Eddie Castro Gonzales, 14, and his mother, Maria, were looking straight into the eyes of homelessness.

It was April, and they’d spent two years living with relatives in Windsor when they were suddenly asked to leave. They had no place to go.

In a “desperate” move, Maria Gonzales called the Catholic Charities Caritas Shelter asking if they had any space available for her and Eddie, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair. Otherwise, they’d be forced to move into their 2003 minivan, which was run down and in need of repair.

Eddie is now one of 67 children living at Caritas, many of whom are enrolled in Sonoma County public schools.

In the past year, there has been a dramatic increase in homeless students attending public schools, according to California Department of Education data released in June.

Sonoma County has seen a rise of 32% since last year, while Napa County has increased 37.4%. The numbers have homelessness advocates and district officials wondering why.

Reporting

Officials think some of the increase may be attributable to improved reporting practices in school districts.

Educational leaders have worked to increase awareness among district officials, administrators and counselors regarding which students qualify as homeless and are eligible to receive key resources, said Joanna Paun, the Sonoma County Office of Education’s foster and homeless youth education services coordinator.

Stacy Desideri, Santa Rosa City Schools’ executive director of wellness and engagement, serves as the district’s homeless liaison, working with the county office, school officials and families struggling with homelessness to make sure their needs are being met.

Desideri said they’ve been training all staff on how to better identify when a student is homeless, and to ensure there is a compassionate environment so families and students can be more comfortable sharing their living status.

All school districts must follow the McKinney-Vento Act, a federal law that defines and protects the rights and services for homeless children.

Under the law, the definition of homelessness expands beyond students who do not have a physical home or couch surf or live in their cars.

The broader definition includes those who share housing with another family; live in motels, hotels, inadequate trailer homes or on camping grounds; live in transitional shelters; or sleep somewhere that is not a designated living area.

Desideri said that the smallest group of students are those who are actually sleeping outside, and the increase is in those who are “doubled up” in a home meant for just one family.

It can be challenging to identify these families because they might not identify as homeless and don’t know about the support they qualify for, Desideri said.

“A lot of families having some economic challenges really pulled together in their little COVID bubbles to try to support each other,” Desideri said. “We may be seeing, with our increased engagement after COVID, they are coming back to us. They're more willing to share what they're going through.”

Causes of homelessness

The factors behind why these families are struggling are often hard to pinpoint. “The hard part is that families may not be openly sharing all of the reasons why they are unhoused,” Desideri said.

And a lot of community support previously fueled by dwindling COVID funds is no longer available to support families living on the margins.

“One crisis, one rent increase, one medical emergency, one — pick a thing — it’s what creates people in homelessness,” said Jennielynn Holmes, CEO of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Santa Rosa.

For Amber Elliott, it was a mental health crisis that followed her sobriety from alcoholism.

“All my problems and trauma I had been suppressing surfaced,” Elliott said. “I couldn’t afford anything and it was a snowball effect.”

In 2020, she was living out of a small car while pregnant with twin boys, who are now 3 years old.

The twins have been her “saving grace” to motivate her to find housing, she said, along with the care and support provided by Catholic Charities’ Caritas Center.

One of her sons is being evaluated for autism, while the other attends Caritas’ on-site Head Start program for children 5 and younger, which is run by the Community Action Partnership of Sonoma County.

“They’re really persistent here — they do not give up on you,” Elliot said from one of the community tables in the center’s dining room.

Once she finds housing, she plans to keep her son at Head Start so he can continue benefiting from the program’s education and socialization with the same teachers.

“I want them to go to school and succeed,” she said. “Preschool is a source of stability for him.”

Holmes, who oversees up to 192 residents at the Caritas Shelter in downtown Santa Rosa, said there has been a “noticeable” increase in families requesting help at the shelter.

She noted a 49% increase in domestic violence survivors in the first six months of 2023 alone. Many of these survivors — often with children or pets — were already on those “margins” of homelessness.

“The (economy) strains on the individuals, and unfortunately what I’m extremely scared of is that it’s only going to get worse,” Holmes said.

One-time funds from the pandemic have dried up, and expanded eligibility for MediCal or CalFresh is no longer available, keeping families hungry or without proper medical care.

Housing stipends and programs like the American Rescue Plan Act — federal money given to cities to address homelessness or programs that support children and families — run out at the end of 2024.

Holmes said last month’s preliminary countywide numbers showing an increase of homelessness by 11% in 2024 is certainly correlated to COVID-era aid running out, as well as continued lack of affordable housing and lack of homelessness prevention programs.

“This is what we mean when we talk about funding and how it directly impacts people being on the street or not,” Holmes said.

Impact on students

Statistically and anecdotally, students experiencing homelessness face an uphill battle when it comes to succeeding in school.

At Santa Rosa City Schools, the county’s largest district, approximately 64% of homeless students were chronically absent last school year, according to state data.

And just over half the district’s 56 homeless students graduated.

Homeless students struggle with mental health and fatigue during classes and are often punished by their schools for small things such as not showing up with the necessary supplies, or not having their computer fully charged.

