Elizabeth Monger is doing what society says it wants people like her to do: She’s trying, with a lot of help from her friends, to pull herself up by the bootstraps and out of homelessness.

It may not be enough.

The 30-year-old Lawrence woman is worried she and four of her six children  two boys and two girls, ages 3 to 12  will be back on the streets soon if she can’t find help paying $700 monthly rent on the three-bedroom apartment they have lived in for several weeks.

The family now is in the apartment thanks to a mixture of donations, a trade of work-for-rent and the generosity of the apartment manager. Monger also has been getting help from churches, school officials and retired social workers. And she’s been taking a class at the Lawrence Workforce Center to certify her in operating office software, while applying for jobs (cooking or other manual labor) around town.

In her circumstances, an $18,000-a-year job sounds like a lot of money, she said.

“It’s a lot compared to nothing,” Monger said.

But for all those efforts to pay off, she said, she needs the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority to relent on its denial to give her a rent voucher.

“I feel like I’m paddling upstream,” she said.

Getting help

Monger and her six children returned in August to Lawrence from Kansas City, where they had gone to escape her estranged husband. They spent a week at the Salvation Army shelter; the husband gained custody of two children during that week.

The family then was put in a small hotel room for two weeks, the first week paid for by The Shelter Inc., the second by an anonymous donor.

Herman Leon, a Kansas University professor emeritus of social welfare, and his wife, Louise, met Monger then. The couple persuaded an apartment manager to let the family stay in a vacant three-bedroom apartment.

Monger enrolled her children in school. At New York School, she said, officials and social workers have taken a keen interest in the family, helping the 11-year-old girl get free violin lessons and offering moral support.

The Leons also secured a $200 rent donation from Corpus Christi Church, helped Monger enroll in the computer class and assisted with job interviews.

“I think it’s so wonderful,” Monger said. “I had been praying to God for help  it’s been great to see all the faces that are interested in helping me to succeed.”

Not easy

But there are obstacles. The housing authority denied Monger’s application for a rental voucher, it said, because she was evicted from a previous residence for lease violations and owed $394 for damages.

Monger said the eviction was a mix-up. The family gave notice that it would leave for Kansas City, then was forced to change plans. By that time, the landlord had promised the home to a new tenant and forced Monger’s family to leave. Monger said she didn’t know the reason for the $394 debt.

Housing Authority officials said they plan to schedule an appeal hearing in Monger’s case, but no date has been set.

“The hearing will take into account any changes in her circumstance,” said Charlotte Knoche, director of housing assistance for the agency.

The manager of the apartment complex where Monger is staying declined to be identified, but told the Journal-World he would continue to let the family stay unless a paying tenant was found. He said Monger was doing odd jobs at the complex to help work off the rent payments.

“As long as I don’t have to have the apartment for somebody else who will pay full rent, the family can stay,” the apartment manager said.

“She’s in the apartment on a wing and a prayer,” Louise Leon said. “All the help has been amazing. But the rental voucher … that would put it all together.”

Herman Leon is frustrated with a system that won’t help a woman who is trying to help herself.

“This is out of Charles Dickens in a sense,” he said. “Everything that’s been achieved has happened outside the institutional network that’s supposed to be helping.”