Cindy Benson: The Connection

A sharp ring echos through the office, bouncing off of walls covered in framed family photos. Grand Haven Area Public Schools (GHAPS) Homeless Liaison, Cindy Benson, swivels in her chair and answers the phone, grabbing some loose paper next to her to take notes. She jots down a phone number, names and various details and thanks the caller. Then, she gets to work.

She has a new client.

Benson has been working with homeless students for six years, and services children in grades preschool to 12, as long as they are in GHAPS. Every school district is required to have a homeless liaison, and it’s usually someone who holds another job in the system. Benson is also the GHAPS Information Services Specialist. According to her, homelessness is supposed to take up about five percent of her time, but because the cases are plentiful, diverse and incredibly important, it takes up more like 40 percent.

“When you start to talk about families and homelessness, they look like you and I, however, we’ve got families that live in cars,” Benson said. “And because we have the community that we are, we have families that live in tents, that live in campers, and families that live in shelters.”

Many of these families have young children in the area’s public schools. That’s where Benson comes in. She serves as the primary link between GHAPS and homeless students, finding ways to create a stable environment. Often times, school serves as that a large factor for that security.

“It’s a place that they can come that they know they will be warm, they will be fed, they will be dry, their needs will be met,” Benson said of the school environment. “Things are consistent. They’re in the same classes with the same kids with the same teachers, they have the same administrators. It’s just more about consistency. The number one role is to make kids that are going through trauma, to make school a safe place for them.”

But because they wish to fit in and are often facing physical and emotional instability, Benson says their first reaction is to turn away from help. Teenagers and adults alike commonly remain under the radar, embarrassed about their situation.

“There’s a fear of, ‘Oh my goodness, everyone is going to know,’” Benson said. “So, they try to keep it private. But there’s also a fear of, ‘How am I going to eat? How am I going to get clothes? How am I going to get my homework done?’”

Those concerns are heightened when the misconceptions and lack of information are factored in as well. In a recent survey by the Bucs’ Blade, 41 percent of students said they were unsure if homelessness is a problem in the area, while 36 percent it wasn’t at all.

“When you think of homelessness you think of everything that you see and hear about in movies or what you see on television, and that’s not what our homeless population looks like,” Benson said. “I can tell you stories about kids that are current students right now, that are homeless teenagers because their moms are heroin addicts. That’s here. That’s in Grand Haven. These kids chose to walk away from that situation because they wanted better for themselves. But that’s here, and we just don’t see it. It’s not our norm, it’s not what people expect in our community, so we need to break that bubble, break that box.”

However, she usually faces disbelief when explaining to administrators or citizens that last year, there were 218 homeless kids in GHAPS.

“When you say those things, people are like, ‘Wait what? How can that be? We live in Grand Haven, everyone has what they want, it’s a beautiful place!’” Benson said. “Well, it is. But it’s also a sad place for some folks.”

According to Benson, costly housing is the main cause of homelessness in the Tri-Cities area. A 2016 study by the United Way reported that 45 percent of people living in Grand Haven struggle with housing costs.

“Its an expensive place to live,” Benson said. “We have great schools and so they’re torn between, ‘Do I give my kids the best I possibly can and the best chance by letting them have the best opportunity to rise to the top to achieve their goals, or do we go to the north or the south where housing is a bit cheaper but the schools aren’t necessarily as great?’”

As the area’s homeless liaison, Benson doesn’t just focus on housing and schooling. She works to teach individuals how to be self-sufficient, give them options and help them find resources.

“So many of these families, no one has ever stood by them,” Benson said. “No one has ever given them boundaries. No one has ever taught them how to grocery shop to sustain their family, so it’s standing by them, teaching them, restoring their dignity and their faith in the humanity of our society and just helping them and telling them, ‘It’s okay to fall, you’re gonna fall. You’re gonna fall backwards. You might lapse, but we’re here to help you and pick up the pieces.’”

Although her main job is to find ways to physically help her client, Benson realizes that creating empathy is also a necessity to help the homeless.

“I want people to react,” Benson said. “I want them to feel something. That’s my number one goal, just feel something, have an emotion that is attached to this. Care about other human beings who are not the same as you.”

That care is typically expressed through donations, monetary and material. Benson says she graciously accepts any gifts to the department, and if she can’t use it, another local shelter will. She also notes that simply supporting families and individuals is productive as well.

“Whether it’s a teenager, a family, a mom or dad or whatever, just by talking to them and letting them know that you care and letting them know that it doesn’t matter how they got this one spot in their life, nothing back there matters,” Benson said. “We just want to take each day as one point in time and move forward.”

She also aims to help students succeed in the long run, which is why she personally goes to the laundromat teaches them how to wash clothes, shows families how to grocery shop and advises individuals on financial decisions. She says she isn’t afraid to be tough and strict because she knows she is setting each case up for future prosperity.

“Homelessness isn’t just a tick in time,” Benson said. “It’s something we have to help them get through, help them get out of.”