Homeless Family Who Held on to Pit Bull Has New, Dog-Friendly Home
The California family who we reported chose homelessness over abandoning their pet pit bull finally has a happy ending: a dog-friendly apartment.
Carol Devia, her husband, Peter, and her adult sons, Leandro and Christoffer, were homeless for months because every apartment they saw within their price range had landlords who were wary of letting a pit bull stay with them.
But one landlord saw the story on a pit bull advocacy group's Facebook page and offered the Devia family a place to live where their two dogs - the other is a lab mix - can run around freely. The San Francisco Bay Area family will be sleeping in their new home for the first time tonight, just in time for their eldest son's birthday.
"He's turning 20 tomorrow and so we're making a birthday dinner for him," Carol Devia said, thrilled to finally cook after months of eating "noodles and soups and 7-Eleven sandwiches" to survive. "We're making meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy," she said.
The family will be sleeping on the floor for now and are trying to obtain inexpensive beds, according to Bad Rap, the pit bull advocacy group that is helping the Devias. Their car also died and they're looking to buy an affordable vehicle so they can get to their job delivering newspapers.
Bad Rap will still be collecting donations for the family through the email contact@badrap.org.
Bad Rap and the family's new landlord have not responded to requests for comment.
"Pit bull owners are good," Devia said. "The community is there. And it's an actual community because they all help each other. Thanks to the pit bull community who came together, we have a place."