The New Year is expected to bring a new beginning for Hannah Gibbons-STEM Students Omarion and twins, Heaven, and Nevaeh.  

“I love it! I love it,” said Heaven and Nevaeh in unison when talking about their new room.  

 Just before Christmas, the siblings and their mother, Crinisha Miller, moved into their new home in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood after being homeless for several months.  

Miller said they moved out of their last home when it became infested with mice and were all set to move into a new place when it flooded.  

“The maintenance man left the water running,” said Miller, a mom of nine. “The past few months we have been staying with relatives and other places. It has been hard to keep the family together.  

Thanks to a project through the Famicos Foundation, a community development nonprofit corporation, Miller is able to lease her new house with the option to purchase.   

“I just feel blessed that everything worked out,” said Miller. She works as a Patient Care Nursing Assistant at Cleveland Clinic.  

Project ACT, CMSD’s Homeless Children and Youth program, currently serves roughly 1,485 students in PreK-12th grade who are experiencing homelessness. Life Skills coach Debbie Greenburg worked with the Miller family to make this day a reality.    

“What we work for every day is to give these kids stability,” said Greenburg. “Once they have stability in home and a bed to sleep in, we can now start to focus on academics.”  

Humble Design Cleveland furnished the home for this family and provided everything from dishes to beds, to Christmas decorations.  This is the 30^th CMSD family they have assisted with furnishings as they moved into a new home.  

“Many of the 260 families we have served over the last two years get these beautiful homes but are still sleeping on the floor or in their cars because it is a huge financial burden to furnish a house,” said Debbie Eastburn. “It takes time to accumulate everything that goes in a home, and we want to take this burden away for families.  

Now this family can feel relieved as the New Year approaches, knowing where they are going to sleep at night and eat dinner as a family.