To ‘Protect’ My Kids, the State Made Me Homeless

“It sounds extreme, absurd: A parent is accused of child maltreatment, so she is thrown to the streets. It sounds like it’s the kind of situation that arises out of a cyclone of bad luck, the unfortunate but rare solution spit out after a confluence of factors is added together just so. But it’s not. Agency-induced homelessness is a common phenomenon known among parent attorneys and advocates as a weapon wielded by caseworkers and judges, who can impose it upon parents at will.

Erin Miles Cloud, a former parent attorney in New York City and the co-founder of Movement for Family Power, an advocacy organization that did pro-bono consulting work on my case, acknowledges that agency-induced homelessness is a “huge problem.”

Child services agencies “have no concern with rendering parents homeless,” she said. “And they often have a very callous response to the housing insecurity that’s endured as if … it’s a deserved consequence of what they perceive a parent to have done, and even if it’s not deserved, it’s worth it for the sake of what they believe the child needs or wants.”’