Wish for the holidays: A roof over their heads

Cassandre, homeless and seeking a college degree, is in a Dorchester apartment after having spent 2 1/2 months in a hotel with her children, Ife, 4 (above), and Uche, 2. (Globe Staff Photo / Yoon S. Byun)

Homeless, jobless, and living at the Cambridge Gateway Inn with her two young daughters, Sadie Fry nevertheless considered herself one of the lucky ones.

Fry had lost her home to foreclosure, her Haitian husband to deportation, and her job to the sudden upheaval in her life. Still, she and her daughters, who were placed at the motel by the state Department of Transitional Assistance, were "grateful to be able to have a place to lay our heads at night," she said.

There are 76 families at the motel, added Fry, who is now living in a row house in Allston that is subsidized by the state and administered by the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, the state's largest provider of rental housing assistance.

"They don't have any food," Fry said of those remaining at the motel, "and they don't even have formula for their babies, no transportation, no phone, no family. They have nowhere to turn, and a lot of them don't even speak English."

The winter holidays are a time when many people turn their thoughts toward home, but for the families staying at the Gateway Inn or those who recently moved out, home is a distant and abstract ideal.

"In the field, we've been calling it a perfect storm of a national economic crisis, an affordable housing shortage, and the state's financial woes," said Libby Hayes, executive director of Homes for Families, a Boston-based nonprofit organization that addresses family homelessness.

"Families that are already living on the edge just have taken the biggest hit with the safety net being taken out from underneath them."

Fry, who spent five weeks at the Gateway Inn before moving into her current home in late October, recalled the challenges of constructing a semblance of normal life while living in a room with two double beds, a microwave, and a fridge.

Her children attended the Peabody School in North Cambridge for a few weeks while they were living at the motel, so "that one room was our homework area, our dining room, our bedroom, our kitchen, our bathroom, our closet, our everything," she said.

"I didn't even have money to do laundry, so I washed laundry in the sink."

The Cambridge Gateway Inn, which bills itself as a "boutique-style hotel" on the travel reservation website Expedia, sits between a bowling alley and the long boarded-up former Faces nightclub on the edge of Route 2 near the Alewife T station.

The rooms are basic, with faded green carpeting, mottled red bedspreads, and mini-fridges and microwaves that Fry noted function only fitfully.

Anthony Martignetti, who did not return multiple calls for comment, owns the 78-room motel, the only site in Cambridge that serves homeless families, and staff at the motel tell travelers looking to make reservations that it is "sold out."

According to the Department of Transitional Assistance, motels receive on average $85 per family per night, and the state places families in such arrangements when shelters are full. There were 654 homeless families in motels across the state as of Dec. 10.

Cassandre, a student and single mother of three who asked not to have her last name published because of judgmental attitudes she says she encountered while homeless, was at the motel until late November.

"It is an unstable situation to be in, living in a hotel room," she said.

"What I really didn't like was living in suspense, wondering, What's the next day going to be like? Are they going to call me and tell me they're moving me? Living like that on a daily basis for two and a half months is scary."

She moved to a "scattered site" - where affordable units are mixed in with those priced at market rate - in Dorchester in late November.

"We can sit around the table and have dinner together. We couldn't do that at the hotel," says Cassandre.

Both women are struggling to become financially stable while obtaining their college degrees. The circumstances leading to the loss of their homes involve family disputes and missed mortgage payments.

"When families end up in shelters, it's generally such a myriad of problems that leads them there," Hayes said, including "not having money for childcare, not having adequate job training to get a job that pays a living wage, domestic violence."

Single adults who become homeless because of the loss of a job or home may be able to find friends or family to accommodate them, but these arrangements are more complicated when it comes to family homelessness, Hayes added.

With children also come the eager expectations for Christmas celebrations. Fry, who sold her possessions in a two-day yard sale in September, is trying to scrounge together an atmosphere of festivity on a budget, buying Christmas cards at dollar stores and visiting local agencies hosting toy drives such as the Salvation Army, Action for Boston Community Development, and the Boston Police.

"It's going to be a really tough Christmas as far as trying to even get a tree, but hopefully," she said, taking a deep breath, "hopefully, we'll be able to at least get a few gifts under the tree for them."

"You gotta be wise," Cassandre added. "You can't just say, 'OK, it's Christmastime,' and go spend money you really don't have."