Carisa Suddoth is working to start her own house cleaning business. Most Sundays she invites a couple of friends, family or neighbors to her home to have dinner with her and her children—Sadé, 19, Regina, 14, and Christopher, 11.

“I cook the dishes my grandma used to make,” Carisa says. “I like to bring everybody together, and then sit back and watch their expressions as they eat. Believe me, I cook for praise!”

Less than a year ago, Carisa and her kids were homeless and living in a shelter. Thanks to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and its push to create the Illinois Rental Housing Support Program, they now have a permanent home of their own: they moved into their South Side apartment in March 2007.

Carisa and her children became homeless in the fall of 2006, when they lost their house in Danville, Illinois. After Carisa’s abusive husband left the family, she struggled to keep up with the bills and mortgage payments on just one income—the wages she earned as a cashier at a Speedway. Eventually, she fell so far behind that she couldn’t catch up.

“We ended up basically living in the streets,” Carisa said.

Hoping to stay with sisters who lived in Chicago while she got back on her feet, Carisa moved her family to the city. When she arrived she saw that her sisters were already struggling to support their own families; she wouldn’t be able to stay with them for long. She tried to find a place for her family in a city shelter.

“I didn’t want people looking and laughing—saying, ‘look at what happened to her,’” Carisa said. “But I knew I just had to grin and bear it so I could do better for my children,” Carisa said.

In November 2006 she and her kids found a slot in a family shelter on Chicago’s southeast side. That’s where she met the women’s organizer for the coalition, Dollie Brewer, during one of her regular outreach sessions. Dollie helped Carisa get enrolled in the Illinois Rental Housing Support Program and connected her with a supportive landlord.

“I just felt like God had come and let these people into my life,” Carisa recalls. “When I first picked up my keys and went into my new apartment, I actually bent down and kissed the floors! It felt like a rebirth.”

The Illinois Rental Housing Support Program is on track to be the largest state-run rent subsidy program in the nation. Designed by the coalition’s statewide housing campaign, the program was enacted in 2005 after a two-year campaign. It will give 5,000 low-wage families across Illinois the opportunity to find permanent homes, including the more than 1,300 families that will be served when the Chicago program is fully up and running this year. The program is “a lifesaver,” Carisa says.

Now home again, Sadé is on track to graduate this year from high school. She will look into options for college in the next few months. Christopher, a fifth-grader, excels in math. Seventh-grader Regina loves playing basketball, and has decorated her bedroom in her favorite color—pink.

Carisa supports the family by working 12-hour days as a house cleaner, earning about $5 an hour, but a diabetes flare-up forced her to cut back recently. She works part-time doing home care for seniors until she recovers her health. She says she appreciates having the chance “to be there for my kids after school to help them with their homework and prepare their meals.”

Each month Carisa also fields phone calls from many other women in need, referring them to Dollie and the coalition. She and a group of other women helped by Dollie get together occasionally for dinner at her home. Several times, she has taken in for the night mothers and children who would otherwise have been on the street.

“I don’t mind helping people out. Hopefully if I fell, they would help me out too,” Carisa says.

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