Scarlett Gauvin was scrolling through her phone recently and happened upon a video her 7-year-old son, Jasper, had secretly made. Sometimes she gave him her phone to play games. But she had no idea he had used it to make the shaky, few seconds of video from inside the truck where they now live.

It took her breath. Then broke her heart. 

“This is my house,” an unseen child’s voice says. “I don’t have a house to speak of. Can you help me get a house?” 

Gauvin, 31, who goes by the name Scarlett, her former partner, Emily Davis, 35, and their sons, Jasper and his four-year-old brother, Pierce, have been homeless since August of 2023. 

That is when they were evicted from the one–bedroom apartment off West Colfax Avenue where they had lived for seven years. During that time the landlord, someone they once considered a friend who they shared holidays with, had tripled the rent from $300 per month when they first moved into $900 which they could not afford. They suspect he knew that and wanted them out so he could charge even more. 

Emily Davis was born male and is the boys’ biological father but is in the process of transitioning to a woman and now identifies as female. Emily is the name she has chosen for herself. 

It has become a point of tension for the two. Gauvin said they are no longer a couple but still live together to co-parent their sons. 

These days the family lives in a converted farm truck parked in a grocery store parking lot. Without proper tags and overdue registration, they move around a lot, trying to stay one step ahead of the police to avoid tickets or being towed. 

A king-size mattress is lashed precariously to the top of the cab. All four of them sleep there, covered by an assortment of overhead tarps to stave off the weather. The bed of the truck holds what is left of their possessions. 

“We have slowly been losing everything,” said Gauvin. 

The first night they were homeless they slept outside as mosquitoes swarmed. The boys, especially, were covered in bites. 

The social workers and authorities tried to counsel them back then on how to stay upbeat for their children. “We told them it was like camping,” Gauvin said of the story told to her sons. “In the beginning we told them it was adventure. But now they want a house.” 

She knows her children long for more normalcy. Her youngest sometimes gets agitated when he must dig through their bags of possessions to find a favorite shirt or toy. Her 7-year-old is more stoic. That’s why his video plea hurt so much. 

The parents drop off the boys at Cowell Elementary School every morning, Jasper at 7:30 a.m. for first grade, Pierce at 8:15 a.m. for preschool. Pick-up is at 2:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. 

The boys eat breakfast and lunch at school. Their teachers know they live in a truck and downplay it to their classmates, Gauvin said. It was the school that helped with Christmas presents. 

Jasper is doing quite well academically, his mother said, sounding like any other proud mother. “Their education is important to me,” she said. 

But lately attendance has become an issue because they must pull the boys out of school during the day so they can shower at shelters, which typically close in the early afternoon. They try to shower twice a week but can’t always make it. 

The family was recently approved for about $700 per month in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). They also get SNAP, previously known as food stamps. But the food allocation almost always runs out before month’s end because they have no place to cook, and pre-made food is much more expensive. On Tuesdays they usually go to Saint Peter and Saint Mary Episcopal Church for the free dinner run by St. Clare’s Ministries, a Denver non-profit.  

They are often the only family with children there. 

After school they sometimes go to the public library where the boys can play on the computers, or their parents read to them. 

The parents panhandle near fast food drive-throughs in the afternoons and evenings, or “fly” signs as it is called on the street. Their boys are by their side. They say they only ask for enough money for gas or food to get them through the night. 

Bedtime in the truck is a non-negotiable 8 p.m. After tucking the boys in, Gauvin said she sometimes crashes next to them. “I’m exhausted,” she admitted, both physically and mentally from the strain. 

Before Davis turns in, she hits the dumpster at a Little Caesars just after it closes at 9 p.m. That’s when the restaurant throws out leftover pizza. 

Davis, who earned a GED, works as a delivery driver, but the income is spotty. Some weeks it is as much as $700, other times it is less than $50.  

Gauvin, who has some college, has applied for entry-level jobs but never gets very far trying to negotiate the handful of hours when her sons are in school. And it is always a problem because they have no permanent address. 

She said they have tried to get on lists for permanent housing, but it has never gone anywhere because of no follow-through from the organizations. Once, during a particularly cold period, the family was offered indoor shelter from the Salvation Army, she said. But it turned out to be sleeping on the floor of a motel lobby. They declined, saying their truck was safer for the boys. 

What she really wants is a house or an apartment. It would be so much easier to chase a better life from a stable perch.   

But that vision has started to slip away. “I don’t even know what that looks like anymore.”