“That can affect them academically,” Paun said. “They might get marked down for these things, or potentially disciplined for these things, which can lead to lower grades and shame.”

Sisters Asucena, 16, and Valeria, 14, have struggled to settle in to their school environment, which has changed constantly since their family’s Sonoma apartment burned down in April 2023.

The two asked to only be identified by their first names to protect their family’s privacy.

In the months that followed, their family of five spent six months at Caritas, then nights in hotels and living doubled up with other families before returning to Caritas, where they live now.

During that time, the sisters moved from their home schools in Sonoma to Santa Rosa, and back again, twice.

“I had two months where I didn’t go at all because of our situation,” Asucena said.

“When I got into sophomore year, I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s so much that I missed.’ and it got complicated, which is why I stopped going,” she added. “It was like, ‘What’s the point in going? I don’t know anything.’”

Stability in school often depends on stability in home life, Paun said, and the sisters have had more than a year of instability.

Caritas has programming within the shelter to specifically address these struggles before they begin, said Toni Abraham, the shelter’s Youth and Family Services program manager.

The Sonoma County Office of Education’s programmingis dependent on receiving a competitive $75,000 grant to support homeless youth.

The grant funds the entire department, from salaries to school supplies they give to students.

“One of the things that all children want is to feel that they look really snazzy on that first day of school,” Desideri said. “We make sure that nobody has to walk in wondering where their materials are going to come from. It’s one of those invisible supports that makes them feel just like everybody else.”

The district also makes sure to conduct summer check-ins with homeless students, to monitor their shelter status and keep a tab on potential learning loss.

Abraham’s team worked with the county to enroll Asucena in an independent study program, which Valeria will join when she starts at Santa Rosa High School in the fall.

The sisters have also been connected with Santa Rosa Recreation & Parks, where they volunteer for the summer programs. Both say the tumultuous experience has pushed them “out of (their) comfort zone.”

The funding for homeless youth is sparse, so the county office has to be creative in its partnerships with districts and shelters like Caritas.

In comparison, the foster youth side of SCOE’s department receives approximately $500,000 a year, “so even that's really skewed as well,” Paun said.

“When I look around and just see the amount of need, in my mind, it doesn’t make sense,” Paun said. “How can we be one of the wealthiest economies in the whole world, and yet in our little county, there’s over 1,000 unhoused students?”

Filling the gaps

The Caritas family center provides reading intervention workshops, quiet places for students to study and yearlong enrichment opportunities through partnerships, including one with a SCOE tutor who comes to the center twice a week to help students with homework.

The help is persistent and the main goals, Abraham said, are to make sure kids are in school, and that they and their families' basic needs are being met.

Abraham’s team works to ensure success, even as the ground underneath a homeless student’s feet shifts.

“If they're changing schools — let's say they got housing in Petaluma — we're going to make sure they're connected with the teachers, transportation … anything that they need to get them going and settled,” Abraham said. “We look out for them that way.”

Sometimes, however, coordinating with schools can be an uphill battle, especially if students have struggles outside of homelessness.

For Eddie, who developed a paralyzing disability after a spinal cord injury when he was 5 years old, getting to Windsor High School from downtown Santa Rosa was a monthlong process.

Eddie had built a support system at Windsor High in his first year there, full of counselors he trusted and people who understood his needs and disability.

But his school district couldn’t find an immediate adequate form of transportation for him once they moved into Caritas.

“(Abraham) was getting desperate … every single day she called: ‘Eddie needs transportation, Eddie needs it tomorrow,’” his mother said.

“I missed a month of school,” Eddie said. “They brought me schoolwork but it was hard to do because I had no one to teach it to me every day.”

It’s important for students to stay in their home district even after they leave, said Desideri, who does not work for Eddie’s school district but spoke to the importance of school stability.

“The housing forces may have them living for a period of time outside of the neighborhood of their school of residence, and we don't want the family disrupted through that,” she said. “The relationships that they have with their school are so important, and we want to make a knot.”

Now that Eddie is in summer school, Gonzales is able to direct her attention to securing legal documentation.

She came to the United States from Mexico with Eddie seeking asylum after his disability progressed to paralysis, hoping to secure the ongoing and appropriate medical care Eddie needs.

But because of her undocumented status, Gonzales does not qualify to be his caretaker.

Caritas staff has helped Gonzales get in contact with an immigration agency but the process is slow moving.

She’s requested support through their medical insurance to apply for a new minivan adequate for housing through an agency that supports families with disabled children, but they haven’t heard back yet.

“We are looking for a house but it is difficult because I have no social … it’s my biggest obstacle,” Gonzales said. “I can’t leave Eddie. He is dependent on me 100%.”

When asked what their plan is when their Caritas contract runs out in October, Gonzales replied simply: “La calle.”

The street.

You can reach Staff Writers Alana Minkler at 707-526-8531 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com and Adriana Gutierrez at Adriana.Gutierrez@pressdemocrat.com.