This grandma is trying to keep her seven grandkids from being homeless for the holidays
Robbie Hamilton-Romer is on the phone a lot.
Every morning when she wakes up, she calls her seven grandkids and great-granddaughter to check in. Are they dressed for school? Have they eaten breakfast? Have they seen their mom?
Lately, the answer is no.
Hamilton-Romer, 56, is the primary caretaker for her seven grandchildren (and one great-granddaughter) ranging in age from 21 years to 11 months old. Their mom, a single parent, battles addiction and frequently leaves her children to fend for themselves for long stretches of time. Without her help paying the bills, they’re facing eviction and homelessness.
On her lunch break from her job at Quest Diagnostics, Hamilton-Romer is on the phone again. She calls every hotline she can think of for help. Often, the long wait times eat up her entire free hour, and she’s wasted another afternoon trying to find a solution. Even the homeless shelters she calls say they’re full.
“There’s literally nowhere they can go if they get thrown out of here,” she said. “I can’t let them be homeless again. I just can’t.”
In their mother’s absence, her two oldest daughters found jobs to support the family, and Hamilton-Romer picked up some part-time catering work on top of her full-time job. But when the landlord of their three-bedroom apartment in Pompano upped the rent $300 a month without warning in September, three and a half jobs weren’t enough to cover rent and the bills and food and clothes and gas for the car and everything else eight people need to survive.
The landlord is threatening to evict the family, and at the start of the month, the property manager told the family their lease would not be renewed, an apparent violation of their lease, which calls for at least 60 days notice. They have until the end of December to find a new place to live.
The kids have been homeless four times since 2013, about when their mom’s addiction began to spiral out of control. Hamilton-Romer is desperate to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Hamilton-Romer spent 20 years in government-subsidized housing and knows how much stability a safe, permanent place to live can bring. She gave up her voucher years ago when she got married and finally had enough to afford her own place.
Now she just wants the same for her family.
“I feel like I’m drowning. There’s such a weight on my shoulders,” she said. “It’s like a cycle that they’re in. I need the cycle to be broken so they can concentrate on school and just be stable. No child should have to go through what they’ve been through.”
Arlene Gurwich, a social worker for Dr. Margaret Gorensek at Holy Cross Medical Group, has worked with Hamilton-Romer for almost 30 years and said despite her troubles, Hamilton-Romer is the strongest person she knows.
“It’s not easy for her. But she’s quite a person. I think that her faith is really seeing her through this more than anything else,” Gurwich said. “She knows she’s the only one that can really keep the family together.”
Gurwich said finding housing is a problem for all of her clients, one that’s gotten worse in recent years as local housing agencies face a shortage of employees. She can’t remember the last time the housing agency in Broward even opened up its waiting list for new applicants.
Every night for Hamilton-Romer ends the same way, on the phone with her grandkids hearing about their day at school, at work or at the park with friends. When they finally end the call, Hamilton-Romer just lies in bed, worrying.
“I don’t sleep,” she said. “It’s too much.”
How to help
Wish Book is trying to help hundreds of families in need this year. To donate, pay securely at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook. For information, call 305-376-2906 or email wishbook@miamiherald.com. (The most requested items are often laptops and tablets for school, furniture, and accessible vans.) Read more at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook.
This story was originally published December 18, 2021 at 6:30 AM.
