A tiny house gives them hope: How a homeless family in Brazil got a fresh start

"There was a morning when our son asked for a glass of milk and I knew I didn't have any to give him," says Erica Lacerda de Souza. "All we had left to eat in the house was rice and farinha [toasted manioc flour]. That's not enough for a child."

The 32-year-old Brazilian and her husband, Bruce Lee Sousa, 28, had already sold both of their cars and closed their bodega because of pandemic regulations when they sent their son Henrique, then 6 years old, to live with his maternal grandmother in the east end of São Paulo.

Bills were piling up and the couple's other work — hers as a cleaner and his at a carwash — wasn't enough. When the pandemic shut down the carwash where Lee Sousa worked too they lost the house they rented and almost everything in it.

With a few changes of clothes in a backpack and nowhere to go, the two ended up living at São Paulo's downtown Barra Funda Terminal. They hoped sleeping on the floor of the busy