Moving day for complaining mom, 12 kids delayed

In the space of a week, Angel Adams and a dozen of her 15 children was to have gone from living in a rundown, one-room motel room to a six-bedroom house, if all had gone according to plan.

It didn't.

Building inspectors raised doubts about whether the selected Sulphur Springs home was suitable, and Adams' plans to move into a rent-subsidized home today was put on hold. It was a glitch in her change-of-fortune run this past week, which included having a debt of several thousand dollars wiped clean and from being ineligible for Section 8 housing to living rent free.

Now, case workers say they are looking at other houses. Still, they say, the goal is to get the family of 13 moved into a home as soon as possible.

Currently, the family is staying at a temporary shelter near Brandon.

Adams' sister, Mary Gibson, said the move has been put off because of the proximity of the home to railroad tracks. The house sits on a cul-de-sac in Sulphur Springs. A chain-link fence separating the home from the tracks is within a couple of feet from the two-story block home.

Because of that, Gibson said, home inspectors are looking at other houses.

Adams and her children "have all their stuff ready to move in," Gibson said.

After she was evicted last month for not telling her landlord she had 12 children in her care, Adams, 37, landed in the Economy Inn on Busch Boulevard. Her plight came to light after she complained that the government didn't do enough to help her.

Her comments unleashed a flood of criticism that she was abusing the system. Child welfare officials in Tampa said they were helping the family because of the children, despite Adams' attitude that the government owed her.

Hillsborough Kids Inc., which manages child welfare in the county, agreed to pay off Adams' rent debts and the Tampa Housing Authority agreed to waive a five-year ban on Adams, who owed the authority $6,000.

"We're not here to start giving her handouts," Nick Cox, the Florida Department of Children & Families' regional director, said during a status hearing in family court this week. "We're not here to provide for her. We're not here to provide her a house that she wants or anything like that. We're here to help and support and take care of the children."

This afternoon, Adams said she was ready to leave A Kid's Place, the shelter near Brandon.

"Well," she said, "I'm still at the Kid's Place and I'm just waiting to move into my new house.

"I'm really excited and I'm just ready to go home and just move on with my life," she said.

She responded to critics who say she's milking the system by saying, "Well, I tell those people I do pay for them [her children]. I have been paying for them and that's why I'm where I'm at today."

Last week, she said she had a right to have as many children as she wanted, even though she couldn't support them.

Adams' comments about social welfare agencies not doing enough to help was widely criticized during the past week. She doesn't currently have a job. Her children were fathered by three men, including one who is in prison.

She lost her children two years ago after neglect accusations, but the family was reunited six months ago. Three of the 15 children don't live with her.