A Greater Cleveland
A call to help children in poverty
The most resilient woman you've never met, Contessa Korper
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Just outside the downtown you know is the Cleveland you probably don't.
I admit, I didn't know this place or the people who call it home – not really – until I was embedded here as part of cleveland.com's "A Greater Cleveland" initiative.
Some of the things many believe about the city's East Side neighborhoods are true, borne out by irrefutable statistics. Yes, most children are being raised by single mothers. Yes, families often rely on government assistance to survive. Yes, there is gun violence. A lot of it. Perhaps even more than the police are aware of.
But among the goals of "A Greater Cleveland" is to dissolve a widely held sentiment that poverty visits those who deserve it. In the comment sections of cleveland.com stories, readers often persecute parents for the challenges their children face – blaming parental irresponsibility for all urban afflictions and writing off an entire population with the shallow argument that if people just worked hard, they would prosper.
So today, I bring you the story of Contessa Korper. She is a mom living in a Cleveland public housing project and working hard to provide a better life for her children. I don't know that I've ever met someone more resilient or less self-pitying, despite the bleakest of beginnings -- as a crack baby, abandoned with her older brother on the steps of an Akron church in the 1980s.
I hope you read her story with the same kind of open heart with which she shared it.
A family's dark secret
For one brief, glimmering moment, it seemed things could have turned out all right for Contessa.
After spending her earliest years in foster care in Akron, she and her brother had been adopted by Cleveland parents, who lived on a stable street and held respectable jobs. Ostensibly, she had been saved from the undertow of poverty, raised within reach of positive influences and given a real chance at a prosperous future.
But her new family had dark secrets with the power to steer the course of a person's life -- like a riptide, tugging below the surface, sending its victim adrift.
Contessa was 4 years old, her brother was 6, when they first came to live with her adoptive parents.
She retains that first day among her earliest memories. It was the cookies they offered her that left the impression – those flower-shaped cookies with a hole in the middle, just the right size for a preschooler's tiny fingers. At the time, she viewed the offering as her new parents' attempt to quell her anxieties. But in hindsight, knowing what came next, she remembers the gesture as more plying, more coercive.
The abuse began almost immediately, she says. Her brother was locked in the basement without food for days, as punishment for minor misdeeds. She remembers making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and trying to shove them under the door for him.
Then there was the sexual abuse at the hands of their father. The fondling that robbed her of her innocence. The awful, emasculating things she saw him do to her big brother.
Contessa describes her father at the time as a "functioning crackhead." To the outside world, he appeared to be a pillar of his community – attending church regularly and participating in family reunions. But behind closed doors, she says, he was a monster, who would get high and bring prostitutes and drug dealers into the house while his wife was at work.
Surviving sexual abuse, victimized again
If Contessa's mother knew what was happening in her home, she didn't put an end to it.
When Contessa was 15 years old, she started running away for long stretches at a time, opting for homelessness and sleeping on friends' sofas over the dread of her father's sexual advances. Sometimes she would return home for short stays. But then the abuse would resume, and she was gone.
Although she continued to attend school, she had grown to loathe authority figures and was, by her own admission, "every teacher's worst nightmare." She didn't last long in almost any school she attended.
Eventually, however, Contessa found a good fit in a program at Cleveland's East High School designed for students interested in childcare and early childhood development. Contessa loved kids, and she flourished there.
But then, one summer night before her senior year, Contessa's life took another devastating turn. She was on her way home from her summer job at the now-defunct Geauga Lake theme park. She normally changed buses at Randall Park Mall, but at that hour, the bus had stopped running that route. So Contessa walked.
On her way, a man accosted her on the sidewalk and dragged her onto a porch. There, two of his friends held her down, while he raped her. (The case went unsolved until 2013 – when DNA evidence collected at the time was finally tested as part of a statewide initiative to test decades-old rape kits. Contessa eventually testified against her attacker, who turned out to be a serial rapist. He is serving 22 years in prison for attacks on three women.)
As Contessa tried to cope with the aftermath of that attack, her father laid hands on her for the last time. She waited until he fell asleep, locked him in his room, doused the draperies with gasoline, lit a match and left.
He managed to get free. Contessa was arrested, charged with aggravated arson and subjected to psychological evaluations. The judge sentenced her to two years of probation.
Manipulated by a friend
Contessa still graduated high school on time, and while staying with a friend, she tried to assemble the pieces of her life.
But unbeknownst to her, that friend had been hatching a plot with an accomplice to cash stolen checks. They asked Contessa to do them a favor -- deposit a check into her bank account, then withdraw the money as soon as the check cleared. Contessa says she was naïve and followed the instructions unwittingly.
Then, one day she noticed her account balance was suddenly a few thousand dollars in the red – the result of the bank trying to rectify the misappropriation. When she called the bank, they told her she had three days to repay the stolen money or face prosecution. Contessa tried to explain that she was unaware that she was committing a crime. But the bank's surveillance footage had her dead to rights, depositing the check and later retrieving the money.
Contessa went to confront her friend about the scheme. But the woman had changed the locks on the apartment and refused to speak to her. She had packed Contessa's possessions in garbage bags and tossed them off a sixth-floor balcony.
Contessa, who was still under probation from the arson case, found herself homeless again and on the run from the law.
