Hear from Rocheall: Survival, a criminal legal system, and a long climb home
San Francisco native Rocheall Pierre’s nightmarish experience of pursuing her career as a social worker, but being unable to pay for childcare, then being on the losing side of the inequitable criminal justice system and becoming homeless.
Rocheall’s story is part of the Families Finding Home podcast.
_____
Transcript
LISA RUDMAN
It's a windy Sunday in Antioch, California, about an hour east of San Francisco. During a community celebration, there's music, food, and information booths. There's an outreach table with members of a parents’ advocacy group.
ROCHEALL PIERRE
“Excuse me, are you guys Antioch residents? Would you like to fill out a survey? It only takes a minute. You also get a free…”
LISA
They're out here today conducting surveys about housing issues.
ROCHEALL
“Just talking about your housing experience in Antioch, because we take these, um, opinions, which will be anonymous, to the City Council.”
LISA
It's not easy to get people to stop, so a couple of the moms are role-playing and keeping it light.
ROCHEALL
“Today, we're having you guys fill out a survey so that you can get your voices heard about housing in Antioch. Do you have a minute, it will only take a minute? Because we got 20 questions… hahahaha.”
LISA
Volunteering with the parents’ group is Rocheall Pierre.
ROCHEALL
I'm a black woman, and I am a San Francisco native, and a mother.
So, my son is 8 years old. He is super amazing, lot of energy, a very fast reader, I'm very proud about that. He has a little social group and, today, we're going to go to one of his friend’s houses to play in their pool.
LISA
Her son is named Jadon. You'll hear him in the background of our recordings.
Rocheall was born in San Francisco and lived there for decades, but with sky high rents, she's been priced out of the city. She moved 50 miles east of San Francisco to Antioch.
In addition to her paid job, she volunteers and advocates for parks, housing, and childcare for families.
ROCHEALL
I became an advocate; I started working for First Five, and volunteering, and going up to Sacramento, and talking to our local politicians and saying, you know, we need to increase the threshold for what a working person should receive when they are trying to get childcare.
Nobody who's working full-time, two jobs sometimes, should not be able to afford childcare; that just doesn't make sense.
LISA
Rocheall understands these policy issues, personally.
ROCHEALL
It was kind of a desperate place because I had to work or we would be homeless, right, but I could not afford the childcare.
LISA
I'm Lisa Rudman, and today, Rocheall Pierre shares her story about survival, a criminal legal system, and a long climb home.
Let's start back in 2006, when Rocheall earns her master’s degree in social work from San Francisco State University.
It's a career she's dreamed of, but it doesn't pay much.
She remembers her professor saying, “you better find a high paying job to feed your social work habit.”
ROCHEALL
Before I had my son, I worked two full-time jobs and I worked around the clock. I worked overnight with disabled adults and I was a live-in so I could sleep there, and I worked by day at full-time eight hour of day job as a clinician, and so I was able to afford my rent and all my bills and everything as a single person.
You know it's crazy you have to work two jobs to pay the bills, and be in a place where you do have that cushion if your car breaks down or if you need some tires or whatever .
LISA
While she was working toward becoming licensed in the clinical field, where show gave birth to her son.
ROCHEALL
But, of course, having my son I had to quit the overnight job because my overnight jobs taking care of my son, you know, and I had got to that place where with the only one job.
I did not have any wiggle room at all, and of course none to even pay for childcare.
I was making about $22.00 an hour however, my rent was like $1,400 a month, car, note, new baby all the way on my own, there was no cushion, and there was no money for childcare at all, and so I would have various friends or family members or just people watch my son and, you know, I couldn't pay them and it was very inconsistent, and I was always afraid I would lose my job because I didn't have a place to take my then one and a half year old son.
LISA
Rochelle searched for a childcare center she could afford.
ROCHEALL
I was able to get him into a childcare center which was really close to my job because he was still nursing at the time, and I could go at lunch break, and I could go on my breaks because it was literally like five minutes down the street, it was a very reputable place, and it was $1,200 a month. That was like one paycheck, and there was just no way I could afford that.
LISA
So, Rocheall applied for subsidized childcare and filled out the forms.
ROCHEALL
I understated my income so that I could receive free childcare and ended up getting convicted of grand theft.
