The Palmer Family

Jasmine Palmer “…learned to be a responsible adult” later in life.

“I got myself into a lot of trouble…lived like an adolescent teenager for a long time…I was an addict…” she said bluntly but with a confident acceptance of the past. “I kept getting arrested….” When her daughters were four and seven she was jailed for six months and then entered a residential rehabilitation program for another six months. Her mother took care of her girls that year. When she was released, she moved in with her mother and her daughters.

Today, three years later, she has a full-time job as a residential counselor with a nine-client case load at the rehabilitation center, and she’s looking forward to finishing her AA degree at SRJC and a counselor credential, so that she can work as a counselor to women in jail.

But she and her daughters — Emma, now 11, and Maya, now 8 — still live with her mom in a two bedroom home where they turned an 8-foot by 10-foot office into Jasmine’s bedroom about a year ago. Before that she was sharing the girls’ room.

“Mom’s been great…a savior..” Jasmine said. “When we get our own place, she’s going to be my best friend, but she was The Mom to the girls for the year I was away. Then, everything was her way. Now… she’s great… but we don’t always agree….and I want to be The Mom. I want to be independent. Something had to happen.”

She looked for places to move, but couldn’t afford more than a studio or one bedroom. She looked into taking a second job to cover high housing costs. She considered a roommate to share costs. She even thought about moving into a shelter because “that can make it easier to get into the reduced rent housing…” When she was turned down for an affordable housing apartment because of her background, her support group told her it would be OK, something better would come along.

It did. She saw an ad about Habitat, and submitted the paperwork about five months ago. It was a lot of work – submitting tax papers, letters, bank statements, credit reports – but just talking about that work makes Jasmine grin and glow with pride.

“I’d done a lot of damage when I was in trouble,” she said. “It was pretty cool to be able to prove that I’d re-established everything.”

On Monday at the Habitat office, she signed the papers to partner on a two-bedroom house in Cotati and sign up for her hours of work, but “it still doesn’t seem real yet. It still feels too good to be true.”