HOUSTON – After enduring more than a year of relentless hardships, a Houston mom and son are finally seeing a turn of fortune, having once faced the despair of being without a roof over their heads.
We first met Kimberley Edwards in April when we sat down for an interview in the hotel room she and her son called home.
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The two lived at the Houston-area hotel for more than a year.
To put it lightly, they were down on their luck.
“They left me with $13 on my card‚” Kimberley Edwards said in April after her SNAP benefits were stolen in a crime known as ‘SNAP Skimming.’
“I ended up losing everything. My car, being evicted May of last year,” she said.
Just a few days after the interview, the hotel kicked Edwards and her son out on the street.
“It was our rock bottom,” she said.
Fast forward two months and their lives look completely different.
Her SNAP funds are coming through, disability payments that were hung up in the federal government have been approved and they now have a place to call home.
Gage Goulding: “What was the feeling you got walking in here for the first time?”
Kimberley Edwards: “It was just, like, almost overwhelming, I was so excited.”
They just moved into the North Houston townhouse a few weeks ago. Edwards and her son, Braeden, are still getting settled in.
But it’s still a shock to them. A place to call their own was so far out of reach just two months ago.
“It feels like, it feels really safe,” Braeden Smith said.
Edwards gives credit to her faith for helping her find a place to live after life seemingly wouldn’t stop pushing her down.
“God,” she said. “It wasn’t by my own power, strength, it was God.”
She can’t give all the credit to the man upstairs.
That’s because her story drove Houstonians to do what we do best: help one another.
A small local nonprofit, the Shirley L. Armstrong Scholarship, saw her story and donated money to help Edwards buy food for the month.
“When I [saw] the segment, it really touched us,” Doyle Armstrong said in May.
That was just the start.
Edwards’ story moved others to lend a hand. It’s how she got the townhome she moved into a few weeks ago.
Gage Goulding: “Did you ever see any of this coming out of that, that story sitting in your hotel room?”
Kimberley Edwards: “No, I didn’t. I didn’t. But I’m so glad that I didn’t give up.”
That’s her message to the dozens of others who are waking up to find their SNAP accounts drained - don’t give up.
“Just as things can be terrible, bad, you don’t think they can get any worse,“ she said. ”Your life, your situation, it can change just like that.”