LISA
She was charged with theft of the six months of childcare costs which were about $6,000. The agency and the judge had a lot of discretionary power over the sentence, to go hard or to simply require a repayment plan.
ROCHEALL
They just decided to just throw the whole book at me, even talking about 10 years in in jail, and my lawyer at the time said, “I never saw this before, like I've never seen it go that hard before like how they're doing to you.”
He was like, usually it's not even a misdemeanor it's usually like called welfare fraud, not even grand theft. This was a criminal lawyer who specializes in child welfare cases. He said, “I've seen people who have two incomes, making way more money than you, have done it for way longer, finally get caught, and you pay it back and a slap on the wrist, and no record.”
LISA
Her lawyer also pointed to racism.
ROCHEALL
The next time I had a court date my lawyer said, “I'm not even bringing you into the courtroom. You're not, I'm going to talk for you.” He was just like, I don't want them to look at you because they see you as this welfare criminal, trying to just drain the system. They're judging you because of what you look like, you know, because you're an African American and that's the story that they're told about you, your people, that's what you do, you steal, and so I'm not even going to let you go in the courtroom and answer any questions. I'm going to talk on your behalf.
LISA
And he did, but Rocheall’s grand theft charge stuck, and she was convicted.
ROCHEALL
I was desperate and I made a very bad judgment call to do it. If I had to do it all over again, I would have done something different, but I can't tell you to this day what I would have done different.
LISA
Rocheall paid the childcare money back, but the spiral had started.
ROCHEALL
I lost my job because, of course, I work in the what they call “vulnerable populations”; childcare, social work, foster care agencies, working with aging populations, it's all under one umbrella, and that umbrella is “community care licensing” and so, you mess with one, you messed with the whole thing, so my job was not able to keep me because community care licensing and Department of Justice will not let my fingerprints clear to work.
I was unable to work in my field for four years and had a misdemeanor on my record.
I lost everything from that mistake, and you know, it was seven years ago but I'm still paying for that same mistake.
I didn't know how hard it was going to be to get back to work.
I was very naive about that. I have been working for 20 years at this point, I was 38 years old, you know, I'm like I have a solid work history and there's no way I'm not going to walk into some place and get a job.
I'm not a criminal, I'm not a thief, I'm a hard worker.
I just thought, I would come snap back to this you know, and it was four years before I was even eligible to even go back into my field, and you know, luckily, I got a job with Uber as a driver because they weren't doing background checks.
LISA
But Rocheall’s informal jobs weren't enough to pay the rent. She didn't want an eviction record, so she gave up her apartment and was couch surfing. She couldn't afford storage, so she lost most of her stuff.
ROCHEALL
Family and friends were like, we can keep a little bit of this in their garage, or you know certain things that I wanted to keep but, you know, the bedroom set you worked hard for, your TV, your kid’s clothes. Whatever I couldn't really carry with me, I had to give it away my dressers. Stuff people family member has had given to me, I had to just give it all away.
That was a really, really hard, that's when I really felt it like I really have nothing, I have nothing.
LISA
So Rocheall and her son had nowhere to stay.
ROCHEALL
We lived at homeless shelter in San Francisco, and we were homeless for about two and a half years, and at some point living in our car and couch surfing, living in different shelters, until we got to one shelter where we were able to stay for a longer period of time which was a year. Some shelters you can only stay in for a few months, some you can only stay for nights, so it was really, really difficult for my son and I, but also he's very resilient and so was I.
LISA
There's a bitterly ironic twist to Rocheall’s story.
ROCHEALL
The craziest thing is when I became homeless, the first thing they offered me was free childcare. That's so ironic, they were like, well you know now that you're homeless in San Francisco, you can have childcare, free childcare, until your son is 5 years old.
I couldn't even work. Nobody would hire me because the conviction was too new.
I said, “wow, I can have free childcare because I'm homeless without a job to look for a job where no one's going to hire me, but when I'm working and I'm paying into the system, I can't access this.”
LISA
The challenges for Rocheall Pierre and thousands of homeless people in San Francisco go beyond the lack of affordable housing.
There's not affordable healthcare, including drug treatment and mental health, and without affordable childcare or livable wages, it's very hard to get by.
Nonprofit groups try to help.
The Hamilton Families agency serves homeless families and Rocheall was able to get into their rent support program.
