Maria Morrison is the full-time caregiver to her 28-year-old son, Mark. Both mother and disabled son may become homeless if help isn’t found. They currently live with a friend; however, that arrangement will be ending in two weeks. She has contacted local homeless shelters, but due to Mark’s disabilities, they have been turned away from all. Shelters consider her son a legal adult and therefore they could not be sheltered together.
Mark is non-verbal and has the cognitive function of an 8-year-old. He also has a colostomy. While able to do basic things like eat and drink on his own, he requires his mother’s full-time care for most everything else.
She told Orlando News 13,
?He can’t be left home alone. I bathe him, I dress him, I prepare his meals, he can feed himself, but that’s the extent of it.?
Due to the constant care demands of her son, Maria does not have a job. Their only income is Mark’s disability check, which totals?$721 per month.
The Agency for Persons with Disabilities has a program that would allow Mark to go to a shelter workshop while Maria went to work. She applied to the program 12 years ago, but the waitlist exceeds 20,000 applications.
She has also applied for assistance through other?area agencies, but help doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. Her application for Section 8 housing was submitted over a year and a half ago. The state of Florida has provided Maria an option for her son. Tearfully she shared:
?They want me to sign custody over to the state so they can put him in a group home, but he’s going to end up in a nursing home. They would rather pay thousands and thousands of dollars a month to stick him somewhere, than try to help me out so I can stay home and take care of him and just give us a place to live. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy.”
There is change coming for Orlando and people like Maria and her son. Much credit must be given to groups like the Commission on the Homeless in Central Florida, Rethink Homelessness, and Homeless and Hungry, for raising awareness around the “City Beautiful. Currently, there is an?initiative in the works to house the homeless partnered by key players like the City of Orlando, Orange County, and Florida Hospital. However, it is still in the planning stages and won’t address this family’s immediate need.
The Commission on the Homeless in Central Florida has been in touch with the family. CEO Andrae Bailey told Orlando News 13,
?Unfortunately options for people with disabilities are limited in our community and in the state.?The fact is she is going to be on the street living in the car with her disabled, developmentally ill son by Christmas if we can’t find an option.?
Watch Maria’s?interview below:
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Elizabeth Preston is a thirty-something wife and mother of three living in Florida. She is a fierce liberal with a passion?for equality and justice. She is a skeptic by nature and often the Facebook friend that rains on the urban legend parade with fact checking. Give her?Facebook page?a?like, follow her on?Twitter?and check out her personal blog,?My Four Ha? Pennies.