She soon met a man who let her stay with him. But he quickly became domineering, taking advantage of the fact that Contessa's outstanding arrest warrant precluded her from finding her own job or even getting a driver's license. Within four years, they had two children together and lived with his parents.
Contessa was rarely allowed to leave the house without him by her side, and his mother advised Contessa to follow his orders.
When Contessa could stand it no longer, she packed up the kids, dropped them off at a friend's house and turned herself in to the police.
She spent several months in jail as her case was resolved. She pleaded guilty to theft and was sentenced to another year of probation.
Free from the oppression of her ex-boyfriend and having paid her debt to society, she worked sporadically for a catering company and for fast food restaurants until she had saved a bit of money. Then she piled her kids on the RTA bus and rode out to a used car lot on the city's West Side, where she laid down her $3,000 income tax refund in exchange for her first car.
A life in public housing
Contessa moved with her kids, Princeton and Queen Ona to Garden Valley Estates, which, at the time, was a privately operated low income housing complex. (The Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority took over the property in 2010 and renamed it Heritage View Homes.)
The eight years they spent there were perilous. She remembers the neighborhood filled with juveniles who had nothing to do. Violent altercations between adults occurred daily. Drug use was rampant. Windows were shot out. Thieves broke into their neighbors' homes.
Contessa gave birth to King, who came along after a brief reconciliation with her ex. And another short-lived romantic relationship yielded Contessa's fourth child, Princess, two years later. The relationship was a mistake, but not the child, she says.
When CMHA offered Contessa a chance to get out of Garden Valley she took it, even though her next stop would be King Kennedy, another public housing complex just a mile away. It felt like an upgrade. Here, she found hardworking families and single mothers, like herself, trying to make ends meet and protect their children from the negativity of their environment.
Through the Urban League of Greater Cleveland, Contessa began taking courses related to the construction trades at Cuyahoga Community College. But an apprenticeship was required for enrollment in Tri-C's cement masonry program. And Contessa, who was the only woman in the class, says she was overlooked for those opportunities.
For years, Contessa worried that her criminal history would prevent her from finding a good job. She was too afraid of rejection to even try until two years ago, when a friend, who works for a company that provides low-income housing for senior citizens, finally persuaded Contessa to apply for an opening, helping out on a temporary construction project.
Contessa went for it – and got the job. When the temporary work concluded, the company kept her on in environmental services.
Today, she says she loves the company and her supervisor, a woman who sympathizes with the demands of being a single mom. But Contessa makes just $12.36 an hour – a gross income of about $25,700 a year. That's $3,000 below the federal poverty level for a family of five. And recently, a modest raise made her ineligible to receive food stamps.
The two men who fathered her children owe her tens of thousands of dollars in child support. She says she won't hold her breath.
The older kids' father sometimes remembers to call them on their birthdays. But he knows less and less about them as the years pass. When he called Princeton on his 12th birthday, he thought his son was still in the fourth grade.
Hope
Since the family moved to King Kennedy, Contessa says she has altogether sworn off romantic relationships.
"I don't have time for it," she says. "I don't want to be used. And men just want you to take care of them. But you're not about to drive my car. You're not about to take my check, and you're not about to move in with us and eat up the little bit of food we got. That's just how my mindset is."
Contessa prides herself on her resourcefulness that allows her to meet her kids' needs, while also having a little leftover for birthday celebrations, some nice clothes and family trips to theme parks. Little pleasures that bring joy to an otherwise dismal landscape.
She also manages to carve out family time every week. Lately the whole family, including Contessa, has been taking swimming lessons together at the YMCA.
Unlike many of the single moms around her, who have called King Kennedy home for their entire lives, Contessa knows there is more. She wants it for her children. She wants them to graduate at the top of their high school class, to go to college, to leave Cleveland and see the world.
She also wants to move out of public housing eventually. But it will take time, she says.
"Even with the decent job I have, I don't have money to pay rent," she says. "Where will I find a five-bedroom where I pay $300 or $400 a month? I won't."
When asked where she would like to live, Contessa – who, only minutes earlier, said she never cries -- begins to weep.
"It makes me emotional sometimes when I think about that," she says. "I don't know. Just somewhere where the lawns are manicured, and you can just go outside and be peaceful and sit on the porch. And you don't have to worry about nobody riding down the streets, shooting, or kids looking at what your kid's got on, so they can break in when you leave. ... I don't know."
The Korper family's journey from the projects to a home of their own
There is something special about Contessa Korper's kitchen table.
Shoehorned into the space between her kitchen counter and family room, this table, made of rich, deep brown wood, with a faux marble lazy Susan, is among the nicest of the family's possessions.
What makes it special is the love that brought it home -- the love of four children for their mother.
And for that mom, who now calls those kids to the table for dinner each night, buying this piece of furniture was one empowering decision she could make in a neighborhood that often leaves parents feeling powerless against the destructive forces of the inner city.
She proudly tells you her table's story without provocation.
Until recently, she says, she had a small table that seated only four people. So she would let her kids sit there while she took her meals in front of the TV or over the counter.
But two years ago, during her kids' annual check-up, the doctor asked them independently a series of questions, and Contessa was stunned to learn that each had said they longed for more family meals with their mom. It was such a simple request, and it broke Contessa's heart.
