Kaylin Tompkins may have found her way out of the basement.

During her third day at a new job on Tuesday, she heard about an income-restricted apartment complex that might have a vacancy for her and her four children. When the 29-year-old got to The Mews at Cascadia Village after work, she heard what she desperately wanted to hear: Two units were available.

“I was literally going to cry,” said Kaylin, who’s been living in a basement with her four children. “I’m just really praying that we don’t get denied.”

Her children’s pediatricians at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center pulled together $1,000 toward moving expenses, she said. Earlier this month, Kaylin’s bank account was in the red. It usually is by the end of the month.
Getting a job and possibly moving into a two-bedroom apartment makes it feel as though things are quickly coming together for the homeless mother.

Months prior, they had quickly fallen apart.

Last year, Kaylin was living in a big, beautiful house in Longview with her fiancé, Anthony Jennings, 30, and their four children. Anthony was the main breadwinner, earning about $3,000 to $4,000 a month doing construction work. On June 9, 2014, AJ was born. On July 13, 2014, Anthony’s father died from a heart attack at age 47.

“Everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” Kaylin said.

The couple soon found out Kaylin was pregnant with twins. Meanwhile, Anthony was overwhelmed by grief over his father’s death and turned to drugs. He was arrested and later imprisoned for being a felon in possession of a firearm — a gun they kept in their rural house for protection, Kaylin said. “We’ll never make that mistake again,” she said.

Anthony ended up at the Cedar Creek Corrections Center; he’s scheduled to be released in June 2017.

“We’re family. I know he didn’t mean for all of this to happen,” Tompkins said. “I can’t wait for him to come home and all this to be behind us.”

Where would that home be, though? What would the family do until then?

Kaylin finished out the lease on the house. When all the money dried up this summer, the family went to a Longview shelter. Kaylin broadcast her plight on various Facebook groups, including Vancouver Moms and Neighbors Helping Neighbors, pleading for a family to temporarily take her in.

The Bonnin family read the post. The more they thought about it, the more they felt compelled to help, said Lowell Bonnin. That’s how Tompkins ended up in their basement.

“She had nowhere to go,” Bonnin said. His own family has four children and a fifth on the way. “All the scriptures are very clear that you love your neighbor as yourself.”

The vast majority of homeless people are like Kaylin, sharing another family’s space. Just how many people there are like her in Clark County is difficult to quantify, though estimates tracked by school districts suggest thousands are doubled-up.

Having people who don’t know each other well packed into one house is tough. There’s more noise, less space, less privacy. Kaylin’s 7-month-old twins and 1½-year-old AJ sometimes keep everybody up with their crying.
“It doesn’t feel good to feel like somebody’s burden,” Kaylin said.
She has to move soon. It’s not working out for either family. If she doesn’t get approved for the apartment, Kaylin’s not sure what she’ll do or where she’ll go.

“You never think, ‘Hey, I’m going to have kids and be homeless one day,’ ” Kaylin said.

Complicating matters is the fact that her 7-year-old daughter, Karly, has a severe, rare disability, Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome. Karly is smaller than normal, about the size of a 5-year-old, has grand mal seizures and is nonverbal. She’s fed through a gastronomy tube, also known as a G-tube, in her stomach. At Hearthwood Elementary School, she has a one-on-one nurse. It’s unclear if the day care center where Kaylin recently began taking her other children will accept Karly, too, on those days she doesn’t have school. For many places, a child with her level of disability is a high liability.

That means Kaylin will have to stay home with Karly when necessary, putting her new job in jeopardy. She hasn’t gotten her first full paycheck yet.

Getting into that apartment is Kaylin’s beacon of hope — a place of her own where she can get back on track.

“I feel like it just fell in my lap,” she said. “It’s just working out. It’s time.”
Patty Hastings: 360-735-4513; twitter.com/pattyhastings; patty.hastings@columbian.com