Tanesha Gilbert doesn't want anyone to feel sorry for her -- she just wants to put her family back together.

The clean cut and well-spoken 24-year-old seems uncomfortable taking her story to the Royal Gazette . But she also has the resolve of a person who has decided to do whatever it takes -- at whatever cost in personal pride or personal sacrifice -- to do her best by her family.

Tanesha, who did not want to be photographed for this feature, is the mother of a six-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son.

For the last two months, her small family unit has been broken apart.

Tanesha's daughter has gone to live with her father because Tanesha cannot find a place for her family to live.

Although Tanesha works full-time, she earns less than $500 every two weeks as a sales clerk in a liquor store. And, as she works shift work rather than office hours, she can't easily find a second job to supplement her small income.

Tanesha's daughter cannot live with her again until she finds adequate accommodation. But, stretched to her limit, Tanesha can only afford $800 to $1,000 a month in rent. And that would be with a housing allowance, she says.

In Bermuda's high-priced and competitive housing market, finding what Tanesha is looking for is like winning the lottery.

And Tanesha's story is all too common, says Kit Swainson, the executive director of the Coalition for the Protection of Children. The "key problem'' for the vast majority of her clients is the housing crisis.

The lack of affordable housing tearing families apart is a "national tragedy'', she said. Many women lose their children because they cannot find homes. "And the children lose too because they cannot be nurtured by their mothers.'' Tanesha has been on the emergency housing list at the Bermuda Housing Corporation (BHC) since the end of January. "They have absolutely nothing available,'' she said.

At the end of December there were 147 families on the emergency housing waiting list and another 450 on the non-urgent list. The Royal Gazette was unable to obtain comments or updated numbers on that list from BHC this week.

At this point, Tanesha and her son continue to live with Tanesha's mother, her grandmother, her sister, her sister's boyfriend and her sister's two children.

The eight family members share a two bedroom apartment in Somerset.

But the overcrowding is not enough to make Tanesha complain.

"We're all family so it's not that much of a strain,'' she says. It's a little crowded in her small room which can only fit a bed and a small dresser, but the only issue that matters to Tanesha is that she is separated from her daughter.

She's working hard to be reunited with her daughter but she could use a little help. "I'm trying hard not to let my children live the hard life I've lived,'' she said. But sometimes she feels all her roads are blocked.

A graduate of Warwick Secondary school, she'd like to further her education but "because I had my children at a young age, I can't afford to go to college''.

Nevertheless she has signed up for a correspondence course in accounting.

And after she spoke to the Royal Gazette she immediately went out job hunting.

Right now she's just looking for a sales or secretarial job that pays a little better than her current position. One that might allow her to get her own apartment.

If she could have any job right now -- a dream job -- she'd pick accounting.

"When I was young, I always wanted to be a social worker,'' she says. "But right now, I'd probably be an accountant.'' But Tanesha is not naive and she doesn't expect to spontaneously jump out of her current troubles. "I just want to have my family together,'' she said.

"I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me, I hate that with a passion. I just want a little step -- not even a big step -- just a little step in the right direction to make a better life for me and my children.''