She immediately went furniture shopping and settled on this dining set, with ample seating for all five of them and an occasional guest.
Her credit was bad at the time, so a friend co-signed to help her finance the purchase. And she opted for insurance on the table, too. ("Even if my house burns down," she says, "at least I know I'll have a kitchen table wherever we end up.") Today she is making monthly payments on this table so her family can sit down together for dinner.
She smiles when she talks about how paying off the debt has improved her credit, how close she is to owning the table outright and how much quality time they now share in this space that has become a hub of activity in her home.
Here, her children toil over homework, their worksheets sprawled under a dim fluorescent light.
Here, her oldest son, Princeton, debates with his mom the potential dangers of joining the football team with boys much bigger than him. ("Don't worry," Princeton assures her. "Outrunning the others will keep me safe.")
Here, they bow their heads in prayer before sharing a meal. They take turns saying grace and always choose the same seats each night. The littlest, 6-year-old Princess, nestled in the corner where two banquettes meet. She sits shoulder to shoulder with 11-year-old Queen Ona and 8-year-old King. Princeton - by default, the man of the house at age 13 - gets one of two single, upholstered chairs. His back to a wall of hazy windows that look out onto the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority's King Kennedy public housing complex.
And here, Contessa begins to share her family's story with two reporters -- and with you. It's a story that is, in many ways, similar to those of other single moms raising their families under the crushing weight of poverty. It tells of scarcity, fatherlessness, gun violence, exposure to trauma, the struggle to find a stable job and the constant pull upon her children of life in the streets.
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer have spent the past four months telling some of those stories and giving readers a chance to see the world through the eyes of Contessa and the Korper children. But the narrative that has most defined the Korper family this year has been their dream of leaving public housing in pursuit of a home they can call their own. We bring you that story today, as the year closes and the Korpers prepare for what lies ahead.
In taking this journey with them, perhaps you will see that Contessa's story, though rife with dilemma and hardship, also might sound much like your own -- a story about a parent's fierce love for her children and her deepest hope that they find the path to prosperity.
'SOMETHING THAT'S MINE'
A basketball hoop on the driveway. A game room with a pool table. A big backyard -- big enough for a swimming pool. And enough bedrooms for everyone, at least two of them painted "pink, pink, pink!"
The Korper children are so full of dreamy ideas for a new home, they breathlessly tell you all about them, stepping all over each other's words.
Their excitement is understandable. None of them has ever lived in their own house before. All of their earliest memories took place either in Heritage View Homes (formerly known as Garden Valley Estates), or here, in King Kennedy, both public housing complexes run by CMHA.
And suddenly there is this opportunity before them -- their mom has applied to buy and rehab a house through Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity. Recently, a representative from Habitat conducted a site visit at their apartment to document the living conditions and interview Contessa. She will find out soon if she has passed the board's financial review.
But as her four kids talk about what their ideal home would look and feel like, it seems, in this moment, that the sky is the limit.
Princeton wants a workout room with free weights and wall space for his LeBron James posters. He also wants a room just to store remote control cars and a track outside to race them.
Speaking of that big backyard -- a basketball hoop would be a dream come true, the kids say. How about a swimming pool? A trampoline?
The kids would love to have their own bedrooms, too. If 8-year-old King has to share with little sister, Princess, he says, he will have to use a strip of tape to divide the room and booby trap his side to keep her out. The siblings burst into fits of giggles.
Caught up in the fantasy, they say they will be happy not to have to do any more chores in their new house. Contessa laughs loudly and reminds them that they will be taking those with them.
For a moment she reflects on her own, more pragmatic requests: Central air, a front porch, new appliances (especially a fridge with an ice maker), more closets and a dedicated space for laundry. (Currently, her washer and dryer are an arm's reach from her kitchen table.)
"I just want something that's mine," she says quietly, glancing around the kitchen of her King Kennedy apartment, where several cabinet doors hang off their hinges and cleaning products must sit openly under the sink without any cabinet at all. "This is not mine."
As an environmental services worker at an assisted-living facility, Contessa's income is $3,000 below the federal poverty line for a family of five. Habitat is the single mom's best shot at escaping King Kennedy and giving her kids a better life, with a no-interest loan and a refurbished house on one of Cleveland's more stable streets.
Based on their income, families who get accepted pay between $300 and $500 a month for the mortgage, taxes and insurance. Each family also must invest a minimum of 250 hours of sweat equity into renovating the house.
Habitat accepts only about five percent of its applicants. Many fall short during the agency's credit and financial reviews.
But all of those details are tomorrow's concern. Today is for dreaming about lush, green lawns and bedroom ceilings tall enough to accommodate a canopy bed.
Eventually, the Korper kids' fantasy gives way to a wish list of a more serious nature, inspired by the harsh reality they face.
They want a neighborhood without violence.
"A street with good kids," 11-year-old Queen Ona earnestly says, looking you straight in the eyes, as she always does. "And people who don't kill or steal."
And they want a house without cockroaches.
INFESTATION
Among Princeton's daily household responsibilities: Fold the family's laundry, mind his three younger siblings when their mom is away -- and wipe cockroach egg sacs off the kitchen counter.
