ARLINGTON, Wash. — A Snohomish County family’s struggle to pull themselves out of homelessness exposes a crisis in sheltering families and the difficulties of keeping them together.
The Boucher family – Amanda, Marc, their five kids, who are 2 to 10 years old, and their dog – are living in an Arlington motel room.
"For me, this is not normal. It's stressful. The unpredictability bothers me," said Amanda, a certified nursing assistant.
Amanda was recently diagnosed with epilepsy and suffers daily seizures. She's unable to work. Marc, a computer technician, has to stay home to care for her and the kids.
Without work, they can't afford the first and last month's rent and a deposit for a home.
A motel room is the only home some of the kids have ever known.
"It's not home," Marc said. "They don't understand that."
"Nobody really talks about it," Amanda added. "We just kinda push through and live as normal as possible."
The Bouchers are in an especially difficult situation. There are shelter beds for men, women and children but very few for entire families.
In Snohomish County, the few beds that exist are all full.
"There's nothing, absolutely nothing available for them in Snohomish County," said State Rep. Mary Fosse, who was homeless, herself, as a child.
She believes Snohomish County needs to treat homelessness as an emergency like people did with the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We swarm our resources and put things into action. I'm not sure why we're not seeing this as a similar type of problem," Fosse said.
Right now, the county is relying heavily on motel vouchers for families. It is converting two motels into transitional housing, but those rooms won't open until next year.
"The tension is the more you come up with temporary solutions, the fewer resources you have for long-term, permanent solutions," said Snohomish County Human Services Director Mary Jane Brell Vujovic.
For now, the Bouchers have enough money to stay at the motel for just a few more days.
At that point, all seven of them and the dog will likely be living in their 17-year-old van, and all they'll have is each other.
"We just pack them in with their blankets and fuzzy animals and pillows and start all over," Marc said.