Judy DeHaas, a photojournalist at the Rocky Mountain News, documented the lives of a young couple for Do1Thing.org. Michael Cunningham, 20, and his girlfriend Lea Hallaway, 18, have been together for about a year. They stay from time to time at Urban Peak, a shelter for homeless youth in Denver. DeHaas tells Do1Thing.org:
Being homeless is difficult for the pair, but they strive to stay together and support each other.
Michael was taken from his alcoholic father when he was three-years-old and placed in at least 42 foster homes by the time he was emancipated in February 2008. His mother disappeared when he was around 3. After leaving foster care, he was unable to hold down a job and wound up on the streets.
His last foster home was with Lea’s aunt, where the couple met. Lea’s mother, a crack addict died when she was 6, and she was taken into the system at 2. After living in a series of foster homes, she was adopted, but Lea started to run away when she turned 13 and was asked to move out by the time she was 16.
The couple has slept on friend’s couches, in shelters and in cheap motels while trying to get a grip on their lives and stabilize, something neither of them learned from their parents or their brief stays in foster homes.
