Chosen 300 says it can’t help LOVE Park homeless family anymore

A homeless Philadelphia family that received an outburst of community support, including a year of free housing, will soon be back on their own.

Chosen 300 Ministries is revoking its backing after the family failed to cooperate.

In October, the group raised more than $12,000 in one day after the family’s plight was revealed: Two adults with two young children living in a makeshift cardboard shelter by LOVE Park.

Chosen 300’s Brian Jenkins says after the family was set up with housing, they started to abuse the support. They refused to go to drug counseling, wouldn’t look for work and spent some of the money raised on alcohol. Dozens of job offers came in after the couple’s troubles were publicized, but they ignored all of them. 

“We don’t have problem helping people who want to help themselves,” Jenkins said. “We do have problems helping people who don’t want to do anything put sit around and be lazy.”

The two adults, Angelique Roland and Michael Jones, were put up in a Marriott hotel until their housing was ready. The first night there, Jenkins says, they rang up $600 in room service fees and were smoking marijuana in the room.

Jenkins says the group then learned that Roland was not pregnant, like she had been telling him.

“Lie after lie after lie,” Jenkins said. “They are professonals at manipulating the system.”

A 30-day eviction notice has been sent to their family, Jenkins said. 

Jenkins says the children are now in state custody. The remaining money that was raised for them is going to be put into a special education fund for the kids.

Despite the bad experience, Jenkins says he’s not hopeless. Just moving on to the next family in need.

“I knew it was a big risk, and I said, ‘look, I wanna give them a chance, and see what we could do,” Jenkins said. “But our faith is not wavering. We’re just going to help another family next.”