On a summer evening, before he is allowed to join his friends outside, Princeton matter-of-factly goes about this revolting task. Spray, spray, wipe. Sigh.
The bugs are getting worse, Contessa, says. Their colony within her apartment is growing to unnerving proportions. At the arrival of dusk, the insidious insects brazenly explore the family's cabinets, furniture and living space, dropping their egg sacs just about everywhere.
Contessa says she loses sleep, waking up often to swat that creepy-crawly feeling from her neck.
As she speaks, a roach scurries down the face of the stove behind her and climbs into a clean, empty pot sitting on a burner. For this reason, all of their dishes must be scrubbed before they are used. Most of their food is in sealed bags or airtight containers. But it doesn't seem to matter, Contessa says.
When 6-year-old Princess enters the kitchen and opens the cabinet looking for a snack, you see the bugs scatter.
Contessa even finds them in the fridge.
Lately, she says, the roaches have started to erupt from the lazy Susan of the family's kitchen table any time food is set down. Again, as if on cue, a tiny roach dances along the top of the banquette seat. Contessa squishes it.
She says she has reported the infestation numerous times to CMHA. Occasionally, the housing authority sprays the apartment, but doesn't necessarily treat adjoining units, she says. So the bugs quickly return, sometimes with a vengeance.
Contessa says someone in the property manager's office confessed to her that CMHA's contracted exterminator seems ineffective. She advised Contessa to hire her own.
Carolyn Gaiter, chief operating officer for CMHA, said in a recent interview that the housing authority exterminates its properties every six to eight weeks, making sure to spray entire buildings and return to problem units for extra treatments. But whether the extermination is effective depends largely on the cleanliness of tenants, she said.
Contessa and her kids do their best to keep the place clean and give the roaches no reason to further expand their brood.
Contessa shows off a chore chart tacked up in the hallway, a system she developed a few months ago. The kids get a dollar for washing dishes, she explains, a clean bathroom earns two. The kids put their color-coded pin next to the chore they've completed, and ...
As she explains the system, two cockroaches creep across the poster board. Contessa quickly crushes them with a paper towel. She is visibly embarrassed.
"These bugs are going to have to start paying rent," she jokes, the smile quickly fading from her face.
HOUSING AUTHORITY
The Korper family spends three days working as a team to prepare for the exterminator.
The kids first tackle their bedrooms, bundling their clothes into plastic bags to protect them from the forthcoming insecticide spray.
When Princeton pulls from a shelf his prized possessions -- a stack of Cleveland Cavaliers ball caps commemorating the team's recent success -- he is crushed to find that the creepy crawlers have been in his caps and left their droppings behind. Even so, he isn't ready to let go of his lids. But Contessa can't stand the thought of him ever wearing them again, so she orders him to toss them out.
The kids and their mother also clear the cupboards, balancing their canned goods, dishes and other items on the kitchen table. They move the furniture from the walls and clear the medicine cabinets as CMHA instructed them to do.
After cleveland.com began asking questions about the cockroach infestation in public housing, CMHA notified the Korpers and some other residents in King Kennedy that it is stepping up efforts to combat the problem.
The Korpers' unit will be sprayed every two weeks or so, according to a letter the family received from CMHA. A second letter says that the pest control company, Terminix, and a representative from CMHA management, will be inspecting the units to evaluate the progress.
Contessa says she is not optimistic that the extermination efforts will make a difference or that CMHA will maintain its commitment, given the housing authority's track record for addressing her other complaints or maintenance requests.
Earlier in the summer, the family went several days without hot water, despite numerous phone calls from Contessa and visits to the management office. The dryer vent has been clogged for more than a year, causing a fire hazard and temperatures to soar in the non-air-conditioned unit when the dryer is running. And recently, when workers were sent to fix a ceiling leak in the bathroom, Contessa came home to find flakes of drywall everywhere – covering the bathroom floor, tracked down the hallway, even embedded in the bristles of the kids' toothbrushes.
The incident prompted her to leave a strident note for the crew upon their return:
"Dear Maintenance: Please do not leave a mess in my home. I do not want to clean up after you. I am not nasty. So please do not treat me as so. Also use your OWN equipment to clean YOUR mess. You left my brooms and dustpans filthy. Thank you very much."
In the not-so-subtle subtext of Contessa's note is what aggravates her most about life in public housing. Many residents believe that the housing authority assumes its tenants are so low-class, they don't mind the substandard treatment or maybe even deserve it.
Contessa consoles herself by talking about her Habitat for Humanity application. She's not sure about a Plan B if she doesn't make the cut. But she pledges to come up with something. She doesn't know how much longer she and the kids can withstand their current conditions.
To make her point, she recounts the horror of recently seeing cockroaches tumble out of a new box of Coco-Puffs cereal that 6-year-old Princess was pouring into a bowl.
Contessa groans and laughs at the same time when she says, "She asked if she could save the cereal."
THE ROAD TO A HOME
Contessa was at work when she got the email. The subject line read "Application Process" -- an ambiguous title, but she knew what it contained.
This was the moment she had been waiting for. Would she and her four children soon be leaving behind the destitution and violence of the King Kennedy public housing project and moving into a newly refurbished house through Habitat for Humanity? Or would they be among the 95 percent of applicants who get rejected and sent back to the drawing board?
