Santa Rosa woman overcomes addiction, homelessness to start life anew

This Christmas will be a holiday unlike any other for Santa Rosa resident Clara Martin and her 3-year-old son.

Homeless for years, Martin and her boy, Nicodemus, were among dozens of families who moved this month from a shelter run by the nonprofit organization Catholic Charities into permanent housing. The transition was just in time to make a big impression on Nicodemus, who took one look around his new home and saw a holiday wish fulfilled.

“My son turned to me with the most serious face, and said ‘Mommy! Santa can come to my house now because I have a chimney!’?” Martin, 30, said. “I just completely lost it; I broke into tears.”

The young mother’s story reflects many of the setbacks that homeless people in Sonoma County face, as well as the turnaround they can make if they are able to secure work and shelter, homeless advocates say.

Before she had her son, Martin spent countless nights sleeping in a tent along the Russian River, couch surfing and repeatedly pressing friends and family for help. Hooked up with the wrong crowd from an early age, she had started using methamphetamine at age 11 and was hooked by 13. It wasn’t until she found out she was pregnant with her son that she was able to stop using.

“I had to decide what I was going to do,” she said. “I knew I had to ask for help or I was going to die.”

Eventually, she found her way to the door of Catholic Charities’ Family Support Center, an emergency shelter program for people with children, where she said a group of peers and case workers helped her turn her life around.

Catholic Charities gave Martin and her son a place to stay while she searched for permanent housing. The shelter program also provided day care, life skills classes, and a case worker who helped enroll her in classes at Santa Rosa Junior College. Martin said it gave her the chance to get her life back together.

A key step for Martin in securing housing occurred a year and a half ago, when she landed a job - her first in years - as a retail clerk at Kmart. Martin said her employer looked past a misdemeanor drug possession conviction that had tripped up her job search on many other occasions.

“People would read my background. They’d tell me they’re not hiring, or that they didn’t like what they saw,” Martin said.

Jennielynn Holmes, director of shelter and housing for Catholic Charities, said such struggles, with unemployment and drug addiction, are common factors leading to homelessness.

“So many people we see have been through some pretty extreme crises and abuse,” Holmes said. “We’re here to help people get off the streets into a safe place, so they can make a home and heal.”

Holmes said finding housing is rare for time of the year. Sonoma County’s rental market, with a vacancy rate of just over 1 percent, makes it nearly impossible to find an affordable unit on a tight budget. The market during the holiday becomes even tighter because of routine closures of business and government, she said.

“It’s very unique for a family to find housing during Christmas,” Holmes said. “But Clara did it. She just burst into my office last week when she found out and told me how excited she was to spend Christmas at home.”

Martin said she used drugs off and on for more than 15 years. It was her pregnancy that propelled her into treatment. She spent nine months going through an outpatient program at the Drug Abuse Alternatives Center in Santa Rosa, and now, she wants to help others who have experienced addiction and abuse.

Martin is working toward a certificate in drug and alcohol counseling from Santa Rosa Junior College. She plans to return to Catholic Charities, but this time, as a case manager to help others like her.

She credited her boss at Kmart, Dianna Adams, for giving her the time off to move and even helping her out financially at times. That assistance and her support network at Catholic Charities made all the difference.

“It wasn’t easy to ask for help,” Martin said. “These people have helped me get to a place in life that I never thought was possible.”

You can reach Staff Writer Angela Hart at 526-8503 or angela.hart@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@ahartreports.