Omaha mother, son say homelessness isn’t always how it seems
OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Sometimes, homeless camps are set up out of sight, on side streets. Sometimes, they hide on busy streets next to a business.
A camp at 84th and Fredrick is next to a Casey’s car wash.
“They come off the trail behind us and they frequent the [gas station] a lot,” said Allen Keller, a nearby business owner. “During the summer, they camp out in their car wash.”
Keller owns a custom framing shop down the street and he says there are a lot of homeless people that move around the area and his store.
“The faces change every year,” Keller said. “Sometimes we’ll see individuals for a few months, sometimes you see them for a few days and then you never see them again.”
Ronda Motykowski owns a pet grooming business in the same plaza. She believes many of the homeless people are dealing with issues out of their control.
“I feel really bad for them,” Motykowksi said. “I think a lot of them have mental issues and I know we got away from some of our mental facilities that used to help with that, so I think it’s sad.”
There are many homeless people fighting addiction or dealing with mental illness, but Romain Boerma believes we all have issues and you can’t put everybody — homeless or not — in the same box.
“We all have things to tend to, everybody, no matter how pretty your house is or if you have no house, we all have things to tend to inside us,” Boerma said.
Prejudgment — developing a stereotype before getting to know an individual — seems particularly prevalent when talking about the homeless community.”
“When you pass a homeless person, you don’t know how they got there,” said Phyllis Kuteron, who has been homeless with her son, A.J. Rivers, since February. “Ourselves, when we were in the position, we have given food to people at the corner of the freeway or money or whatever — but we never thought it’d be us.”
Phyllis and A.J. are both working, but they can’t earn enough money to pay deposits or first month’s rent.
“I became pretty much homeless on my 22nd birthday,” A.J. said. “I kind of just went into survival mode because that’s how I was raised. You have to do what you gotta do.”
What they have to do right now is live out of their car, and Phyllis says they need to find a new place to park their temporary home.
“I’ve been living in my car for almost two weeks in a Walmart parking lot in Gretna and yesterday they asked us to leave,” Phyllis said.
A lot of compounding circumstances landed them on the street.
“I was in an abusive, drug-fueled marriage,” Phyllis said. “I had to make a choice to help my husband or save my son. My husband didn’t want to help, so I chose to save my son, and we came here to Nebraska.”
Phyllis says here husband divorced her and she lost her business, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But now they’re working to get back on their feet. A.J. is working as a food delivery driver and they’ve started a new business.
“We opened up a cleaning business, but we’re still homeless,” Phyllis said. “Just because you see a person or hear that a person is homeless doesn’t mean they’re out pushing a cart or sleeping in a garbage bag at night. Some of us pay our bills. I paid insurance and got tags so I have somewhere to sleep at night in my car.
Right now, Phyllis and A.J. say they make enough money to get by in their current lifestyle, but still can’t afford to move out of the car.
“Until our business makes enough money or some sort of miracle happens, then we’re going to be in that car until we can do better.”
The Omaha mother and son don’t fit the stereotypical homeless bill, but that’s because there shouldn’t be one, according to people like Boerma and Kuteron and Motykowski, the latter of whom also thinks finding a solution is paramount.
“Maybe we do need to put some more money out there towards that, but I really think we need to have facilities for them to continue to attempt to educate them and help them out,” Motykowski. “It’s tough. It’s a tough question.”
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