Originally published in the 2025 DRC Homecomer
Marion is 65 years old and has the typical routines any typical woman has. She waters her plants. She loves her cat, Baby. She even argues with her husband. But as Marion sits across from Cindy Wright, Housing Program Manager at the DRC, she is telling her story with tears in her eyes. “I’ve been so nervous, like, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?”
Marion has been told her apartment building will be condemned in only a few months and will need to find somewhere else to live. Currently housed at The Springs apartment complex in west Fort Worth, she was happy to look at the sky she could see through a hole in her ceiling. She was happy to bring the plants inside when crime and theft got worse in the area. Marion even loved talking to her neighbors and building a community out of such despair, encouraging others to keep going despite any obstacles that came their way. So, why couldn’t she motivate herself in the same way now? Why did it seem like there was no hope?
Marion was 14 years old when she fled her abusive stepfather. She was 15 by the time she was forced into sex trafficking. Things started to look up when she was able to escape and move back to her hometown where she met her husband at 20 years old. He was funny, supportive, and loving. They spent 26 loving years together until he passed away quickly after a sudden illness. With her support system gone amid the chaos of survival, Marion suffered from a mental health crisis that has continued to this day. Unable to maintain employment or afford life as a single person, Marion fell into homelessness for the second time in her life.
Often staying in abandoned houses, Marion tried to keep herself focused on getting out of her situation, but it was hard without her cheerleader. She couldn’t accept that he was truly gone, so she didn’t. She started having conversations with him, and he encouraged her to look forward to the future and work hard. Around 2015, Marion was able to find help through First Street Mission where she met grief counselor Charme Robarts.
After qualifying for senior housing, Marion was grateful to have a roof over her head and a safe place to lay her head at night. She was able to start seeing a psychiatrist. For ten years, she worked a steady job and swore to herself, and her husband, she would embrace this newfound peace. But then she received a notice of condemnation. She couldn’t find affordable housing, let alone one that would take her housing voucher or the only family she had left- Baby. Little did Marion know, Ms. Robarts is a former DRC Solutions Board of Directors member and knew that if anyone could help in this helpless situation, the DRC always can. And here, Marion was about to receive the best news she’d received in over a decade.
Cindy hands Marion a tissue with a smile. It’s like the assured look of an Olympic-level athlete who is ready to run a race she knows she’ll win, because the DRC always does. With all the directness that Cindy adopted with her time in the U.S. Air Force, she lets Marion know that her situation is about to change. She knows exactly what to do. Cindy will be moving her housing voucher to a new, senior-designated apartment complex. Cindy and Team DRC will help move her in. Cindy will work with Marion’s psychiatrist to register Baby as an emotional support pet, so she never has to worry if she’ll be suddenly separated from her family. And finally, Cindy will be connecting Marion with the DRC’s new Benefits Specialist, Justin Quick, who will aid her in stabilizing her Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid benefits in order to ultimately increase her income, building more of the self-sufficiency Marion craves.
Marion continues to glance over her shoulder, making sure her husband hears this correctly, too. She is dumbfounded. She is in shock. She can finally breathe. Ultimately, she is ready to face her brighter future with a lot more support behind her than she could have ever hoped for herself. She smiles because she knows her husband and counselor told her to hold on, and they were right. “I can relax?” Marion asks earnestly.
Yes, because the DRC always knows what do.
