A Mother's Days of Desperation

This Mother's Day column is about a mom in the Marshall Heights section of Southeast Washington. My intent was to highlight the affordable-housing crisis in the nation's capital and to take a poke at plans in the D.C. Council to cut taxes mainly for high-income households. The housing crisis is real indeed, and the tax cuts are premature.

But the centerpiece of today's column is the mom herself. Her tale mirrors the lives of so many District women for whom tomorrow will come and go without any of the special tributes that mothers across the country will receive from grateful children.

She is identified by her initials, C.C., because of her vulnerable circumstances. (Her identity has been disclosed to The Post.) The interview also was conducted in the presence of Jamila Larson, a social worker at a Southeast elementary school.

C.C.'s wants for Mother's Day are few: just a permanent roof over the heads of her children, a yard where they can play safely and enough to eat.

Facing yards-long waiting lists for subsidized housing, C.C. might as well as seek an invitation to the next White House state dinner.

In this inn called the District of Columbia there is no room, at least not for a single mother of six whose only means of support are food stamps and a welfare check.

Which explains why C.C., Larson and I were meeting in a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a three-story building with a boarded-up, burned-out apartment on the top floor.

C.C.'s apartment is in the name of an aunt who turned the place over to her niece and the children when she found out that they had nowhere else to live. C.C. and her children have been in this dwelling for a year, but she's scared to death that the owner might discover they are occupying the apartment and kick them out.

Her other worry is how she can make it on a $744 monthly welfare payment when her rent -- which, above all else, must be paid -- is $722.

Still, C.C. said proudly that her children never leave for school without breakfast, and she has always managed to put food on the table for dinner. The school lunch program takes care of the midday meal.

C.C. frequently sells her food stamps for money to buy other household essentials. She knows that's wrong but said it's the only illegal thing she does.

She doesn't have a telephone -- can't afford one -- but a nearby elementary school will allow her to make calls when she has to. She does have a cellphone, which she uses whenever she can scrape together enough money to buy minutes.