This once homeless family is now housed, but that doesn't mean life is easy

What’s it like to finally have a place for you and your children to live, after spending most of the year homeless?

“Surreal,” said Tiffany Hicks, whose family we told you about in two stories this year (links below).

Hicks and her fiancé had been living at the downtown Seattle shelter Mary’s Place with their three kids, including a newborn baby. The older kids attended Lowell Elementary, where up to 20 percent of students were homeless.

Hicks and her family have since moved into an apartment in Auburn with help from Wellspring Family Services.

“It’s a lot better,” Hicks said. “No noise. No eating when they tell you to. No waiting in lineup to eat. No putting up with weird people in strange places...It’s just a lot better.”

KUOW’s Race and Equity team followed up with her as part of a year-end series revisiting some of the stories we covered in 2017.

Hicks said that after more than a year in shelters, she’s grateful for stable housing. But a lot of things are harder now.

Being in Auburn means that her family is far from most of the services they rely on.

And she said school officials urged her to keep her older kids enrolled at Lowell Elementary — that’s an hour-long taxi ride each way.

Still, she said, she feels “so blessed” right now, because they have a place to live, and they have each other.