Fighting Homelessness and Bureaucracy to Protect Her Family
In Whippany, New Jersey, a mother named Lindsay is fighting a battle that no family should face. Homeless and living in unsafe hotel rooms, she’s struggling to keep her family together while advocating for real change in a system that seems designed to fail.
“This is dehumanizing because inmates don’t live like this,” Lindsay said, describing the mold-covered walls and cockroach infestations that surround her family. Split between two rooms in separate buildings, they lack even the most basic comforts—no kitchen, no working television, and no sense of stability.
The Toll of Hotel Homelessness
Hotel rooms have become a last resort for many homeless families across America. For Lindsay, they are both refuge and prison. The environment is unsafe and unsanitary, but there are few alternatives. “We’re too poor for affordable housing,” she said—a painful paradox that exposes the gaps in housing programs meant to help.
Every day, Lindsay faces bureaucratic barriers that make survival harder. “Most people just accept the answers [they’re given],” she said. “I can’t do that. I fight for my family and other families because this system is broken.”
Advocacy Born from Struggle
Even as her youngest child battles serious medical issues in the hospital, Lindsay finds the strength to attend council meetings and meet with lawmakers. She asks the same question again and again: Why is it this hard to get help?
“They tell me to change legislation,” Lindsay said. Yet, every time she pushes back, she said she faces retaliation. Her courage to speak out against injustice has made her both a target of the system and a champion for those who have no voice.
Her fiancé, Robert, sees her fight every day. “She’s the rock star of this family,” he said. “She what keeps this family going.”
A Call for Compassion and Change
Lindsay’s story is more than one family’s hardship—it’s a window into a national crisis. Family homelessness is growing, and families like hers are paying the price for decades of policy neglect and administrative red tape.
Lindsay says there’s so much disconnect between the workers and the community – and there aren’t enough resources, and the ones we have are riddled with bureaucracy. People are being set up to fail.
Yet Lindsay refuses to give up. She continues to fight for her children, her community, and every family enduring the same struggle. Her strength reminds us that behind every statistic is a parent doing everything possible to protect their children—and a system that must do better.
