When an Albrightsville woman was forced to leave her late father’s house in early February, she moved into a shed located in the lot adjacent to her former residence.

The house had been foreclosed on, so it was either that, the 55-year-old woman said, or head off into the woods.

But it wasn’t long before state troopers came knocking on the shed doors to tell the woman, who prefers to be known only by her first name, Yvonne, that she had to leave the premises.

“They (state troopers) told me I had to go to the hospital for a check,” Yvonne said.

“I think their only line of defense really was to send her to the hospital for some shelter,” said Christine LeClair, who has been helping Yvonne navigate the complexities of social services since she became homeless.

Yvonne spent one night in the hospital. After being discharged, she picked up a backpack, filled it with toiletries, and headed for the Carbon Plaza Mall, just outside of Lehighton. She stayed in the mall for about a week.

“I’d go from bench to bench, trying not to be noticed,” Yvonne said. “They let me stay inside.”

Though the mall provided nearby resources and shelter from the cold, Yvonne couldn’t rest. She has lymphedema, a condition that causes swelling in the legs and arms, and she wasn’t able to lie down.

Eventually, one of LeClair’s former co-workers went to the mall and noticed Yvonne. They reached out to LeClair, who now serves as the president of the St. Vincent De Paul Society based out of St. Joseph’s Church in Summit Hill, and informed her of Yvonne’s situation.

“She (Yvonne) came out with no shoes on and her book bag,” LeClair recalled. “She hadn’t slept.”

LeClair searched for resources for women experiencing homelessness in the county, but came up short. She called the Carbon County Action Committee, the Lehighton Police Department, Catholic Charities and the Agency on the Aging for advice, as well as shelters in Luzerne, Schuylkill and Lehigh counties, only to find out that shelters were either full, or that Yvonne did not meet admittance requirements.

“If she had a mental health diagnosis, if she had a substance abuse problem, if she was a veteran, if she was a man, if she had small children, if she was a victim of domestic violence, I could help her,” LeClair said. “But she’s just a woman, so there’s nothing.”

By Feb. 18, LeClair’s organization, with the aid of Catholic Charities and help from some of her friends, was able to relocate Yvonne from the plaza to the Mahoning Inn on Blakeslee Boulevard in Lehighton. Yvonne stayed at the inn until Feb. 25, when she moved again, this time to Parkview Inn in Summit Hill. She’ll stay there until at least the end of March.

With LeClair’s help, Yvonne said, she’s looking for permanent housing. She has submitted an application to the Carbon County Housing Authority, but it’s still unclear when she’ll be able to find a more stable living situation.

Yvonne, who is unable to work because of her condition, is also in the process of applying for Social Security, which has been a challenge in and of itself. In order to apply for Social Security, Yvonne has to have her condition diagnosed by a physician to prove that she is disabled.

When she went to see her former physician, she found that they had left the practice. And since it had been three years since her last visit, Yvonne would be considered a new patient. But the practice isn’t accepting new patients at this time.

“They make it hard,” Yvonne said. “It’s the red tape kind of thing. You get the runaround almost because of your situation.”

For about three weeks, Yvonne has struggled to find resources that can assist her as a woman experiencing homelessness, partly because there doesn’t seem to be any in the county tailored specifically to single women.

Family Promise of Carbon County deals with families and Peaceful Knights, a Christian organization for single adults, is for men.

In January, the body of a homeless New Jersey woman was discovered lying face down on Route 443 in Mahoning Township. And the 2019 Point-In-Time count, a county-specific, annual survey of homeless individuals mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, showed that the number of single women experiencing homelessness at the time of the survey rose between this year and last.

“Typically in the past years when we did the Point-in-Time count it was single men,” Kimberley Miller, executive director of Carbon County Action Committee, said. “This year, all three of them were single women.”

Yvonne said one thing she misses about having her own space is being able to have home-cooked meals. She carries with her only the essentials. But she’s adjusting, and in her mind, that’s the only thing she can do.

“You learn to adapt,” Yvonne said. “I wasn’t going to let it get to me. I was just like, ‘nope, I’m just going to go with the flow, and then I’m just going to just pray that I wind up in the woods sooner or later.’ It’s what I was really going for, because I didn’t want the system.

“It’s easier, should I say, to go live in the woods than to deal with the system.”