EverStrong is a Madison organization created to serve Dane County’s 17- to 24-year-old population affected by homelessness. TaMaya Travis, EverStrong’s Bilingual Peer Systems Navigator, said, “My job is to help young adults get through the homelessness system and out of the homelessness system permanently.” This entails helping her clients obtain jobs, transportation, and hotel rooms before job interviews to prepare themselves, and within a few months, long-term housing.
Travis has a deep connection with her work and her clients’ journeys due to her experience with homelessness as a teenager, on and off for several years.
“Coming into this work, I can have a very open and honest conversation with you,” said Travis. “Especially since I’m only 22, I’m the youngest person on our staff, so being able to be directly in our age range gives them a glimpse of hope and then seeing themselves in our staff.”
Everstrong seeks to meet people where they are; new clients start with basic intake. Here, EverStrong works with clients to establish clear goals and a plan to achieve them. One of these methods is making a road map to visually track progress and show a step-by-step path to future goals.
A major first step is getting a client access to their vital documents, such as a Social Security card or birth certificate, which can be expensive.
“It’s illegal to walk around without an ID on you,” said Travis. “It should be free to be able to obtain your vital documents. Our program being able to go pay for it takes a lot of pressure off of them.”
Travis said the high cost of living in Madison, difficulty navigating federal housing programs, and a lack of beds at local shelters, even during inclement weather, exacerbate the problem and keep people on the streets.
“We want to help the homeless, but then we police the homeless,” said Travis. “There are plenty of times where we’ll wake up in the morning, and we’ll see that our clients have been arrested for disorderly conduct. But it’s not disorderly conduct. It’s just being homeless in Madison. There’s not places for them to go.”
The systematic policing of homeless people makes the process towards stable housing harder. Travis said.
“We can’t work on it if they keep going to jail,” she said. In the court system, EverStrong works to advocate on its clients’ behalf and support them through the process.
In addition to helping with housing, Travis assists her clients with their journeys through motherhood.
“My personal clientele population is a lot of young Black mothers,” Travis said. “I do a lot of free doula work in my role. So they just gravitate towards me.” She is taking classes with The Doula Initiative to become a pregnancy and postpartum doula.
Travis was inspired to take on this work when one of her clients went into labor and didn’t have anyone to be with her at the hospital. The mother felt the medical staff weren’t listening to her, so Travis went to the hospital to advocate for her needs and make sure the baby and mother were safe.
“Since then, something opened in me,” said Travis. “This is really rewarding, and they definitely needed this. I had other clients on my caseload who were pregnant, so I started doing trainings to become a doula. It just continued to spiral from there. In the past two years, I assisted 13 births.”
Unfortunately, Travis said she’s encountered multiple occurrences of medical staff neglecting and mistreating her pregnant clients. One time, a client was hemorrhaging after birth and staff ignored her client’s needs; another time, staff tried to push a medically unnecessary C-section onto her client. Both reflected a pattern of medical racism and neglect against Black mothers. These challenges only encourage her to do this much-needed work.
Travis’s message to Dane County’s people facing homelessness is one of hope.
“It is so possible to get out of the homelessness system,” said Travis. “Yeah, it is very difficult, and some of the barriers are very, very tall, and you’re gonna have to climb. Sometimes you’ll fall. But if you have the right support behind you, you will always have somebody to fall back on to help you get out of this situation. It can get to a point where it is mentally exhausting, and you don’t want to keep going. But, once you get in a momentum where you’re making progress, even baby steps. Progress is progress, and I just want people to know to never give up. I know how exhausting and demeaning it can be to not know where you’re gonna sleep at night. Don’t give up and continue to try; you’ll make it through.”
EverStrong offices are open Tues-Fri 10-6, by appointment, at 2701 International Lane.
