WHAS11 coverage

(WHAS11) -It’s still dark out when Terri Perez turns on the lights to get to her locker and start her day.

She works Monday through Friday from 4 a.m. to 12:30, cleaning the dining room area at Wayside Christian Mission.

It’s a full time job, but not one Terri ever thought she’d have.

That’s because the cleaning job is reserved for people who live at Wayside.

Terri Perez is homeless.         

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would end up in a place like this,” admits Perez.

She ended up at Wayside a few months ago after a series of unfortunate events.

First, she was laid off.

She explains, “The company that I worked for was outsourcing a lot of their work to India.  They in fact, in the past year, had several stages of layoffs and got rid of more than half of their workforce.”                                

After being laid off, Perez got sick and ended up in the hospital twice.

She did everything she could to pay her mortgage and medical bills, but she still went bankrupt.

Perez lost her home, her car, and the possessions she collected throughout her life, including pictures of her husband who died ten years ago.

“I actually had a storage facility, but all that’s gone now I’m sure.  I just couldn’t keep up the payment on it,” she says.

Now, all she has left are memories of a life very different than the one she lives now.

Nina Moseley, Wayside’s CEO, says stories like Terri’s are becoming more common as the economy declines.

She explains, “There are as many reasons for homelessness as there are people in the shelter, but unfortunately a good portion of them are folks that are really victims of the economy or what’s going on in the community…It seems to be that folks are in much worse shape than they were a few years ago, and we get more and more stories of folks coming in that had good jobs, good paying jobs.”

But as companies outsource jobs overseas, move away, or just shut down, those good paying jobs disappear.

Philip Mangano, executive director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness says homeless populations are growing across the US.

“Around the country we’re seeing both people who are victims of the mortgage foreclosure crisis as well as folks who have lost their jobs.  They’re starting to appear at the doors of homeless shelters throughout the country,” says Mangano.

Perez is just one of those people.

She says she’s trying to rebuild her life, but it’s tough.

For the jobs that are out there, she thinks living in a homeless shelter puts her at a disadvantage.

“A lot of people have the impression that all homeless people are drug addicts, riff raff... that’s just not true.  It’s good people, things that have happened in their lives like myself to end up in some place like this,” explains Perez.

It’s a place where she now spends her days cleaning the dining room, watching TV in the common room, reading in a bunk bed at night, and turning off the lights. Then the next day, she will do it all over again.