It’s a happy ending : Goats and Soda : NPR

In August 2023, we shared the story of a household of three from São Paulo who had misplaced every part as a result of pandemic. With no work, house, automobile or meals, and their younger son positioned together with his grandmother, they struggled to outlive. They spent nights on the ground at a transit hub and infrequently discovered beds in a shelter.

A program referred to as Vila Reencontro allowed them to maneuver right into a transitional tiny house and get entry to meals and social companies. Now, reunited, employed and settled right into a rental in a quiet neighborhood close to household, they’re progressively getting again on their ft.

We adopted as much as see how they’re doing now.

With fists held tight, Henrique rubs his eyes as he closes his bed room door and makes his solution to the kitchen to repair himself breakfast. The ten-year-old mumbles a “good morning” to his mother and pop as he passes by way of the lounge and provides his gray and white cat, affectionately named Psycho, a scratch on the pinnacle and below the chin.

Within the kitchen, he fills a glass with milk and scoops a heaping spoonful of chocolate powder into it earlier than giving it a stir and placing it within the microwave.

“He all the time makes his personal breakfast,” says his mother, Erica Lacerda de Souza, as she watches him from the kitchen doorway, her husband, Bruce Lee Sousa, nodding in settlement from the sofa within the adjoining front room. “It’s his job to maintain Psycho too. He places out his meals and water and makes certain the litter field is clear. I would like him to be unbiased and accountable.”

Only a 12 months in the past the trio was one among 37 households every of whom have been residing in a tiny home within the downtown São Paulo neighborhood of Anhangabaú. It was a part of a municipal program referred to as Vila Reencontro, impressed by New York’s Housing First program from the Nineties and one of many methods the Brazilian metropolis of 12 million was attempting to assist its rising variety of unhoused individuals, significantly through the pandemic, get again on their ft. This system supplies households with tiny properties for as much as 36 months together with entry to meals and social companies.

All is misplaced

Once they needed to shut their bodega due to pandemic laws and their different work dwindled — Lacerda de Souza’s as a cleaner and Lee Sousa’s at a automobile wash — they misplaced the home they rented and nearly every part in it. Whereas Henrique, who was then 6, was despatched to dwell together with his maternal grandmother, the couple spent two weeks sleeping on the ground at São Paulo’s downtown Barra Funda Terminal — a central hub for metropolis transit — and months making their manner by way of town’s shelter and different short-term housing programs earlier than studying about Vila Reencontro and being supplied a tiny house.

There, Henrique was capable of dwell with them once more, they usually have been offered a slew of different alternatives, together with assist discovering everlasting housing and jobs.

Simply six months after shifting to the 194-square-foot house — barely smaller than a one-car storage — Lee Sousa was supplied a spot in a piece program and began his job with town’s sanitation division — which he nonetheless has in the present day — final September. The trio additionally benefited from a metropolis housing program that allowed them to flip by way of a listing of potential properties accessible to lease so they might select what could be the very best match for his or her household.

A brand new starting

After seeing a number of choices, they determined to go together with their spacious house within the east-end neighborhood of Guaianases, which they’ve now been in for about two months. It’s removed from downtown, however Lacerda de Souza says it’s what she prefers.

“I like residing in a quiet, household neighborhood,” she says. “Right here I can stroll to the grocery store, there’s a bakery across the nook and Henrique doesn’t have far to go to high school. We’re rather a lot nearer to my mother’s home now too, so it’s straightforward for her to return go to or for Henrique to go spend time along with her.”

The housing program can pay their lease for the following two years and has already helped them furnish their new house, offering them with a desk, a mattress, armoires and a fridge. Different gadgets — like their sofa and range — they bought themselves, as they slowly rebuild what they misplaced. After two years, the household ought to be capable to pay their very own lease.

The household receives visits each different week from a program social employee, who has additionally helped them get entry to medical care – Lacerda de Souza has again ache from two herniated discs — and regulate to their new circumstances.

“There are such a lot of small belongings you take as a right,” Lee Sousa says. “Like realizing learn how to plan your month-to-month grocery run. It’s been years since we have been ready to try this ourselves. If you’re in shelters and even within the tiny house, meals are simply served to you. Now now we have to relearn learn how to price range for what we want.”

The three like spending time collectively in the lounge, the place they usually lay the mattress from the couple’s bed room on the ground to allow them to watch films and TV reveals collectively. Lee Sousa has a penchant for Indian movies, whereas Lacerda de Souza prefers reveals like Supernatural and Henrique likes watching Cobra Kai.

Their new house is on the high of a prolonged flight of stairs, and the household has already befriended their neighbors who dwell within the different three flats off the lengthy stretch of hall. When Lee Sousa is at work and Henrique is in school, Lacerda de Souza likes to talk over espresso with the 2 younger ladies who dwell subsequent door. When Lee Sousa arrives, their youthful male neighbors are sometimes ready for him to speak one thing over or ask for recommendation.

And Henrique has been doing exceptionally properly in school, making new pals shortly and by no means eager to miss a day. Each morning he takes his time doing his hair, ensuring the curls are good, earlier than his mother walks him to the nook, the place she watches him head up the road as a result of he doesn’t need his pals to see that she’s with him.

“I suppose he’s already getting too previous for that,” she says with amusing.

A non secular revival

Their home, says Lacerda de Souza, is never empty now, and has grow to be a hub not just for household — weekend pasta nights are a favourite occasion — but additionally for his or her non secular neighborhood.

The household’s religion lies within the Afro-Brazilian faith referred to as Quimbanda, one of the stigmatized religions within the nation. On account of cultural misunderstanding and damaging stereotypes, they struggled to apply it whereas residing in shelters and the tiny house for concern that others wouldn’t perceive.

However a small space off the lounge of their new house has allowed them to return to practising their religion, the place statues of saints and different sacred objects are on show to allow them to pray and meditate — all the time with the curtains drawn. Others from the neighborhood are sometimes there to do the identical, and a few keep over on the household’s new house once they have nowhere else to go.

“Having your individual house is every part,” says Lacerda de Souza. “It’s liberating. And I’m all the time completely happy to assist others. The place would we be if no one had helped us?”

Jill Langlois is an unbiased journalist based mostly in São Paulo, Brazil. She has been freelancing from the most important metropolis within the western hemisphere since 2010, writing and reporting for publications like Nationwide Geographic, The New York Instances, The Guardian and Time. Her work focuses on human rights, the setting and the influence of socioeconomic points on individuals’s lives.