If Maria Rios could have gotten only one thing for Christmas, it
would have been health for her entire family.
Health would mean a job for her husband, Roberto Sr., who is out
of work because of kidney problems.
Health would put food on her table, a permanent roof over her
two boys’ heads.
If Maria Rios could have gotten only one thing for Christmas, it would have been health for her entire family.
Health would mean a job for her husband, Roberto Sr., who is out of work because of kidney problems.
Health would put food on her table, a permanent roof over her two boys’ heads.
Maria didn’t get what she wanted for Christmas.
Maria and her family are homeless.
The Rios family, who have lived in Hollister for the past four years, spent Christmas at the Emergency Winter Shelter on Southside Road, which doubles as the migrant camp during the summer months.
“We had to leave the place where we were living,” Maria said, through interpreter Grace Orta of the San Benito County Community Services and Workforce Development. “They had to knock the place down because it wasn’t up to code, so we had to leave and we had nowhere to go.”
Maria found out they were going to be evicted in November. “I was very sad,” she said, as tears welled up in her eyes. “My son started crying.”
When she went to the Community Services agency for assistance, she was told about the winter housing and applied for it, she said.
Usually the waiting list to get into the winter shelter is six to eight months, but the family got lucky and was chosen to occupy one of the 15 units available, Orta said.
When she learned her family would be able to stay at the shelter, she had to plead with her landlord to allow them to stay in the house they were living in until Dec. 5, when they would be able to move in to the shelter, she said.
Her main concern was her children, who were devastated when they learned that they would not have a home, she said.
“I wasn’t embarrassed (about being homeless),” Maria said. “I was just worried about my boys.”
The family was surprised to see how nice their temporary housing was when they arrived, because most people imagine a large building with many families living together in one room, Orta said.
“The boys say that now that they’ve seen it here, even if it’s just one room for all of us they will be happy,” Maria said. “When we got here they said, ‘Oh, we’re going to be rich now.'”
From donations and help from the community, the shelter hosted a Christmas party for the residents, where they distributed presents to the 80 children who currently live at the shelter.
Ricardo and Roberto Jr. received some clothes and a Nintendo Gameboy with two games each, and Ricardo was chosen to be the lucky recipient of a brand new bicycle – one of eight that were donated by Hollister resident Joe Sanchez.
It’s the 10-year-old’s first bicycle.
“Christmas was very good. We had breakfast and then the Christmas party,” Maria said. “We didn’t have any (presents) for the boys until we went to the party.”
Church-based volunteer organization Fishes and Loaves also donated a $50 gift card to Kmart, which Maria already spent on clothes for her boys, she said.
Roberto Jr. and Ricardo, who attend Spring Grove School, had a difficult time for a while when their housing situation was in limbo, Maria said.
“Now that we’re living here they tell everyone (at school) that we have a real nice house,” she said.
After the New Year, both Maria and Roberto Sr. plan to start looking for a new home because their time at the shelter will come to an end in March. They decided to wait until January so their children would not have to think about their plight during the holidays, she said.
“They get really sad about the fact that we don’t have a place that’s actually ours, and they know we have to leave,” she said.
To help get them back on track, Roberto Sr. hopes to get the OK from a doctor so he can come off disability and go back to work at the Ding-A-Ling Cafe, and Maria will look for any job she can find, she said.
As far as Maria’s hopes for 2004, they are as simple as her Christmas wish was.
“To have a home,” she said.