ROCHEALL
They pay a portion of your rent, so while you're trying to get to a place where you can afford to pay your own rent, this program is there to support you in your own apartment.
They help you to find a place that they feel like after maybe one year, you will be able to pay on your own.
They pay 60%, you pay 40%, and as your income goes up, you contribute more until that one day when you're actually able to pay the full rent and that's when you make twice the rent.
So, if your rent is $1,400 you need to be making, what, $2,800 a month, then they say okay, we're going to successfully close your case.
LISA
But the nonprofit agencies have the same problem as their clients, that's finding affordable housing, without displacing them far from San Francisco.
ROCHEALL
So, San Francisco, it doesn't have any affordable housing.
I'm a San Francisco native born and raised in San Francisco. All my education is in San Francisco. Most of my work experience was in San Francisco, it's, it's the city I love.
For me, there was no place in San Francisco, there was no place in Oakland, at that time and so Antioch was the option.
You know, Antioch is a suburb that was created for the white middle class, it wasn't created for low-income, People of Color and so, when we came out here in droves because we couldn't afford San Francisco and Oakland, and it was more affordable, the rents were a little bit lower, but it was a desert as far as resources.
LISA
Antioch is 52 miles away from Michelle's job. Her commute, with traffic, can often take two hours each way.
ROCHEALL
It was going to be a really truck to just get back and forth, and when I saw the house, of course, I was thankful that I wasn't going to be in a shelter anymore, but I just immediately thought about how am I going to get back and forth to work, and if something happens to my car or if I can't afford the BART payments, I'm not going to be able to maintain my job living so far out here, and so it was a blessing because you're not homeless anymore, but it was definitely a challenge because the resources out here are very scarce and not knowing anyone, not having a support system, not even a friend out here, really, was really hard.
LISA
While Rocheall was coping with living way out in Antioch, she found some activities for Jadon.
ROCHEALL
I learned about the East County Regional Group and they were doing a lot of free activities for children under five, and my son was under five at that time so, you know, he was able to do some baseball, and we were able to do Zumba in the park, and just a couple little fun recreational things that I wouldn't have been able to afford on my own and, you know, they said, “why don't you join the group?”
So, I, you know, of course, signed up and then worked with them since 2017 so, that's kind of where I found my support group out here. I met a lot of other families that were going through the same struggle as me, and who wanted to make a difference, who didn't want to just stay there, and wanted to see the community change.
LISA
You may not have thought someone with a master’s degree and a solid work history could be homeless, but the lack of affordable childcare options, a desperate mistake with a harsh punishment, has trapped Rocheall with insecure housing.
ROCHEALL
They always say you're one paycheck away, it's so cliché, but it's so real.
You are one paycheck away from being homeless. You lose your job. You don't get a job quick enough.
You either need to tell your landlord, “I need to move out,” where you have nowhere to go to but a homeless shelter, and some of them are full, okay, or you get an eviction and either way, you become homeless and it's because of the wages.
It's because you don't have, even most people, don't have a savings where you can say, “oh I have a few months saved up,” you know, there are people, many people, who do, but there are far more people who do not.
LISA
I asked Rochelle where she's at now.
ROCHEALL
I am still poor. I don't know where I'm going to get the money from and, you know, still I try because it's like, I'm trying to invest in my future, so that I'm not stuck here because I do have a son, and he is my legacy, and I don't want him to be worried about if we're going to be homeless again, and I often go to bed, when I look at the bills I have versus the income and, I think, I promised him that I wouldn't, we wouldn't do that again, but I just don't know if I can keep that promise, and it's hard, it's devastating, it has me depressed often, and very worried, all the time, and just living in fear, working two jobs now, and take care of my child, and I'm still in the same situation, and it's almost like it feels like a life sentence.
LISA
That was Rocheall Pierre, a mom, a social worker, and an advocate for affordable housing and childcare for all.
You've been listening to “Families Finding Home.” This episode, entitled “Rocheall,” was produced by Lisa Rudman, with support from the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC Media), Hamilton Families, and Google.org.
Our Executive Producer is Paula Smith Arrigoni. Cory Winter is producer for Hamilton Families.
You can find more episodes of this podcast at BAVC’s website, that's bavc.org, and at hamiltonfamilies.org.
Special thanks to Elaine Beale and Diane Livia.
Our music today was by Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound.