“That was then, this is now” is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot.

For Julie Oliver, the words describe her rollercoaster life.

Then — Homeless. Laid off from her job. Living in a tent in Burlingame State Park & Campground with her boyfriend, Patrick, and their 2-year-old son Korey. Feeling helpless, hopeless.

Now — Sharing a two-bedroom apartment in Pawcatuck with Patrick and Korey. Working two part-time jobs. Has money saved for the approaching end of seasonal work. Happy, hopeful.

So what made the difference? What helped her across a chasm wide as the state of Connecticut? In a word: MASH. Mystic Area Shelter & Hospitality, the organization whose slogan is “Ending family homelessness, one family at a time.”

“Every year in January, a count is done of the homeless families in the area, a snapshot of homelessness,” says Denise Collins, executive director of MASH. “Between 2010 and 2014, the numbers have been pretty much constant. Typically, there are around 50 families a night in shelter or transitional shelter.”

This year, the Point-in-Time (PIT) survey counted Julie Oliver and her family among 56 families – 149 individuals, including 93 children – in New London County who needed shelter. For Oliver’s family, the downhill slide had been escalating for months.

“I guess a little of the back story on it . . .” Oliver says over a cup of coffee. “I had a seasonal job and, in the winter, we became very behind on our bills and the landlords where we were living were about to start the eviction process. They weren’t bad people, the landlords . . .”

Julie Oliver was working two waitressing jobs at the time, as she is now – 60 to 70 hours a week – earning, she says, “five dollars and change” an hour, well below minimum wage; if a customer tipped only 5% or nothing at all, she was in trouble.

But her long hours weren’t enough. Oliver and her boyfriend were months behind paying the $550 rent on their small rental, a room with kitchenette and bath – “about from there to there,” she says, indicating a 10-foot-long stretch of counter space. Rather than wait to be evicted, they left, drifting from night to night, motel to motel, friend’s couch to friend’s couch. And, finally, the park: the three of them in a four-person tent, sleeping on an air mattress. She and Patrick are, as she says, “outdoorsy,” so camping out this past summer didn’t seem terrible. Not at first, anyway.

“But I ran out of money,” Oliver says. “I felt so helpless. I didn’t know what to do. So I called 2-1-1 (the state’s crisis intervention line), and they referred me to MASH.”

Oliver spoke with social worker Marlynn Benker but was initially reluctant to ask for help. When Benker asked how the family’s housing search was going, Oliver recalls, “I said, ‘We’re camping,’ and Marlynn said, ‘You OK with that?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, it’s kinda like a vacation.’

But when Benker called back a few hours later with an offer of temporary shelter, Oliver says, “I was so excited, so relieved. When I went to meet her, I was an hour early.”

Together, they visited the shelter, a two-story duplex in a residential section of Groton. “It was like the Taj Mahal,” Oliver says. “It had everything: beds, sheets, blankets, pots and pans, a couch to sit on. They had a crib for Korey. They even had a highchair for him. It’s a nice house.”

The family moved into that nice house, and 27 days later, moved out – into their own $750-a-month apartment in Pawcatuck. MASH housing coordinator Noreen Zupnik had found it for them; MASH covered their move-in costs.

And that — permanent housing for families — is the agency’s true goal.

“We need to minimize a family’s time in the shelter,” Collins says. “Studies have shown that homeless children are far more likely to become homeless adults.”

Short-term assistance often can stabilize at-risk families while they regain their financial footing: Rent subsidy. Utility subsidy. Help finding temporary housing. Resumé writing. Budgeting advice. Support that can lessen the stress and anxiety of homelessness.

“It’s very raw for them when they are in shelter,” says Kathy Keller, office manager and development director for MASH. “We rely on community support. We have three sources of income: our annual (December) appeal, government funding and local grants. We also have an event in the spring: “May Day for MASH” at the Seaport. May-day, as in ‘help,’ but also May 1.”

The organization gets by on an annual budget of about $300,000, Collins says – and a little help from its friends. Its office space, behind Union Baptist Church in Mystic, is donated by the church, and area businesses sometimes conduct fundraisers. Mystic Boathouse has raised about $1,400 for MASH, and Coogan & Gildersleeve Appliances hosts an annual event that brings in about $5,000 a year.

The drive to prevent homelessness is both a local priority and a national one.

Five years ago, President Obama signed the HEARTH Act, the Homeless Emergency & Rapid Transition to Housing Act of 2009. Its premise: Nobody should be homeless for more than 30 days. Its mandate: to reduce entry into homelessness and to reduce repeat episodes of homelessness.

“We’ve had a lot of success; we were the first area agency to reduce the rate of recidivism,” Collins says. “What we’ve been unable to do is reduce the demand . . . What could really change things in this area is affordable housing in the true sense: housing that people on minimum wage could afford.”

On the affordable housing scale, Connecticut scores poorly. The state has the 6th-highest rental costs in the U.S. According to MASH’s Fall 2014 newsletter, “The Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment in New London County is $1,035. If a worker were to spend no more than the standard 30% of income on housing, they would need to earn an hourly wage of $19.90 (equivalent to 2.3 full-time minimum wage jobs.)”

And high rents are just one of the three biggest obstacles confronting low-income workers.

The second: Seasonal jobs. As tourist magnets, New London and the surrounding towns are rife with warm-weather work, annually tossing workers into unemployment as snow and cold approach. Full-time work with benefits is about as common as four-leaf clovers. In 2013, the average unemployment rate in New London County was near 10%, well above the state average of 7.8%.

The third: poor public transportation, which makes car ownership a near necessity – something not possible for families unable to buy and maintain a car.

“What is an inconvenience for us is the beginning of a downward spiral for families living on the edge,” says Keller.

Julie Oliver is making payment on the 2005 Ford Taurus she needs to commute to her part-time, seasonal jobs. That makes it impossible for Patrick to use the car, even if his job-search were successful. In the past, Oliver says, he’s done landscape work, dishwashing and gas station attending. He gets occasional gigs singing and playing the guitar, she says, but, for now, his primary job is taking care of Korey.

“I couldn’t ask for a better father for my son,” she says. “He’s a loving, giving, caring person. I have the most amazing boyfriend.”

Together, they’ve faced the stigma of homelessness. “You feel so judged,” Oliver says. “People feel that if you’re homeless or struggling to find work, you’re lazy or on drugs. That’s just not the case.”

Although drug abuse and mental illness can and do lead to homelessness, many families lose their homes after a single financial crisis: a job loss, a divorce, an unexpected medical bill. Shelter help, Collins says, “is not people getting a handout. It’s people struggling to get by.”

As the days dwindle down toward winter, Oliver acknowledges feeling nervous – one of her jobs ends December 1 and the other has already begun to slow down – but she looks ahead with hope. MASH helped the couple sign up for heating assistance, helped them plan a budget. Their bills are paid. They have money saved to cover the lean months. “So I’m not just holding my head and saying, ‘What now?’” Oliver says.

Now, she can think back and remember the bad days. “I was feeling the most desperate I’ve ever felt, so I swallowed my pride and made that call. That was the best thing I ever did. We’re in a wonderful place right now, and that is because of MASH. We’re better than we’ve ever been . . . They were advocates for us. They had faith in us. They trusted us. They didn’t just look at a piece of paper and say, ‘They’re this kind of people.’”