For a moment Contessa thought about waiting to read the email until she got off work and could take in the news with her kids at her side. But the anticipation was overwhelming. She took a deep breath and opened the message.
The first word said it all: "Congratulations!"
As Contessa sits at her kitchen table and dramatically recounts that moment for two reporters, Princeton chuckles and shakes his head in playful jest. He plays it cool, of course, saying that he kept his own reaction under control and was "just, like, 'Yay'" when his mom finally spilled the news.
Contessa says she expects it will soon feel more real to the kids.
"I had been saying forever that we're going to get a house one day, but I hadn't delivered on it yet," Contessa says. "So I don't think they'll really believe it until we're moving in."
Much hard work, however, lies between them and the day they get those keys. Whenever she can, Contessa and the kids have been squeezing in hours of sweat equity toward the 250 that Habitat requires. A wide variety of community projects, volunteer opportunities and DIY home improvement classes count toward the goal.
So far, she and the kids have helped paint a neighborhood mural and planted trees at her children's school. And on her own, Contessa has volunteered at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore on the city's West Side and at the Boys & Girls Club where her kids spend after-school hours. She also has completed several DIY workshops, including backsplash installation and basic woodworking, held at her local Home Depot store.
Once the family chooses a house, Contessa can expect to spend hours working on her own home.
Soon, the Korpers will have logged enough hours to view the list of available homes and tour the properties. They've been cautioned not to get hung up on the current conditions of the houses, which could include graffiti, vandalism and varying states of dilapidation.
Contessa is unflappable about such things. She and the kids, living in public housing for the past decade, have shared their unit with cockroaches and their neighborhood with some of society's most dangerous people. Just to relax peacefully on her own front porch will be a gift. So yeah, she says, she can deal with a little graffiti in the interim.
Even Princeton seems to have made peace with the reality that most Cleveland houses won't offer the kind of humongous yard the kids have dreamed of.
He'll be happy, he says with a smile, as long as a basketball court is within walking distance.
'IT'S A PRETTY GOOD DAY'
Look past the broken glass, cobwebs, torn up drywall and boarded-up windows, the rickety front porch, outdated wiring, piles of rotted shiplap and rusty nails -- and you will see the Korper family's dream coming true.
The kids already see the potential in this nearly century-old house that has sat vacant for years in the heart of Cleveland's Buckeye neighborhood. It's the home Contessa chose for them from Habitat's list of available properties.
On a sunny, late-summer afternoon, while dozens of Habitat volunteers fan out on the quiet street to paint porches and clean up yards, the Korper kids are walking through their soon-to-be new home for the second time. But they have been dreaming of this place for so long, they are giving you the grand tour as if they've lived here for years.
Here is the living room, where the Korpers hope to decorate Christmas trees for years to come - a tradition that had fallen by the wayside during their decade in public housing. Here is their dining room, featuring a space big enough for the dining set Contessa worked so hard to give her kids. (Princeton looks like a real estate agent, opening the built-in cabinets to highlight this vestige of the home's former glory.)
Here are the kids' bedrooms, lining a long upstairs hallway. The kids pile into one room, then another, explaining in their boisterous, talking-all-over-each-other way that Princeton and King will each get one of the smaller spaces, decorated, respectively, in LeBron James posters and characters from the Skylanders video game. The big room with the walk-in closet is reserved for Princess and Queen Ona. (Contessa will have a room downstairs.)
And when the Korper kids start to show you all of the best spots for hide-and-seek - an upstairs closet, a little nook under the basement stairs - it's clear that as far as they're concerned, this house is already theirs.
But it has a long way to go before it is even inhabitable, let alone finished to the high standards of Habitat for Humanity.
Jim Repas, director of construction for the agency, stands among the gutted kitchen, walls with peeling paint and a random toilet sitting in the middle of a hallway, and he walks you through his game plan.
With a bedroom and full bathroom on the first floor, the house has a unique layout for one built in the early 1920s, Jim says. So building upon those good bones, Habitat will replace the siding, re-roof, rewire and re-plumb the whole house. Workers will tear down and rebuild the front porch and demolish the condemned detached two-car garage to maximize yard space and build a storage shed for equipment and bikes.
Insulation will be blown into the exterior walls and will be knee-deep in the attic. The house will get new windows throughout. And all new appliances and fixtures will comply with the city's green-build standards, which should help keep Contessa's utility bills low, Jim says.
Every element of the first-floor bathroom and kitchen will be new. And Habitat will install laminate wood flooring throughout the first level with new carpeting upstairs.
And of course, one cannot overlook a key perk of every Habitat home: Central air conditioning.
"Thank the Lord!" Contessa says. "Because we almost died this summer."
She's thinking about those days when her thermostat in her King Kennedy unit reached 90 degrees, as a pair of large fans futilely pushed hot air around the room. If she had to run her clothes dryer with its clogged vent, she used paper towels to wipe the beads of sweat from her children's faces.
While touring the house, there is the question of a second bathroom, arguably a necessity for a family of five. For a long moment, it seems Habitat cannot accommodate Contessa's request to turn a large, upstairs storage space into a bathroom. The ceiling slopes too dramatically, Jim says, it will never work without changing the roofline.
