Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Any day now, sin­gle moth­er Se­li­ka Ja­cob will give birth to her third child. Very like­ly she will take her new­born to the place she cur­rent­ly calls home–an aban­doned, un­se­cured house fur­nished with on­ly a mat­tress. She shares that space with her two oth­er chil­dren and an­oth­er fam­i­ly of three and is des­per­ate­ly ap­peal­ing for a safe place to raise her chil­dren.

Ja­cob, 23, found her­self in dire straits six months ago when the fa­ther of her chil­dren was ar­rest­ed and im­pris­oned. His rel­a­tives, with whom she lived in To­ba­go, asked her to leave their home and she re­turned to Trinidad where she has no rel­a­tives to turn to, so she end­ed up on the streets with her chil­dren.She even­tu­al­ly came up­on the aban­doned house in Co­coyea Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, and moved in with her fam­i­ly.

Three weeks ago, while get­ting coun­selling at a so­cial wel­fare of­fice, Ja­cob met Can­dice Pat­ter­son, 22, a moth­er of two girls, who is al­so home­less. Pat­ter­son said her com­mon-law-hus­band was shot dead by po­lice in 2011 and his rel­a­tives put her out of their home

The two sin­gle moth­ers de­cid­ed to share the aban­doned struc­ture and have worked out a sys­tem to care for their four chil­dren, Ker­shelle and Kimo­ra, both five, Han­nah, two, and Ke­visha, 11 months. Pat­ter­son takes care of the chil­dren dur­ing the day while Ja­cobs works. Ja­cobs babysits at nights while Pat­ter­son works at a casi­no. Be­cause of the dis­tance and dark lone­ly road to get to their home, Ja­cob takes the chil­dren out on­to the main road every night to await Pat­ter­son's re­turn.

They wor­ry about what will hap­pen when Ja­cob gives birth. Ja­cob, Pat­ter­son and an­oth­er woman, Tami­ka John­son, were in the spot­light al­most two weeks ago when they camped out in front of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ing Cor­po­ra­tion's (HDC) head of­fice on South Quay, Port-of-Spain, beg­ging for homes. Af­ter spend­ing the night on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port-of-Spain with their four chil­dren, the women al­so took their plight out­side Par­lia­ment.

Ja­cob said those ef­forts were not suc­cess­ful but she was will­ing to go pub­lic again to get a se­cure and com­fort­able place to live."We fear for our lives," she said ex­plain­ing that peo­ple us­ing blocked num­bers have been call­ing their phones, threat­en­ing to find them and rape them."Some­times I does be scared to even an­swer the phone, the kind of things they does be telling us," she said.Both women say they have no rel­a­tives to turn to.

"My moth­er left me with a rel­a­tive when I was three months old," said Ja­cob. "My rel­a­tive raised me but I left her home when I was 17. When I re­turned to look for her a few months ago, she was in a home for the el­der­ly."Ja­cob does not know if she has any oth­er rel­a­tives."I don't know if I have any broth­ers, sis­ters, or any­body," she said.Pat­ter­son said every­one she could have turned to for help is dead."My moth­er, my fa­ther, my child fa­ther... every­body I know dead. All I have is my chil­dren," she said.

The struc­ture the women cur­rent­ly oc­cu­py is the rem­nants of a failed at­tempt by squat­ters to oc­cu­py state lands. It con­sists of a floor, an up­stairs deck­ing and a stair­way to the front. There are no walls, doors, or win­dows. There is no run­ning wa­ter or elec­tric­i­ty.Ja­cobs has se­cured the open spaces with sheets of old gal­vanise but that is not enough to keep away drug ad­dicts who have stolen the few pos­ses­sion she had. There is no pro­tec­tion against rain, in­sects, or rep­tiles.

The un­fin­ished struc­ture is sur­round­ed by tall, thick bush­es and is lo­cat­ed on a lone­ly road some 15 min­utes away from the main thor­ough­fare or oth­er hous­es. Ad­dicts and oth­er shady char­ac­ters fre­quent the de­sert­ed area."They does be there whole day. On­ly in the night they does go. We can't sleep in case they de­cide to come back dur­ing the night," Ja­cob said.The women said the mat­tress on which they all slept was the on­ly pos­ses­sion that had not been stolen.

Ja­cob's stove and gas tank are long gone, so the fam­i­lies can­not even en­joy a hot meal."I used to have a stove and a gas tank but some­body thief it when I went to work. Now I does leave all my things by a la­dy quite out the road. Ke­visha, the ba­by doesn't like the cold milk, but it's the on­ly thing I could give her," Ja­cob said.

Even in her ad­vanced state of preg­nan­cy, Ja­cob goes to work dai­ly at a DVD club in La Ro­maine. On her way, she drops off the two old­er girls at school in San Fer­nan­do, while the younger ones ac­com­pa­ny her to work."I keep them dur­ing the day, so Can­dice can go out and try to get help for us," she said.The women are plead­ing with the HDC to pro­vide them with homes. Ja­cob said they were will­ing to oc­cu­py one house tem­porar­i­ly un­til prop­er arrange­ments could be made.

Ja­cob said they had tried to rent apart­ments on their own but had been turned down by land­lords be­cause of the chil­dren."Most places won't take you if you have chil­dren. But I could nev­er live with­out them."HDC came here, took pic­tures, in­ter­viewed us, but up till now, noth­ing hap­pen­ing," she said. "Un­til the day one of us get rape or kill in­side here, every­body will con­tin­ue to turn their backs."

HDC: We are try­ing our best to help

HDC's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John said the agency was try­ing every­thing pos­si­ble with­in its re­sources but the women's cas­es could not take pri­or­i­ty be­cause there were many peo­ple who were worse off."There are a lot of peo­ple un­der sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. Even though the cir­cum­stances might be dif­fer­ent, we have to bal­ance that. While the protest these women staged was very dra­mat­ic, there are so many peo­ple who have been wait­ing in line for years to get as­sis­tance," she said.

John said this did not mean she did not sym­pa­thise with the con­di­tions the women and their chil­dren were forced to live un­der."We are not hard-heart­ed here," John said."I sit at my desk all day try­ing to find ways to help peo­ple in much worse con­di­tions. We are try­ing to do the best with the re­sources we have."John said there are no up­dates in ei­ther woman's file to re­port.