By Andra Cernavskis, Mission Local
Anthony Velez, 13, is tired of trudging around the Tenderloin with his family to find something to eat that will not give him a stomachache. He misses his mom’s home cooking.
“I’m used to having a refrigerator,” said the eighth-grader at Everett Middle School. He is at a diner across the street from the Hamilton House, where he, his mother and three siblings live. Anthony had stayed home sick from school that day because of a bad stomachache, so they decided to skip out on the dining room’s tuna casserole and find something easier to digest.
“It’s like I’m confined in a box,” Melissa Velez, Anthony’s mom, said. “I feel enclosed, and the children feel that way, too.”
She hates that her family has to sit on the floor or on their beds while spending time together in their single room. They used to have a living room. They used to have a couch. She used to be able to make Anthony herbal tea when he got an upset stomach.
Read the complete story at Mission Local.