But then -- a surprise visit from John Habat, the president and CEO of Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity. And all at once, he's walking through the house like the host of an HGTV renovation show, envisioning open floor plans to connect spaces. When he gets upstairs, John immediately notices the house lacks a second bathroom.
He tells Jim to add it to the list.
It's a pretty good day, Contessa declares. The sun is streaming through the few windows that aren't boarded up. The children are all smiles and giggles, their hands fighting each other to click on and off the old-fashioned light switches. The sound of volunteers clearing away debris from the demolished garage creates a feeling of all things moving in the right direction.
But one thing is bothering Queen Ona, who is staring out a small, dirty window on the side of the house.
She turns to John and asks a question that would seem apropos of nothing if you didn't know better.
"Is someone going to climb through here and rob us?" she asks. It has happened to them before.
John's eyes widen before he answers.
"You're not going to get robbed because you're going to have a security system on this house," he says.
He pauses then affirms, "You're going to have security."
A CHRISTMAS BLESSING
While dozens of people tour the Korper family's newly refurbished home, preparing for Habitat's ceremony to dedicate and bless the house, Princess cracks open the window of her future bedroom and carves her name in the snow resting on the gable below.
Noticing how quickly the falling flakes fill in the letters, she adds two handprints -- dedicating the home in her own way.
It's a private, daydreamy moment for Princess -- the first of many she will spend in this space, overlooking her new neighborhood and a street so peaceful, it might as well be a thousand miles from King Kennedy.
After a whirlwind of demolition and construction, the house is nearly complete. And the Korpers are seeing the finished product for the first time on the morning of the dedication ceremony.
They marvel at the rebirth of a house that had sat vacant for a dozen years and only a few short months ago seemed worthy of a wrecking ball. Today, a new roof, gray vinyl siding and a rebuilt front porch give the house some of the best curb appeal on the block. Replacing the piles of rotted shiplap are gleaming, chocolate-colored wood laminate floors. Plush carpeting spans the bedrooms and the upstairs hallway. ("It feels plush, even through my shoes," Contessa says.) And dark wood cabinets and new countertops line the spacious kitchen and two renovated bathrooms.
In the backyard, a concrete slab, where a condemned garage once stood, awaits a basketball hoop.
The house is still a few weeks from being move-in ready. Contessa will receive the keys after a few final touches and inspections. But one thing is certain: This will be the last Christmas the Korpers spend in the projects.
That realization is everywhere, as the Korpers gather in the living and dining rooms and join hands with their friends and the Habitat team to bless the house and honor the hard work that made it possible.
Someone leads a prayer, asking God to keep the Korpers safe in their new neighborhood and to continue guiding their path. The family receives gifts – books for the children, a stocked toolbox for mom, a ceremonial key carved from wood.
John Habat reflects on the contagious nature of hope and the power of one family's dream of homeownership to inspire others. He thanks Contessa for daring to dream.
It's Contessa's turn to speak. She expresses her gratitude to the volunteers for their work and her friends for helping her complete the sweat equity hours. She jokes that she and the kids had "stalked this house from day one," driving up and down the street to observe its progress.
Then, all at once, the room is awash with tears.
"This is like a dream come true for me," Contessa says, her voice cracking. "Because I have been through every stage of housing. Homelessness, shelters, shacking up, projects – two projects. I have dealt with gunshots, my house being robbed. Everything. But I told my kids, 'One day, we're going to get a house.' ... And it was a hard, long struggle, but I made it. And I'm just so, so happy."
Princeton wraps his arms around his younger siblings. All of them are weeping.
"This is mine," Contessa continues. "Nobody can take it from me, unless I lose it myself. This is mine. And you all just don't know how happy I am for me and my family."
6-year-old Princess Korper's father owes her more than $25,000 in child support
On the seventh floor of the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Justice Center, the corridor is filled with people quietly scrolling through their phones, anxiously pacing or engaging with lawyers in bitter conversations about custody battles, paternity and the cost of raising children.
Contessa Korper perches at the edge of a wooden bench beneath a bank of windows overlooking Cleveland's East Side. She took the day off work for this, got here on time and has been waiting for nearly an hour to be heard by a magistrate about the months that have passed without a single penny of child support from the father of her youngest daughter, 6-year-old Princess.
So far, the father is a no-show, and Contessa is not surprised.
Princess is sweet, smart, funny and affectionate. But her father wouldn't know that, having taken virtually no interest in her life. He owes her more than $25,000, but it might as well be a million, Contessa says, because he will never pay – jumping from job to job to avoid detection and garnishment. His evasion has left Contessa to stretch every dollar she makes, working in environmental services at a low-income senior living facility. To put food on the table, to clothe her four children and to get them to and from school safely, she often must rely on a tightly knit network of equally stressed-out single moms.
Contessa spots another woman she recognizes, and the two exchange pleasantries. The woman also is waiting for her day in court. The absentee father of her daughter is the father of Contessa's daughter, too.
After waiting three hours, Contessa finally is called into a courtroom and sits alone at a wooden table before the magistrate's bench.
The magistrate tells her that Princess' father hadn't been properly served – that the summons had been sent to an old address the county had on file, and because of that error, the court would try again and continue the hearing in a month. But luckily, the magistrate tells her, she doesn't have to attend.
