PORTLAND — Latte Harris seems like a typical college student. She reads and listens to music voraciously, gets involved in the occasional protest, and stops people on campus who have cool-looking outfits. She’s declared her sociology major at Portland State University, but not her minor in black studies.
However, the 19-year-old’s path to the downtown Portland campus was not typical. She had planned to attend Arizona State University.
But the best-laid plans don’t always happen when you’re a poor, homeless high school student.
In 2015, when Harris was a senior at east Vancouver’s Evergreen High School, the district identified 765 students as homeless, including her and her two younger sisters. This last year, the number of homeless students went up about 40 percent to 1,075. Total enrollment in the Evergreen School District has remained about the same, it’s just the proportion of homeless students that’s increased.
Harris got accepted to Arizona State, had her classes picked out and took a Greyhound bus the 1,300-some miles to orientation. A bookworm who took honors and Advanced Placement classes in high school, Harris planned to be a pre-med student.
“I just didn’t have enough money to attend there,” she said. “It got me thinking, this should not be the case.”
Although Harris worked part-time during high school, her paychecks went to housing. Her family struggled to find and keep housing for years, since losing the house they owned off Division Street in Portland. Her mom spent a year in prison, after which her parents separated.
So, Harris went from the Parkrose School District to David Douglas to Hudson’s Bay High School and finally Evergreen. Her mom thought they would fare better in Vancouver.
“We just couldn’t afford to live anywhere,” Harris said. “My dad didn’t really help out financially. So, it was all of us and my mom. From there, we started moving from house to house.”
Sometimes, it was motel to motel. They slept in the car a few times and stayed at relatives’ houses. Mom’s health declined.
“We stayed at a shelter for a bit. I met so many kids from my school who were in that shelter,” Harris said.
She kept an extra set of clothes, a toothbrush and toothpaste in her backpack just in case. When they had stayed in Portland, it would take Harris and her sisters two hours to get to school by bus.
“I really tried hard to balance all my studies. It was so difficult. I did miss a lot of school my senior year,” Harris said. “I was so very depressed during that time. … Some days, I was just like, ‘Why am I even trying? What’s the point of me even waking up today and trying to continue this?’ ”
Most support came from her sisters.
“We’re all in the same boat. We’re going to the same school. We’re all just cheering each other on to keep going,” she said. “I consider my sisters to be my best friends because we can talk about anything.”
Harris got help from Peggy Carlson, Evergreen’s liaison for students in transition. Harris would hang out in Carlson’s portable after school, do homework, have something to eat and help with donations until she found out where they were staying that night. Bus passes, clothing, food, school supplies and help with SAT fees helped Harris finish up high school.
It was Carlson, actually, who wrote a letter recommending Harris for a $2,000 scholarship from the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth. In her letter, Carlson wrote: “I’ve always known Latte to be a hard worker. She held a part-time job at the mall to help her family make ends meet. She also spent countless hours in my office volunteering her time to organize donations. She did this all without complaint and never felt sorry for herself even when faced with such challenging circumstances. There were days when I could see how completely exhausted she was, but she still maintained a positive attitude and a beautiful smile.”
Harris will go to the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth conference in Orlando, Fla., at the end of this month to accept her award, and Carlson will be there, too.
Others attending and speaking at the conference include Jan Wichert, director of employee and resident services at Vancouver Housing Authority and executive director of Bridgeview; Alishia Topper, director of strategic partnerships at Vancouver Public Schools and a Vancouver city councilor; Tamara Shoup, director of family engagement at Vancouver Public Schools; and Melanie Green, who heads the family and community resource centers at Evergreen Public Schools.
Harris isn’t sure what she’ll say if she’s asked to speak, but she’s comfortable candidly telling people about what she’s overcome.
Her first term at PSU was rough. She was stretched too thin trying to take care of her family, work and school, and got put on academic probation after failing a class. She’s since cut back her work hours and brought her grades up to a 3.5 GPA. She wants to use her sociology degree to help at-risk youth, particularly youth of color, like herself. “There are no limits,” she said.
For the last six months, she’s lived in an apartment in Gresham, Ore., with one of her sisters and her sister’s boyfriend. She works two jobs that pay for her expenses and has student loans, but otherwise considers herself financially stable.
She still helps her family when she can; finances are still tight. All of the strings attached to growing up in poverty don’t go away just because she’s in college. Rather, they resurface and attempt to yank her down, undo her successes.
“I still struggle,” said Harris. “Me going to school, me being on my own — this is going to pay off for all of us in the end,” Harris said.
To the growing number of local homeless students — those 1,075 in her alma mater’s district alone — she urges them to keep trying, to work towards breaking the cycle of poverty.
“It really does get better. When you’re a kid you have so little control over what you can do,” Harris said. “Don’t quit. The payoff is too large.”
