A shortage of affordable housing in Colorado has played a role in children being removed from their homes and placed in foster care over the past two years, according to data from the Colorado Department of Human Services.

Inadequate housing or experiencing homelessness was a factor in about 13% of cases in which Colorado children were placed in foster care from 2021 to 2023, the data shows. Nationally, housing is cited as a reason for removal in about 11% of cases, according to the most recent data compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

State social services officials said there are often other reasons why child welfare agencies are involved and there must be a risk to a child’s safety for officials take steps to remove a child. Removals are rare, added Joe Homlar, who heads the state’s child welfare division, and the rate of children placed in foster care has declined in recent years as agencies seek to maintain more families together.

“Only in very rare cases are children removed from a home solely because of the parents’ living situation,” said Julie Popp, communications manager for the Colorado Department of Human Services.

In Coloradoa parent’s substance use was cited in 45% of child referrals over the past three years, and neglect was a factor in 38% of referrals, according to Popp.

Yet family advocates say that without stable housing, parents often struggle to reunite with their children. At the same time, losing children to foster care can send families into a financial and emotional spiral, making it more difficult to find and maintain housing.

“Stable housing is a foundation for families to navigate any other challenges they face in their lives,” said Shawna Mackey Geiger, director of engagement for the Colorado Office of Respondent Parents’ Lawyers.

Geiger’s office provides state-funded representation in child welfare cases for parents who cannot afford an attorney – which, in Colorado, is most of them. them. In the state, as elsewhere, participation in child welfare is closely linked to poverty; 90% of child welfare cases in Colorado involve at least one parent living in poverty, according to a 2023 study. report from the Office of the Respondent Parents’ Lawyers.

“For our clients struggling with substance use disorders, they struggle even more when they don’t have permanent housing,” Geiger said. “For our clients struggling with mental health issues, it’s the same.”

Geiger added that “it’s much easier for families to thrive when they have stable housing, and it’s easier for children to thrive when their parents aren’t struggling to cope.” find stable accommodation.

Although each family’s journey to housing instability and homelessness is unique, the common thread is the lack of affordable housing, according to Evan Caster, who leads homelessness initiatives for the Colorado Department of Human Services .

“The barriers to accessing housing have changed,” Caster said. For all Coloradans, including those with children, “low-cost rentals are harder to find.”

Homlar said the county’s social service agencies work hard to keep families together or reunite them. Yet, he added, housing is not often the primary concern for child welfare agencies when addressing barriers to family reunification.

“Because children are not removed solely because of housing, not being housed would not be a barrier” to reunification, Homlar said.

Some child safety advocates say helping parents with their housing needs would ultimately help their children. Ruth White, who directs the Maryland-based Center for Housing and Child Welfare, said many social service agencies have the resources to directly help families.

“They could pay rent, pay for motels, fix cars, hand out money,” White said. “If you talk to former students of foster care as adults, they will often say, ‘I realize that if they had just paid my mother’s rent, this wouldn’t have happened to me.’ “

But agencies rarely do that, leaving it up to families themselves to find a way out of homelessness, according to White, and often with the added burden of parenting classes or other court-imposed requirements. This approach, she says, ignores the trauma inflicted on children when they are separated from their parents.

Sonia Neblett is a parent advocate with the Colorado Office of Respondent Parents’ Counsel. She sees housing as probably the biggest barrier to reunification for many of the families she helps.

In Neblett’s work on behalf of families, she draws on her experiences in the child welfare system. In 2007, after her husband was incarcerated and the family lost a crucial source of income, her children were removed from her home and placed in foster care with Neblett’s mother, where they remained for years. She blames the child welfare system for destroying her family.

“I know what it’s like to be homeless with your kids and have these people here who think you’re the worst person in the world,” Neblett said. The loss of her children broke her, she added. “After that, I kind of went into ‘I don’t care.’ » She became addicted to oxycontin.

Neblett was lucky in prison. A mental health provider “believed in me more than myself” and put her on a path to probation and housing. In 2009, she filed a petition to get her children back and won. Since then, Neblett said, she has dedicated herself to rebuilding her own family — and other families.

Finding accommodation is his specialty.

In 2022, Neblett’s work connected her with Ray Rosa and his wife, Susana Dorado. The couple was homeless in Denver, camping on the streets or in a warehouse. Their five children, ranging in age from a baby under a year old to a 14-year-old, had been taken, one by one, following allegations of neglect and abuse that the couple said were false.

In the latest case – one that resulted in their older and younger daughters being removed and placed in foster care with strangers – child welfare officials reported the family due to the poor condition of the a relative’s house where she resided.

When Neblett met them, Dorado, who suffers from seizures, had lost Medicaid coverage. His medications were no longer covered. Rosa did her best to take care of herself. Just surviving from one day to the next took everything they had.

The list of conditions authorities set for them to reunite their families — parenting classes, life skills classes, therapy, randomly scheduled drug tests and visits to their children — seemed impossible. Forget about having a job.

One day, Rosa called Neblett in tears.

“He told me, ‘I’m a complete failure. I don’t even feel like a man. I can’t even provide for my family. I still provide for my family,” Neblett recalls.

Rosa also remembers: “There was a moment when we said to Sonia: ‘Let them look after our children.’ We are for each other.’

This time, it was Neblett’s turn to believe in the couple more than they believed in themselves: “Sonia wouldn’t allow us to do this,” Rosa said.

Neblett describes his technique for finding housing in Denver’s tight rental market as a matter of introducing himself to housing agencies and apartment complexes, refusing to take no for an answer, and working out what she calls out a “slow yes.” In a single, legendary weekend at the office, she hosted 11 families. Neblett’s colleague Geiger describes her as a sort of miracle worker.

“She has pathways that I don’t know how to access or where to start,” Geiger said. “It feels like she’s conjuring things up out of nothing.”

What Neblett envisioned for Rosa and Dorado was a two-bedroom apartment in downtown Denver with a small playground out front where their youngest could play.

“It changed the trajectory of their case in a major way,” said Avery Lehr, Rosa’s attorney in the child welfare case.

In an interview on their sunny porch in the spring of this year, Rosa and Dorado spoke in a different way about what Neblett did for them.

“Sonia is amazing,” Rosa said. “We call him the angel of God whom he sent to us.”

The couple agreed that moving into stable housing was transformative, allowing them to focus solely on getting their children back.

This summer, Rosa was one of three parents honored by the Office of Counsel for Respondent Parents at Elitch Gardens, the Denver amusement park, for taking heroic steps to reunite with their children.

Seated next to the couple was their youngest daughter, now 2, who happily cuddled with her mother and father during the ceremony. Their eldest daughter, 16, was also present, sitting near her mother. Both children are now back home and their parents aim to regain custody of their other three children, who remain in foster care.

For Sarah, the eldest child, the path was difficult. She has not forgotten the months when she did not see her parents or her brothers and sisters.

“I thought they didn’t care about me,” she said. “But that’s not what was happening.”

That day, she said, she was just happy to be back with her parents and her little sister, who adores her. Right now, Sarah Rosa wanted what any kid would want on a hot day: to go to the water park.

Some of Neblett’s children and grandchildren were also at Elitch Gardens that day, enjoying the amusement park. But Neblett wasn’t ready to relax; there were more unhoused families – there still are – and she was working to bring them home.

Independent journalist Kristin Jones wrote this article for the Colorado Trust, a philanthropic foundation that works on health equity issues statewide and also funds a reporting position at the Colorado Sun. He appeared at coloradotrust.org October 22, 2024and can be read in Spanish on collective.coloradotrust.org/es.