Homelessness has a face and name in small towns.

While homeless people in cities are often viewed as a group, on South Whidbey homelessness is the Campbell family.

Sheri and Carl Campbell and their children, Kaylee, 9, and Scott, 14, have been living at the the Island County Fairgrounds in three leaky dome tents covered with a blue tarp since early this summer. They’ve been there trying to put their lives back together, lives that once included full-time jobs for Sheri and Carl, a home and never a thought about how they might get along while living outdoors.

Not one but a series of events put the Campbells where they are now.

“There was a time my kids had everything,” said Sheri Campbell. “We lived in a five-bedroom house and I was a supervisor at Hewlett Packard.

“Three years ago I would have never believed I could be in this situation. I have always prided myself elf on taking care of my kids, working and handling things that needed to be done.”

Her situation began to change when she was not longer able to work due to illness — fibromyalgia and lymphomatoid papulosis — and a divorce. But life went on because she and her two children were able to start family life anew with Carl Campbell. Sheri and Carl met in 1997 and married in August of this year.

When Sheri Campbell got sick, she had to rely on Carl to keep the family together financially. At the time he worked for Nichols Brothers Boat Builders.

“He took care of us when I was ill,” Sheri Campbell said of Carl.

It was something he was able to do until recently. Though he was laid off from Nichols Brothers in 2000, the family went to Bellingham to start a painting business. That provided an income, for a while. Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Suddenly, there was no demand for what Carl Campbell could do.

Campbell said he has always worked, and has a lot of experience in construction and landscaping. But that could not help him through the economic downturn after Sept. 11.

“Not providing for my family now is tough, hard on my self esteem and our dignity.”

He is limited to labor intensive jobs because he is unable to read or write. He was orphaned at two-years of ag and became a “kid of the state.”

The family returned to South Whidbey because in Sheri’s words, “it’s our home. We are not trying to get anything for free. We have both contributed to society and we are willing to work and work hard.”

But they haven’t found that work, so their lives are unlike those of most of their South Whidbey neighbors. These days, fresh food for the family is kept in an ice chest, not a refrigerator, and what little cooking they do is on a barbecue. Sometimes they use charcoal when there is extra money, but more often the fuel is scraps of wood.

The children, who do attend school daily, qualify for the free and reduced breakfast and lunch programs in the South Whidbey School District. It’s the only way they can eat sometimes.

“I feel sorry for Mom and Dad because they don’t get hot food everyday,” said Sheri Campbell’s daughter, Kaylee.

Through the summer, the situation has been manageable. Sheri Campbell said she is grateful for the help the family has received form Friends of Friends, Helping Hand, the Food Bank and the Family Resource Center. But it’s not enough to get them back to the life they used to have.

As the cool, wet nights of autumn drop over the island, they are still homeless. They are trying to make the best of a dire situation. They make sure their kids go to school everyday and have clean clothes, food and a shower each day. In the evening they help Kaylee with her homework in front of the tents by candlelight or the headlights from the family car.

They pay $10 a night for their camp site at the fairgrounds. Carl Campbell has been doing work at the fairground to help pay the rent.

But they are running out of time at the fairgrounds and are worried they will have to start living out of their car, or move into the woods. Fair management will force them to leave the campgrounds this weekend.

Not much help to be had

Assistance for the Campbells and other homeless people is limited in Island County. The Housing Authority of Island County administers HUD housing vouchers. Unfortunately, the agency can’t do anything to help the Campbells. According to Katharine Gray, a staffer with the housing authority, there is a waiting list of two to four years for HUD housing.

Just this year, Gray has processed 186 applications with an estimated wait of two to four years. From Sept. 10 to 17, she processed 15 applications.

“It’s frustrating because we can’t help the person that just walks in the door for help,” Gray said.

Whidbey Island school districts have recognized homelessness as a community problem.

“Not all homeless children are as easily identified like Kaylee and Scott,” said Gail LaVassar, director of the schools-affiliated Family Resource Center “It’s difficult to have an exact count of how many students in the district might qualify as homeless. Some are hard to identify because they may be ‘couch surfing’ with friends or relatives.”

At the moment, LaVassar said there are about 289 homeless children in the three Whidbey Island school districts. While federal law requires the districts to attend to the educational needs and rights of homeless youth, no federal money is available to otherwise help them. But grant money is available, for some.

The island school districts pooled their resources last year and applied for one grant to cover all the schools. They were rewarded with a $35,000 grant, one of only 14 given state wide. LaVassar, hired with the grant as a homeless education program coordinator, is writing for a $40,000 this year.

She said her homelessness program has three main goals: Increase awareness of homelessness on Whidbey Island; develop a program which assists schools with compliance; and increase school attendance and academic success for homeless students.

For children already in school, possible indicators of homelessness include persistent fatigue, frequent absences, clothing that is dirty or worn repeatedly, inability to complete homework assignments, hoarding food, or sudden changes in behavior.

According to government guidelines, homeless children are defined as lacking fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residences, and include children who are sharing housing due to loss of regular housing, economic hardship or other reasons. They may also be living in motels, hotels, inadequate mobile homes, campgrounds, cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings or emergency or transitional shelters.

The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act has been on the books since 1987, but was not widely implemented. In January it was given new life as part of the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” education policy.

“We are trying to increase our ability to recognize students in a homeless situation and help them as well as their families become more stable,” LaVassar said.

LaVassar can now only hope the work she does can help the Campbell family. She has a personal stake in the work, since the family has helped her in the past.

“It’s ironic that Sheri helped us start the Family Resource Center four years ago with the first fund-raiser garage sale,” she said.