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New mother escapes homelessness

A woman with spina bifida, her husband and their baby find a home.

By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN, Times Staff Writer
Published December 23, 2007

St. Petersburg police Officer Sandra Minor holds 6-week-old Jocelyn Gipson while parents Chris and Brittany Gipson watch in their newly rented mobile home. Minor and Catholic Charities helped get the couple off the streets and into a mobile home at the Royal Poinciana Trailer Park in St. Petersburg. Brittany met Chris at Mirror Lake when they were both homeless and they married six months ago.
	[Martha Rial | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Martha Rial | Times] Jocelyn Gipson, 6 weeks old, was born one month premature. [Martha Rial | Times] Police Officers Jacques LaMonde, left, and Rick Kenyon discuss the slope on the wheelchair ramp they built for Brittany Gipson's home.

ST. PETERSBURG - Brittany Gipson sat in her wheelchair on a recent afternoon, cradling her infant daughter, Jocelyn.

"I can't believe it," said Brittany, shaking her head and looking around at her mobile home. "When you're on the streets, it just becomes all you know."

For the first time in years, Brittany, 20, wasn't homeless.

She and her husband, Chris, 36, had managed to stay that way for about a month and a half through help from an unlikely source: the Police Department, and Officer Sandra Minor.

Minor smiled as she listened to Brittany. She first met Brittany about two years ago, back when Brittany was still homeless and seemingly destined to stay that way.

Brittany stood out among the city's homeless community. She was born with spina bifida, or an incomplete spinal cord.

She grew up in a wheelchair and shuttled through foster homes. She attended Pinellas Park High, but dropped out before graduating.

Now, Brittany is a new mother learning how to run a home. She and her husband, Chris, 36, get by on her disability payments while he looks for work. Her daughter is staying with a relative while Brittany recovers from a caesarean section and other ailments.

Brittany says she didn't like Minor at first. But then she got to know her.

Minor came around regularly to check on her and the other homeless people who spent their nights outside. She even carried a pack of diapers in her patrol car.

"She was cool," Brittany said. "She listened."

After Brittany got pregnant about 10 months ago, her desire increased to get off the streets.

She and Chris got help with the first and last month's rent for their mobile home from Catholic Charities.

They got their furniture through the Police Department. Minor called around and got employees in the department's communications center to donate couches, tables and just about everything else.

Some officers on her squad even spent a recent day building a ramp outside the mobile home so Brittany could wheel outside the mobile home at Royal Poinciana.

"They all just came through," Minor said. "They wanted to help."

Brittany says she's been on the streets for several years.

Other homeless people looked out for her, and she didn't give much thought to ever getting into a home.

Then she realized she was pregnant. And she says that was when she vowed to raise her daughter herself. She doesn't want to send her child into the foster care system that she says failed her.

"I'm going to raise my daughter," she said. "When I realized I was pregnant, I said to myself: 'I've got to do something.' "

Abhi Raghunathan can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com or 727 893-8472.

[Last modified December 22, 2007, 21:32:41]