Mom, 8 children end 2 1/2 years without a home

OGDEN -- With a tree on each side of the path to her front door, Cheydene Hudspeth thinks her new rental home on the 500 block of 21st Street looks like something from a movie.

But with nearly two and a half years of homelessness behind them, Hudspeth and her eight children have lived a life that could make an interesting film.

Inside the house after school, there is a flurry of activity as everyone clamors around their single mother for a snack.

There's peanut butter and jelly, corn dogs, quesadillas and baloney and chicken sandwiches.

Some kids have one of each.

"We didn't have access to the kitchen (every time the kids wanted a snack) at the shelter," Hudspeth said, explaining their excitement.

And Thursday, it was an extra-hectic afternoon.

Dejaish, whom Hudspeth describes as her stepdaughter, was visiting. Dejaish is the same age as 2-year-old Destini.

"She couldn't really visit when we were in the shelter," Hudspeth said.

"She wasn't allowed in."

Then Destini accidently locked herself in the master bedroom and everyone scurried to rescue the crying child.

Seeing the hectic nature of her life, it's easy to understand why Hudspeth celebrated moving into her new home with a hot bubble bath.

"I hadn't had a bath in SO long," said the 32-year-old mother.

Hudspeth doesn't do drugs. She doesn't appear to be lazy. She doesn't have a criminal history.

But despite that, she and her children fell into a downward spiral that brought them to learn difficult life lessons as they struggled to meet their most basic needs.

It was the economy that Hudspeth said was her biggest obstacle.

"I've never had a problem getting a job before," she said. "I have tons of qualifications. I've been trained on computers. I learned VISTA when it first came out."

Even without her high school diploma, Hudspeth said with a good work ethic she didn't foresee a time before 2007 when she'd have such a struggle.

At that time, she felt secure and was saving up for a down payment on a house.

Hudspeth lived with her own mother, and the women worked opposite shifts so the children were always cared for.

But then a chain of events led to things unraveling.

In February 2007, they were asked to vacate their apartment by new owners.

She and her mother then made an investment in what they thought was a rent-to-own situation on a house in May that year. They bought appliances and new carpet. They'd paid the first and last month's rent.

A month into the deal, a man came knocking on their door and told them he was the real owner and that they'd been scammed.

"I lost my whole savings in that house," Hudspeth said. "I lost $5,000."

She was living with a friend when she soon lost her job.

Hudspeth got a temporary job but couldn't keep up with her efforts to find housing and obtain adequate child care while working new hours.

"I stayed at the YWCA, the Road Home Winter Shelter in Salt Lake City, and I moved in with my sister for a while."

Her setbacks included being denied federal housing in April last year, she said, because she and her children lived in her father's one-bedroom apartment while she took care of him after surgery.

"They said you had to be in a shelter in order to get a voucher," she said. "That's what prolonged everything."

But Hudspeth said things started to turn around for her when she moved to Ogden in May.

"St. Anne's is the only place I knew of that they did drug testing," she said. "I didn't want my children around (drugs)."

Hudspeth said her experience at St. Anne's Homeless Shelter was beneficial, as case workers trained her to be more organized and to budget better. She now has $2,200 saved up for emergencies by being extra frugal with her welfare and child support funds.

Even though caseworker Chris Turner was impressed with Hudspeth's model behavior, he said he and others couldn't get her into a house.

Hudspeth said she's lost out on 10 potential homes since she got to Ogden.

"Once you tell them you have eight kids, they say, 'Whoa,' " she said. "There has to be so many bedrooms, and the boys are not allowed to be with the girls."

While it's not legal for landlords to turn down federal-housing renters, the mother said they would find a way around it by telling her they had found another renter, that she did not qualify or by finding that she had bad credit 10 years ago.

But this week, she said extra efforts by officials from a Layton property management company paid off for her as they got her into a home.

She's finishing her high school diploma, and she believes she'll be self-sufficient soon.