When the magistrate asks Contessa if she has any questions, she stands and clears her throat.
"I don't have any questions," she says. "But this is all pointless. He is not going to pay the child support."
"Then he will go to jail," the magistrate says bluntly.
"But he's not even going to show up," Contessa counters.
"Then, we'll go and arrest him," the magistrate says, maintaining eye contact with Contessa. "He's not the first person ... see, we cover the whole spectrum of people who owe support: Those who want to pay, those who are paying a little bit and those who don't want to pay. There's a mechanism to handle them all. They can say what they want, but ... if they say they're not going to pay, then we say they have jail time coming."
Some escape arrest for years, the magistrate concedes. But others, he says, are picked up within days. And there are other ways to put the squeeze on Princess' father, he says. When he tries to renew his driver's license, he will find that it's been blocked.
If a single stretch of jail time doesn't convince him to financially support his child, he'll face a second and a third, the magistrate assures Contessa. Then there is a felony charge for non-support. If he manages to get away with probation for that offense, he will be subject to random drug screening, the results of which eventually could send him to prison.
"He's not the first one or the last one we'll deal with," the magistrate says in conclusion. "We'll take care of it. The first step is for us to properly serve him. Once he's served, things will happen. You'll be surprised that he might even pay to stay out of jail. Nobody wants to go to jail."
When the magistrate finishes his speech, Contessa stands silently for a moment, her fingertips resting on the table, like a lawyer poised for closing arguments.
"Ok," she says.
Outside the justice center, Contessa finds the other single mom sitting on a cement retaining wall, snacking on a bag of chips. They recap the details of their respective hearings, quickly affirming that they got the same results.
When Contessa recounts the judge's assurances, the woman purses her lips.
"We'll see," she says, doubtfully. "Why do they need more time? It's been five years! The last time he sent a check was in April, and do you know how much he paid? $10.21. I'm so over this! How much time do you want? To do what?"
Contessa nods her head in agreement, as traffic on Quincy Avenue roars at her back.
"That's three hours of our lives, gone," the woman says, crumpling up the empty potato chip bag. "We'll never get that time back."
"Yeah," Contessa says, quietly. "I could have gone to work."
With hearts set on Lakewood, Jones family dreams of moving somewhere 'quiet'
Eight-year-old Ruby Jones hasn't stopped smiling since she got here.
Between Lakewood Park's newly revamped playground, the acres and acres of grass and trees, the boardwalk along the shoreline and the Solstice Steps overlooking Lake Erie, she is as happy and fulfilled as a little bird during midge season.
As Ruby climbs the winding ramp from the boardwalk to the top of the bluff, she pauses to take in the choppy lake and the view of downtown Cleveland from this higher vantage point.
"All you hear are the waves and the wind," she says, smiling. "It's so quiet here."
Quiet, you have come to learn, is shorthand for "no shooting."
Ruby and her 10-year-old sister, Michaela, certainly aren't the only children growing up in Cleveland's impoverished Central neighborhood who long to live in a place that is, above all else, "quiet." In fact, kids at the Boys & Girls Club in the King Kennedy public housing project have spoken so wistfully about "quiet" places they have visited or heard about that they sometimes sound more like weary elders than playful, boisterous, carefree kids.
But of the more than 3,500 children in Central living below the federal poverty line, Ruby and Michaela might have a better shot than most at moving out of the inner-city and into a suburb that's dramatically quieter. That's because their resourceful and determined mom, Carly, has her heart set on Lakewood.
In April, Carly opened a women's clothing boutique near the historic Birdtown neighborhood on Madison Avenue and fell in love with the place. The sky seemed brighter. The people seemed kinder. The streets seemed safer.
"Just being here makes me feel healthier," Carly said one day, while munching on a salad behind the front desk of her store.
Carly had never considered Lakewood an option before she and her business partner explored the location for their shop, Level Up Boutique. Now, almost six months after opening their doors, Carly says she can see her girls growing up here. She loves the suburb so much that Carly, who also works as a home-health aide, flirted with the idea of taking on a third job somewhere in Lakewood, perhaps delivering pizzas, to become more familiar with the town.
The problem is that making the choice to uproot her family would come with great sacrifice. Carly is five years into a 15-year rent-to-own agreement with CHN Housing Partners (formerly the Cleveland Housing Network), which had built a four-bedroom home for them in Central.
Walking away from the deal now would probably mean giving up on the dream of homeownership in exchange for what likely would be a much smaller rental unit in Lakewood. On the other hand, if Carly sticks it out, by the time she owns the house outright her girls will be grown.
The two-story colonial is in an area of the neighborhood that, in many ways, feels worlds apart from the rest of Central and King Kennedy, where Ruby and Michaela spend their after-school hours at the Boys & Girls Club.
Carly's house is one of hundreds that were built since 2000, within a square mile known as the Villages of Central, stretching from East 36th to East 79th streets. In this enclave, the roads and sidewalks are new, the yards are big, and at first blush the neighborhood seems ... quiet.
On a sunny summer day, the girls played Uno with two reporters on their front porch and took them on a bike ride around the block, past a mother and child playing in the neighborhood park.
But looks can be deceiving, Michaela was quick to point out, noting that the playground is usually full of older kids, smoking cigarettes and causing trouble.
