SNOHOMISH, Wash. -- The number of homeless people continues to rise in Western Washington and that includes more children.
In King County the homeless population has grown at least three percent. And the latest count in Snohomish County revealed 829 kids under the age of 18 are homeless.
Erin Gannon is a single mother of three. Their home is now a small room inside the women's shelter at the Everett Gospel Mission. Life wasn't always this hard.
"We're together, that's all that matters," said Gannon. "We had a nice house and we had all the Christmasses and all that. And now, it's this."
Split from her boyfriend and no job, she had no place to go. So for a time she and her kids had no choice but to live in the family van.
"I couldn’t pay my rent anymore so that was it," said Gannon. “I never thought in a million years it could happen, especially with my kids, that was the most.. I don’t know, I blamed myself a lot.”
Despite signs of improvement in the economy Snohomish County is seeing an uptick in the number of homeless, where roughly a third of them are children.
"Homelessness for kids is always trauma even though they might look very resilient," says Sylvia Anderson, Everett Gospel Mission's CEO. "I think when you're homeless you're always struggling, wanting things to be better. But what we're seeing is people thinking things can't get better."
Erin Gannon doesn’t know what’s next for her family. But what she does know is they’ll get through it together.
"My son told me when I asked him one night about our situation, he said, 'Mama, I really don't care, we're together.'"
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