Warm, at last

By BARBARA WALSH, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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	Staff photo by Fred J. Field Millie Gervais of Caribou stands outside the trailer where she and her family lived for two years. Her son, Adam, was chronically ill last winter. "We just couldn't keep the place warm," she says of the trailer. "Adam coughed 24 hours a day."
	Hidden Faces of Poverty The five-part series continues a three-year examination by The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram of the challenges and issues children and teens face in Maine. Statistics Population Density Education Increase in Assistance Children in Poverty School Lunch Program Clients Treated for Opiate Abuse Photo Album: Hidden Faces of Poverty To top of story

CARIBOU — Adam Gervais needed help last winter. The 6-year-old lived in a trailer in Aroostook, Maine's most northern county. He couldn't get warm.

"Mommy, I'm cold," Adam cried night after night.

Adam's mother, Millie, covered him with four and five blankets. But it did little good. The wind blew through their trailer's drafty windows. Ice thickened on inside walls.

For weeks, the temperature outside was well below freezing and the brown-haired boy shivered in his bed. He got ear infections, colds, the croup. Every other week, his mother took him to the doctor.

"We just couldn't keep the place warm," Gervais says. "Adam coughed 24 hours a day."

For two years, Gervais, her son, 9-year-old daughter Stephanie, and Gervais' boyfriend lived in No. 14, a sky blue trailer parked in a ramshackle lot called Lazy Acres, along Route 1 in Caribou.

Half the trailers were boarded up and empty. Gervais' trailer was in disrepair. "The landlord wouldn't fix (the problems), so I got a lawyer and stopped paying rent," Gervais says.

Gervais sought help from Jeff Ashby, an attorney with Pine Tree Legal, which serves people unable to afford a private attorney. "The trailer was awful," Ashby says. "The place was uninhabitable."

Wires dangled from the electrical box. Sometimes Gervais heard the wires crackle and hum. There were holes in the kitchen floor. Gervais' foot fell through one of the heating vents. Holes pockmarked the refrigerator door.

The windows were drafty and old. Gervais hung two sets of curtains, hoping to block the icy blasts. But it did little good.

Her heating bill topped $1,000 last winter. Most of the heat went out the windows. A local general assistance agency helped her pay the bill.

"I had to get help to pay the heat," she says. "There was no way I was going to afford that kind of money."

Each week, Caribou town hall worker Ellen Gendreau receives dozens of calls from people like Millie Gervais. Gendreau oversees the general assistance fund for the town of Caribou.

"Two years ago, we used to see five or six people a week that needed help paying their bills," Gendreau says. "Now we see five or six people a day that ask for assistance."

Caribou and other communities have set amounts they contribute to their general assistance funds, and if they go over their budgets, the state kicks in additional money. But state guidelines have gotten tougher over the years.

Often towns can't help parents, Gendreau says, because families earn too much money under state guidelines. A family of four must have a monthly income no greater than $743 to be eligible for general assistance.

"It's ridiculous," Gendreau says. "Last year the state raised the general assistance guidelines by 1 percent. But that's still not enough. A lot of families don't qualify for help.

"Yet they can't pay their rent and their bills, so where are they supposed to go for help?"

Millie Gervais and her children survive on $354 in monthly veteran's benefits, $174 in child support and $300 in child welfare. Every two weeks, she receives food stamps.

Gervais is unable to work because of a knee injury she suffered in Army basic training camp in 1991. While living in the trailer, she looked for a better home for her children but couldn't afford the $600 to $700 rents in the Caribou area.

She tried to get public housing in 2002, but the Caribou Housing Authority told her it could be years before she received a Section 8 voucher. "I was number 100 on the waiting list," she says.

Last winter, Gervais' son Adam caught cold after cold in the frigid trailer. Gervais brought him to the doctor so often, the Department of Human Services was called to check on the child.

"They came twice to my home to check on Adam and Stephanie," Gervais says. "I told them I can't help living in this trailer. I was trying to meet my kids' needs to the best of my ability."

In April, after living in the Lazy Acres trailer for two years, Gervais found a better home for $475 a month.

The three-bedroom red house had air-tight windows and electric heat. "The kids were finally warm," Gervais says.

But because she paid more than half of her income on rent and another $150 a month in electricity, Gervais couldn't pay for necessities.

"I didn't have enough money for toilet paper, shampoo, toothpaste for my kids," Gervais says. She relied on friends, family and local charity to help her buy toiletries. In August, she was three months behind on her heating bill and sought help from the town.

This fall, when her two children went to school, Gervais had no money for school clothes, backpacks or pencils.

"My son didn't understand why he had his raggedy-old book bag when all the other kids had new ones," Gervais says. "Stephanie said the kids made fun of her because she wore the same school clothes she had last year. They kept crying, saying, 'Mommy, we need this,' or 'Mommy, why can't we buy that?' "

Gervais grew depressed.

"It was like I was at the bottom of a black hole and I didn't know how to get out," Gervais says. "I was just trying to keep a roof over my kids' heads and keep them fed and clothed and I couldn't do it."

In October, after waiting a year and a half, Gervais finally received a Section 8 voucher. The federal voucher pays $405 of her rent. She pays $70.

"Now, I can buy my kids winter jackets and boots," Gervais says. "I don't have to worry about the electricity being shut off or my kids crying about something else I can't afford."

Sharon Bonsey listens to hardships of many people like Millie Gervais. Many of the parents who call her agency are working two low-paying jobs and can't afford heat or electricity.

"Many of our families, moms with babies, they're young and unable to afford proper housing so they end up in old trailers where the cold air comes through every niche and corner," says Bonsey, who works for Penobscot and Penquis Community Action, an agency that offers fuel and food assistance to families.

"We have children we visit and their hands are purple in the winter from crawling on the cold floors."

"The parents' choices are very limited in a rural area," Bonsey says. "Perhaps a way to escape that poverty is to move into an urban area but you're asking these families to leave their homes, leave their support. And that's not the Maine way. That's not what these families do."

It only takes a short walk around the island of Vinalhaven for Bodine Ames to see how families struggle.

"Poverty is forgotten out here," says Ames, who lives on Vinalhaven, off the coast of Rockland. "We've got families living in campers with no water and electricity that runs from their parents' homes. We've got people living in garages. We've got every God-awful problem here that you can imagine. But because we're out of sight, it's hidden. No one on the mainland talks about it. No one sees it. It just goes on."

Listen to housing advocates and workers who aid people in poverty. They say the troubles of rural Maine families are growing worse.

"I've never seen it this bad during the 10 years I've worked here," says Eleanor West, director of community services for the Washington Hancock Community Agency, which administers Section 8 vouchers for the Maine State Housing Authority.

"It's terrible to tell someone we don't have any idea of when we'll be able to help you."

Some housing authorities are only taking Section 8 applications from people and families who are homeless. And those numbers are rising, too.

"Our vouchers have been frozen since April," says Dennis Lajoie, director of Community Concepts, a South Paris agency that distributes Section 8 vouchers in Oxford and three neighboring counties.

"It's a very discouraging time for families. We've got about 915 people on our waiting list now compared to 500 five years ago. We have 30 or more homeless families that we can't even serve.

"What do you do when you can't even help homeless people on the street?"

Staff researcher Julia McCue contributed to this article.

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