Statistics reinforce her point, too. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting data for 2014 (the last year for which data are available for Cleveland or Lakewood), Cleveland's violent crime rate was 1,334 per 100,000 people. That was more than 10 times higher than Lakewood's rate of 129 per 100,000.
And so far this year, there have been about a dozen shootings within a mile radius of Michaela's home.
Maybe not so quiet, after all.
Carly is grateful for the CHN Housing Partners program that helped her family finally move out of public housing and into a home that she could one day call her own. But the fact remains that her neighborhood – well, it's just not Lakewood, the city that has captured her heart. She must make a choice. Either one will be a sacrifice.
The girls feel it, too. They love their big backyard, their school and their friends at the Boys & Girls Club. Leaving all of that behind would hurt, no doubt.
But their joy is undeniable – contagious, in fact -- as they continue exploring the nearly 1.5-acre playground at Lakewood Park, amid other children and picnicking families. (A police officer is even spotted on foot.) The girls race between teeter-totters, climbing walls and, literally, a dizzying array of spinning apparatuses.
Ruby stops just long enough to shake some wood chips out of her flip-flops, then climbs onto a swing. Pumping her legs, she swings higher and higher, until it seems her feet might touch the low-hanging clouds above this safe, quiet place.
Carly Jones scrambles to pay electric bill before her girls return to find a darkened house
If it had happened at any other time in her life, when she was younger, weaker or less confident, Carly Jones says she would have spent half the day crying in the dark.
But the Carly Jones of today – this tough, resourceful single mom of two young daughters – has six hours to pay her electric bill and get her lights turned back on at her house in Cleveland's impoverished Central neighborhood. And damned if her girls are going to come home, flip a switch and learn the hard way that their family is living this close to poverty's edge.
The drama began shortly after Michaela, 10, and Ruby, 8, had left for school in the morning. Carly was sitting on her living room sofa at about 9 a.m., preparing for her work day as a home-health aide, when she heard a commotion outside her house. She went to investigate and found a Cleveland Public Power worker in the process of turning off her electricity.
Carly says the city-owned utility gave her no warning of the disconnection – no door hangers, phone calls or emails. She acknowledges that her account was in arrears by about $400, though she makes it a point to pay at least some of it every month.
Now, the CPP worker, surprised by Carly's confrontation, sheepishly apologizes but says his hands are tied. She would have to come up with the money before her power can be restored. And if her account isn't made whole by 3 p.m., it will be too late to send out a technician, and she will have to wait.
Carly is only half listening at this point. Her mind is already racing to solve the problem. Michaela and Ruby will go straight from school to the King Kennedy Boys & Girls Club. But they will be home at 7:30 p.m., and the lights must be on by then.
Between Carly's day job, caring for a homebound elderly woman, and her recently opened Lakewood fashion boutique, financed almost entirely by dreams, Michaela and Ruby see their mom as a success story. They want for nothing – and know nothing about the personal sacrifices Carly has made to keep it that way.
Carly decides that today's hardship won't ever reach them. She takes stock of her resources -- $200 to her name. And she grabs the phone.
First she calls her uncle, a man of means, and explains the situation. She proposes giving him $200 in cash if he would charge the $400 to his credit card. She promises to pay him the remaining $200 when she gets paid next week.
"Whoa, that's a lot," he says, hemming and hawing. "I'll think about it and see what I can do."
But Carly doesn't have time. So she moves on, next calling on a close childhood friend. Carly again offers the $200 up front, and her friend agrees to help. But she's unable to withdraw cash until her husband gets off work at 3 p.m. and deposits enough money. Carly thanks her for her kindness, but says she has to find another way.
Reluctantly, she reaches for a credit card she had set aside only for business expenses. It was a last resort, but it has come to this – adding hundreds of dollars of personal debt to her boutique's account.
She goes to CPP's online payment portal and punches in the numbers. But the confirmation page gives her an error message, so she tries again and gets the same result.
What now?
Then the solution hits her. She will borrow cash from her boutique. With her business partner's blessing, she takes a loan from the register and promises to repay it as soon as her paycheck hits her account.
With cash in hand, Carly heads to CPP at about 2:15 p.m. As she's paying the bill at the service window, she learns that, despite the online error messages, her credit card had been charged after all – twice. The customer service rep tells her the refund process is tricky, so Carly will fight that battle another day.
A technician returns to the house at around 4 p.m. and restores power.
"God will make a way," Carly says, breathing a sigh of relief. "In this case, he made it out of no way. Because I didn't know where I was going to get that money."
Just as the late-September sky gives way to dusk, Michaela and Ruby come home, after an afternoon spent with friends at the Boys & Girls Club. They step inside, flip the switch – and there is light.
Read more about the Jones family here.
A Greater Cleveland is a project of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. See the entirety of our project by clicking here.
A Greater Cleveland is a call to action to the community to help identify and remove the barriers to success faced by Cleveland children in poverty. For those moved to make donations, we ask that you consider a gift to the United Way of Greater Cleveland, which is focusing on issues of multigenerational poverty that this series will examine. Because of the sensitive family matters discussed in this series, we have provided the people we write about anonymity and are using pseudonyms to identify them.
