Robert Polight leaned over an electric pot in a corner of Room 27 at the Breezeway Motel, stirring the sauce for his family's favorite dinner: spaghetti. He strained the noodles in the room's cramped bathroom sink.
His wife, Joshalyn James, had just finished slicing sausage on the coffee table and was busy cleaning up after him. Son Jake, 6, quietly played a video game, and daughter Haira,12, giggled on the phone.
Dinnertime, even under these circumstances, has given the family a sense of stability since it became homeless.
Fairfax County pays $65 a night for the family to stay at the 1950s-era motel in Fairfax City while it waits for space to open in a county shelter. The family was evicted from a rented townhouse in Spotsylvania after Polight lost his warehouse job and he and James couldn't make ends meet on her salary as a medical assistant.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/15/AR2009021501966.htmlI used to live directly behind this motel. Periodically you would see families moving in or out, with all of their clothes stuffed into garbage bags. At that point in time, there was about a 3-month wait to get into one of the two family shelters in the county. I wonder what the wait is now?
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