A Homeless Family, and the Pro-Life Activist who Helped Them

by Sarah Terzo

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The following story comes from Marisol Maldonado Rodriguez’s 2023 book Beyond Her Yes: Reimagining Pro-Life Ministry to Empower Women and Support Families in Overcoming Poverty.

A Charity that Helps Single Mothers

Rodriguez is a pro-life activist who runs RENEW Life Center. RENEW describes its mission on its website as:

RENEW equips single moms with the concepts, skills, and tools they need to overcome generational poverty. Our educational programs, mentoring, and leadership training transforms lives and restores hope and dignity.As a result, they experience a shift from a survival mindset to a thriving mindset, which leads to reduced dependence on government assistance and economically stable homes.

Rodriguez started out working at a pregnancy resource center and felt called to do more to help the single mothers and pregnant people who came to her there. The RENEW website states:

Marisol has served in the pregnancy resource center field for 12 years, first as a volunteer and then as Director of an urban center. Her years of experience in serving women facing an unplanned pregnancy, lead her to see the many needs and obstacles women in poverty were facing.Burdened by the struggles that confronted these new moms, Marisol, and three other women, also with a pregnancy center background, founded RENEW Life Center in 2013. Our goal was to fill in the gap that exist [sic] after the services offered at a pregnancy center ends.

In Beyond Her Yes, Rodriguez tells the story of Julides, a single mother of two young boys.

The Story of One Homeless Family

Someone referred Julides to RENEW because they know RENEW helped women like her. She was a single mother with two little boys. Their father had abandoned the family long ago, and she had no family in the United States.

She was facing eviction and had nowhere to go.

Marisol wasn’t sure how much he could help, but agreed to go with Julides to court and offer emotional support. Marisol says:

She thanked me profusely for going with her. I told her I didn't know if there was anything I could do to help, and she said, 'That's okay. I'm just glad that I'm not here alone.' That's all she wanted – not to be alone.

Julides went before the judge, and he wasn’t sympathetic to her plight. He ruled that she had to pay $3200 in overdue rent by 5:00 PM that day, or she would have to leave her apartment.

Marisol tried to intervene. She pleaded with the judge to give Julides more time. But the judge was unmoved.

Marisol’s nonprofit didn’t have $3200, so Marisol took Julides to Catholic Charities.

Marisol felt sure that because Catholic Charities was such an established organization, they would have enough money to save Julides and her family from eviction. Unfortunately, they were unable to help. They might be able to give her the money, they said, but it would take some time to arrange. Julides needed the money that very day.

One common misconception about the homeless is that they are in their situation because they abused drugs. Julides had no history of using drugs and was not mentally ill. She just couldn’t earn enough money to pay rent, no matter how hard she tried.

It is a myth that most people are homeless because of addiction. According to one study, 63% of homeless people don’t use drugs, and 25% have never taken an illegal drug in their lives. Many who do use drugs started after they became homeless as a way to cope with their bleak lives.

Homeless people often seek drug treatment but can’t get it, either because they can’t afford rehab or because of long waiting lists, or both.

No Government Assistance

Marisol next took Julides to the Department of Children and Families. This government agency networks with homeless shelters and provides government assistance.

Marisol thought that because Julides’s situation was so desperate, she would be able to get help from the government. But when she spoke to the caseworker about Julides, she was in for a rude awakening:

I explained [Julides’s] situation and asked if they could help her; the response was no. I asked if they could place her and the boys in a shelter.The caseworker responded that they were out of shelter and motel vouchers, and then she added, ‘If she can’t find a place to stay, we’ll have to take possession of the boys.’I was shocked at the callousness of this caseworker. It’s easy to assume that social services are in abundance, that shelters are free and safe, and that anyone can just walk into one at any time. This couldn’t be further from the truth.While I stood there feeling hopeless as Julides wept, she told me again that she was grateful she wasn’t alone.

As you can see from the graphic below, there are far more homeless people than there are beds in shelters.

This is why so many homeless people sleep on the street or in their cars – it’s not by choice.

But now back to Julides.

Three days after the judge’s verdict and the failed attempts to get help, Marisol drove to what had been, until now, Julides’s and her children’s apartment.

Julides stood on the sidewalk with her two boys, surrounded by everything she owned. She had nowhere to go. Marisol asked Julides what would happen to all her worldly possessions – all the children’s toys and games, the family’s clothes, and everything else.

Julides said the neighbors would go through her stuff and pick out what they wanted. The rest would be thrown in a dumpster.

Marisol says:

I had never seen or experienced anything like it, but now I know that it goes on every day in cities across our country.³

All Marisol could do was put Julides and her sons in a motel as she tried to find a better solution. The motel cost $120 a night – far more money than Julides could’ve afforded to pay. But Marisol and RENEW couldn’t keep paying it either – it was just too expensive.

Marisol set about trying to raise enough money to get Julides and her children a place to live. Someone offered to pay a security deposit and the first month’s rent for an apartment. While this may have seemed like a godsend, it was, sadly, not a solution.

