The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

AFTER being kicked out of a home she shared with a friend, now homeless 45-year-old Carla Eugene is still left seeking somewhere to live.

The Tribune found the mother-of-three waiting outside the Department of Social Services’ Baillou Hill Road office yesterday, one of several hoping for help in a desperate situation.

She has been unemployed since the beginning of last year, homeless for roughly three weeks or more and is now seeking government assistance.

“I’ve been out here for hours and hours – sit here and I saw the people left,” she told The Tribune. “I sat here until darkness fall and I was still in front of Social Services while everybody left and leave me sitting right here.”

According to Ms Eugene, it was her friend’s family that kicked her out of the home. She understood the family’s reasoning, but said the situation was not handled properly.

“The friend got ill. The friend had to get admitted to the hospital and that’s when the family came and tell me I have to leave.

“They say I have to go because you know he’s no longer there and they won’t accept me being there.

“I was sleeping on the couch in the front room and when the family came they knocked on the door and I went and opened the door and they told me, ‘Come you gotta leave now’.”

She added: “I couldn’t even take a bath... they say no because one of the daughters got to secure their father’s possession.”

The 45-year-old said her children are staying with relatives.

“My children are with my family. Who isn’t abroad is with my family and they were not able to assist me because they’re not in the position to assist me as yet.”

So, she kept coming to the Department of Social Services for help. She was placed into temporary lodgings, but has been told her time there has come to end.

“After they put me up for two weeks in a motel, they tell me that’s it, I exhaust my resources with them. They can’t help me no longer and so I was back and forth here.”

She said she is living at a motel, but does not have the money to stay there any longer.

“I have to pay my $200 at …(the) motel. That’s what someone gave me to reside for a week. “My week was up from Monday, but only through the manager saw me outside sitting down in the dark after eight, nine o’clock in the dark where everybody and I was still outside and the manager insisted that his workers give me a room until today.”