How far apart can two ends of a train line in the same city be? Sometimes, they can be farther than you think.

Seven months ago, my boys and I had to leave my mom’s one-bedroom apartment because the lease didn’t allow for all of us to live there. We ended up in a shelter. While we were glad to have a roof over our heads, the was shelter in the Bronx — and we were from Brooklyn.

That distance didn’t make it easy to get through the day-to-day. I was far from my job. It took my boys two hours to get to school in the morning. My son, who’s a junior in high school and taking some college classes, and between the commute and the schoolwork, he just couldn’t keep up with it all.

We needed to be close to our family and the kids’ schools, closer to my job — but most of all, we needed a place to call home. I’ve been working hard to give my sons all I can, but they hadn’t had a room of their own in 10 years.