On a recent late summer evening, the sounds of children’s sneakers clopping against the blacktop echoed across a hotel parking lot near downtown San Jose.
“Yeah, touchdown!” cried 7-year-old Dimmi, spiking a leather football to the pavement in celebration.
Not too long ago, Dimmi, like many of the other children now staying at the hotel, woke up each morning in a tent pitched along a city sidewalk. At the time, the wiry second-grader described to the Bay Area News Group what he missed most about having a home: sleeping on a mattress, eating hot food from a microwave, taking a warm shower.
Then last month, about two weeks after the article published, the man Dimmi calls Dad, Dameon Wright, got a call from a local nonprofit offering them a spot at a city-funded hotel shelter for homeless families. Wright, Dimmi and Dimmi’s mother, Sammi, moved in soon after.
Dimmi said the best thing about staying at the hotel is being able to take a shower whenever he wants. That and the in-room kitchen, stocked with microwave-ready meals provided by the shelter program and a bevy of Goldfish crackers and Fruit Roll-Ups donated by neighbors while the family was still living in an encampment.
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He’s also no longer exhausted for school after chilly nights spent in a tent. He now falls asleep on a small cot next to his parents’ bed, often waking in the middle of the night to crawl under the covers between them. “I want my dad to hold me,” he said.
In 2023, Santa Clara County counted 211 homeless children under the age of 18 living without shelter, up from 112 the year before. Last year’s count was less than a third of the 664 unsheltered children identified in 2017, four years before the county started a campaign to end family homelessness.
Local officials and nonprofits have spent millions of dollars to add hundreds of family shelter beds, tiny homes and supportive housing units in recent years, helping to permanently house more than 1,700 homeless families since 2021.
But even as officials appeared able to act quickly to move Dimmi indoors, the ultimate goal of ensuring no families with children have to sleep on the street remains out of reach. There are simply …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
