m.

He wishes they were still in their two-story, seven bedroom house. He thinks people need to get better at minding their own business.

“If you just don’t think about it, it’s not that bad.” At thirteen:

Letters From The kids

Each year, college students join Will Write For Food to write about what it’s like to be homeless – for other people. This time, we were joined by some of the more than 20 kids who live at the shelter. Here’s what life is like, in their own words.

Gabe

“There are three swamps. There are alligators. There are dangerous animals. There could be a king cobra. You would have to have anti-venom to survive the bite, my mom said. I was told if you have a knife to get out of the alligator.”

James from indiana we moved to florida yes is all this stupid puss here at stay plus but wats the plus side sometimes i wanna hide this place stinks it needs some tride gum living here i feel like a bum but i’m not no slum because i will come from nowhere and get out of here

Some Kids grow up in a safe environment and some grow up on the streets this doesn't allow the people of the world to judge others do to the facts that they have no control over, sometimes in life you have to suffer to finally get an understanding on how life works. Does that mean those who have suffered should look down upon, but should those who haven't look down upon those who have? This question is asked or thought of quite a bit actually people, even kids, are taught and brought up to be the best They can be but at the same time they should be being taught to help others when they need it. Just because someone is poor and has no money doesn't mean society should look down upon them actually in my own opinion They should be on equal standards because mostly they have been put through more. Yes, some wealthy people have been through a lot to get to where they are but there are people out there that have been born into that wealth.

As a result those kids were accepted into society and taught by the so called "paradise" named society that those who have to work for what they get should be bullied or even put down. It's like birds and a penguin, the penguin has wings but can't fly but they make up for it in the fact they can swim, however the other birds can't swim but can fly what I'm trying to get through to you is that the poor can't buy everything also known as flying but they have virtue they know what it is to fight and stand for what it is that's important they know what's it's like to have nothing which makes it all the better to have something. The rich however (the birds) have everything and may be able to fly but mostly they lag virtue, yes they have things but an item cannot bring happiness to basically anything. Give a poor man money and a shovel,he will dig, but give a rich man money and a shovel he will pay someone to dig for him. I'm not trying to get across that poor people are better all i am saying is that we shouldn't be judged my society for how much we have. This will make the world finally worth the earth, society will finally stop being hatted if we understand what others go through. Nick Davis