Homeless Woman Finds Hope in Cave Dwelling

Hope who is now 41, she felt more comfortable in the cave than a homeless shelter. She lived on her Social Security disability check of $670 a month, but she spent a good portion of it staying at a motel for four or five days a month. It gave her chance to clean up and to spend some time with her younger daughter, who was still living in the area. Her daughter knew where she lived the rest of the month.

“She would say, ‘Oh, God, Mom, I can’t believe you’re living in cave.’ I felt like I failed utterly.”

Carmen Gonzalez, who works at the Hub and coordinates outreach workers for the Mental Health Center, remembers meeting Hope at the Hub snack bar. She knew Hope was a new client, and she remembers her as “pretty tearful, pretty frightened and at the same time trying to appear strong.”

Gonzalez became Hope’s confidante, nudging her in the direction of getting more help. Later that March, after losing the cave dwelling, Hope went to a Project Homeless Connect event at the Parmly Billings Library, which gives homeless people one-stop access to services, food and other forms of assistance. Most important, Gonzalez told Hope that people from the Housing Authority of Billings would be waiting for her.

“Carmen really paved my way,” Hope said.

Finally, two months after Project Homeless Connect, she moved into a subsidized apartment owned by the Housing Authority. She is still in the downtown apartment nearly two years later, able to walk nearly everywhere she needs to go, occasionally doing temporary work and hoping, someday, to write a book about her experiences on the street.

Hope revisited her old cave last week for the first time since her eviction. There is no sign of habitation now, except for the soot-smudged roof, and Hope thought it looked a lot smaller than she remembered. And even now, she said, she missed her “million-dollar view” of MetraPark down below.

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