When Working Isn’t Enough

Julides hadn’t finished high school. She had no job training or marketable skills. The only job she was qualified to do was clean houses, and that is what she had been doing. It didn’t pay enough to afford even a one-bedroom apartment. No matter how many hours she worked, it wasn’t enough.

A lot of people feel that the answer to homelessness is simply getting people jobs. Unfortunately, today, in our country, that is not the case.

Minimum wage is not enough to pay for housing for a family in any part of the nation, much less in any city. Most people working minimum wage can’t even afford to rent one room, much less an apartment.

In fact, half of all people who are homeless are already working, many full-time.

There are two types of homelessness – sheltered and unsheltered. People experiencing sheltered homelessness are lucky enough to be able to stay in a homeless shelter or in the cheapest possible hotel room, paid by the government.

People experiencing unsheltered homelessness are sleeping on the street or in their cars. The reason for this, as we have seen, is that there are not enough beds in homeless shelters and not enough government funds to shelter everyone.

A comprehensive study found that more than half of the people experiencing sheltered homelessness are employed, and slightly less than half of the people experiencing unsheltered homelessness are employed.

Somehow, nearly half of the people sleeping on the street or in their cars, unable to shower, with no access to basic amenities, manage to hold jobs. Can you imagine the determination and effort that must take? Sadly, for them, it’s not enough.

This is how Julides story ends. After exhausting every single possibility, reaching out to every charity she knew about, and turning to the government – all in vain – Marisol took Julides and her children into her own home.

Marisol took the step of allowing Julides and her children to live with her, actually opening her home to the homeless family.

In the years since, Marisol has come to see Julides as a daughter. Marisol says, "I'm the mother she never had."

But how many people can find a stranger to take them in?

As you can see, there are already very few resources out there to help homeless people.

And things are about to get much, much worse.

Proposed Cuts to Programs

The proposed Republican budget will cut billions of dollars from the Office of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees all housing programs. In fact, it will cut a massive 43% of its funding.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, this will “decimate HUD’s vital affordable housing, homelessness, and community development funding in its full fiscal year 2026.”

Many of the remaining shelters will close, emergency funds to prevent evictions will be taken away, and many who have housing vouchers will lose them and become newly homeless.

The budget cuts rent subsidies for low-income Americans by more than $700 million. This means 32,000 housing vouchers will be lost.

As a result, 32,000 families/households will soon be homeless. These households will likely include working families with children, veterans, survivors of domestic violence, seniors, and people with disabilities.

For those who do manage to hold onto their vouchers, there will be a new two-year time limit. Then they will be kicked off the voucher program and lose their homes.

Why Disabled People Will Be Hurt

Politicians assure us that only “able-bodied” people will be subject to this restriction – that elderly and disabled people, who cannot work through no fault of their own, will be exempt.

But there’s a problem with this. The rule only exempts people who have been judged to be disabled by the government and who are receiving Social Security payments.

The process of getting approved for disability can take anywhere from two to four years. A person applying for disability is not exempt until they are actually granted disability, not while they’re going through the application process.

And that’s assuming they can apply in the first place. For most people, getting approved for disability requires hiring a lawyer.

One can sometimes find a lawyer who agrees to be paid only after a case is won, but many people are forced to pay out-of-pocket for a lawyer, which is prohibitively expensive and disqualifies many disabled people from being able to get disability.

There are many, many people who are too disabled to work, but who aren’t recognized as disabled by the government. These unlucky people will be subject to the two-year limit.

And what about those “able-bodied” people?”

The path out of dire poverty is extremely difficult and takes time. What if, like Julides, you can’t find high-enough-paying work because you have insufficient education?

Could you finish college in two years as a single mother with a full-time job?

If you can’t afford an education and have no marketable skills, could you find an entry-level job that will allow you to advance enough so that you can afford housing, and do it in two years? Spoiler alert: Probably not.

The truth is, most stories like that of Julides and her children don’t have a happy ending.

What You Can Do

Here are some things you can do.

Donate to RENEW Life Center. Help Marisol help more people.

Write an email to your Senators and ask them not to defund programs that protect people from homelessness or shelter them when they are homeless. Here is an idea of what you can write. Or use your own words.

As your constituent, I'm writing to urge you not to pass the budget as it now stands. Instead, please work with your colleagues to expand, not cut, investments in HUD programs in the FY26 spending bill.Housing costs continue to rise faster than wages, and the supply of affordable and accessible homes and rental assistance has not kept pace with demand. HUD’s affordable housing and homelessness programs play a vital role in helping households make ends meet in our community.Continuing to underfund or actively cut these programs in FY26 will further deplete our community's ability to respond to the needs of hardworking families, veterans, people with disabilities, and older adults.I urge you and your colleagues to reject any harmful proposals to drastically cut vital investments or withhold disbursement of funding, and instead pass a final FY26 spending bill that funds affordable housing and homelessness programs at the highest level possible in FY26.