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Moving day

by Arkasha Stevenson
Tim Beverly and his wife, Tyanna, pick out clothes for their son and daughter before the children's ride for day care arrives. After living in hotels for the past four months, the couple have kept their clothes in garbage bags next to the refrigerator.

“It’s like wrestling a wildcat,” Tyanna Beverly said as she tried to change her 2-year-old’s diaper.

Savanna, sprawled on her parents’ bed, wriggled and spoon-fed peanut butter to her 15-month-old brother, Harlyn. The spoon fell and stuck to the hotel room’s already stained carpet. Tyanna let go.

“Our children are everything to us,” she said.

Whatever her children need, Tyanna said, she will fight to get it. Savanna and Harlyn’s main need right now is a roof over their heads. That is a daily struggle for Tyanna and her husband, Tim. For the past four months, the family has lived in Elizabethtown hotels. For the two weeks, a room at E’Town Motel has been home. That changed Friday afternoon when the Beverlys learned the landlord had rented their room to someone else. Tim and Tyanna packed the family’s belongings in garbage bags while the children slept.

“Kids can sense when you are stressed,” Tyanna said. “I have to be strong for them.”

Tyanna stayed strong until the landlord’s heavy knock on the door woke Harlyn and the shouting started.

“Just give us one more hour,” Tim pleaded. The landlord responded by hauling trash bags out the door.

An hour later, the family was together in a friend’s backyard.

“I’ll put a tent up,” Tim said.

“No,” Tyanna told him. “It’s too cold.”

Tim Beverly tries to tame his two-year-old daughter, Savanna, on the walk home after having dinner at the Warm Blessings soup kitchen. The family has been living the past two weeks at a motel in Elizabethtown across the street from the soup kitchen.
A normally overprotective and attentive Tyanna is distracted from watching her daughter as she talks on the phone with her case worker. The family has been living in an Elizabethtown motel for the past two weeks, and on this day are being forced to vacate. Tyanna spent the majority of the day on the phone with her case worker looking for a place to move. "We have nowhere to go," she said.
Tim Beverly impersonates his 2-year-old daughter's eating style while the Beverly family dines at the Warm Blessings soup kitchen. The family has lived in hotel rooms the past four months, calling the motel across the street from Warm Blessings "home" the past two weeks.
After discovering they will not be recieving their unemployment check that day, Tyanna and Tim Beverly phone the unemployment office and post office to make sure a mistake has not been made. The couple anticpated the checks arrivals so Tyanna could pay to have her drug test for drug court. If she fails to pay for the test, the state could remove the two children from their custody.
"Help us please," is scrawled across the inside of the Beverly family's phone book. Tyanna Beverly wrote this plea when her family was being thrown out of their hotel room where they had been living for the past two weeks. At the last minute, an anonymous donor paid the $190 for the family's next week of rent and they were allowed to stay.
After finding out that her family must vacate the hotel room they have been living in for the past two weeks, Tyanna tries to think of a backup plan. "We have nowhere to go," she said.
The Beverlys and one of their case workers, Lorelei Rackes, try to compromise with the landlord of the hotel. Tim and his wife, Tyanna, began searching for a new place to live, but all of the hotels within their price range were booked and the homeless shelter was full. "We have nowhere to go," Tyanna said.
Tyanna Beverly stacks garbage bags containing her family's belongings in a friend's shed. After being kicked out of the hotel room they had been living in for the past two months, the future of Tyanna, her husband, Tim, and their two children is filled with uncertainty. "I'll put up a tent," Tim said. "No, it's too cold," Tyanna told him.
Uncertainty plagues Tim Beverly as he holds his 15-month-old son, Harlyn, outside of the hotel room that has been home to the family for the past two weeks. Tim and his wife, Tyanna, spent the majority of the day trying to find a new place to live after finding out they will be losing their room at 5 p.m.