“People do change”
This is the first blog post of Housing Alexandria’s Housing Alexandria Stories Initiative. The purpose of this initiative is to give Housing Alexandria residents an opportunity to tell their stories so that we can celebrate them and create a community with an increased level of mutual appreciation and recognition. This blog post is based off of an interview with Aleyda, a Housing Alexandria resident.
“People do change.” This is an impactful truth that has guided the life and decisions of Aleyda, a Housing Alexandria resident. Aleyda is a special person with an inspiring story.
Aleyda is from Alexandria, but due to an unstable and unsafe family situation, she was placed in the foster care system, in which she spent her teenage years. While in the foster care system, she lived in several different places, including Colorado, New York, and Massachusetts. She made her way back to Alexandria as an adult. She tried to live with family, but found that the situation was still unstable, and again had to leave her family and live on her own.
Aleyda experienced many difficult challenges during this period of her life, and she spent significant time in and out of shelters and without a home. She had two sons, whom she cared for deeply and wanted to give better lives than what she had had. However, despite her sincere desires, she was not in a stable enough position to do so at that time. She started becoming involved in illegal financial activity in order to support her sons, and she was soon caught trying to shoplift diapers and baby supplies, which led to legal troubles. She lost custody of her boys while she served a prison sentence.
After completing her prison sentence, the desire to gain custody of her boys drove her to change her life. She found that she couldn’t gain custody of her sons again until she had a stable housing situation, so she applied for several housing lists. After waiting for several years, she was able to move into a Housing Alexandria property. After she obtained stable housing, the pieces started to fall into place for her. She felt that she gained freedom and was able to begin to “do things the right way.” She was able to gain custody of one of her sons again and provide him with a stable and safe home. Her other son is living in a stable foster home in Texas, and she has been able to build her relationship with him from a distance. Being able to raise one of her sons and be a part of both of her sons’ lives has changed everything for Aleyda.
Aleyda worked hard and tried to earn money to build a foundation for herself and her boys. She began a job at the Friends of Guest House, which is an organization that helps women successfully re-enter the community after incarceration. She had received help from Friends of Guest House when she was younger, and she embraced the opportunity to give back. She still works at Friends of Guest House today, where she is currently leading a team that is helping women to improve their lives. Through her work, she continues to help people through situations and challenges that are very similar to what she went through. Her experiences have given her the unique perspective of being able to understand both sides of social work, because she has helped people in difficult circumstances improve their lives and been in their position herself. She has a reputation for being strict with the people she helps because she believes that accountability is an essential element of progression, but she still loves and cares about them. Aleyda wants to work with kids and ultimately become a foster parent because she wants to help young people who are going through what she went through, and her life experience gives her a unique ability to relate with them and to help them. Most of all, she believes that “people do change,” and she has seen this truth play out in her own life as well as the lives of those she had worked with.
For Aleyda, home is a place of safety, comfort, and freedom from worry. Getting stable housing was the first major event that helped Aleyda to change her life around. She observes that people who don’t have housing often go back to their old ways, saying that, “If I didn’t have housing, I don’t know where I would be.” Based on her experience, Aleyda sees housing as a way to prevent crime and drug abuse because having housing helped her to avoid and overcome these things. According to Aleyda, people should support Housing Alexandria’s mission to ensure that all Alexandrians have access to high-quality affordable housing because “it helps a lot of people” and suggests that getting people housing will decrease crime and homelessness.
Aleyda is an amazing person who was given the opportunity to change her life and has been extraordinarily successful in doing so. She also deeply believes that other people can change too, and this belief motivates her to serve those in her community and help them overcome challenges that they face. Many more people can be like Aleyda as we help those in need to access affordable housing. Click here to learn more about how you can support the work Housing Alexandria does.
