NEWS

Can a temporary fix lead to permanent results?

BY HANNAH HERNER

This time last year, homeless service providers got a chunk of money — CARES Act money sent down from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development meant to get people under a roof, and quickly. It’s through a program called Rapid Rehousing.

Nine area organizations took on this challenge — Catholic Charities, Community Care Fellowship, Nashville CARES, Nashville Downtown Partnership, Oasis Center, Step Up on Second, The Contributor, Salvation Army and Safe Haven. For four of them, it was their first time participating in Rapid Rehousing. Seven of them brought on new staff to handle the caseload.

When the group of organizations set out to take part in Rapid Rehousing in November of 2020, the goal was to house a total of 400 people. Data from Metro Homeless Impact Division shows that as of Nov. 15, 2021, 602 individuals have been housed. Between them they’ve spent about $2.7 million thus far. The contract is set to end in September of 2022, and a spokesperson for Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, who is reimbursing organizations as they spend on clients, says there’s no concern that that money will run out before then.

The Rapid Rehousing program is a strategy that is meant to provide short-term rental assistance and services, usually with a one-year expiration date. This typically looks like paying rent and helping to secure a form of income while gradually stepping the person down until they can pay the full rent themselves.

With this program starting in the winter, organizations wanted to get people out of the elements quickly, and opted for temporary housing options — putting a number of participants in motel rooms with one-year “leases.” The clock began ticking to find each of these people a more permanent place to stay. And the 603 housed include a portion of those still in this limbo. While many have moved onto a more permanent option, others still lay in wait.

Step Up on Second was one that opted not to put clients in hotels in the interim. But recently, they were forced to for some on the sex offender registry for whom it is very challenging to find housing for. Arthur Murray, vice president of the Southeast division of the organization, argues that the Rapid Rehousing program doesn’t work as well for those who are chronically homeless, struggle with mental health problems or who can’t hold down a job for whatever reason.

Subsidized housing is too scarce, and can take too long to get, to fit well within the year timeline of RRH. Step Up typically goes for permanent supportive housing, a different funding bucket that offers care indefinitely.

“[Rapid Rehousing] is not a model that we like to sign up with. Because the end outcome could be that if we don't find a permanent housing solution for the tenants, then they could return to homelessness. You have a year to do that, so it gives you a little bit of time to work with those people,” Murray says.

While there’s not a set limit on the amount of money available to spend per client, there is a limit on the amount of money an organization can get total, based on how many clients they offered to work with — so they must spend wisely.

Gary Basham is one relative success story of the Rapid Rehousing program. Since March, he’s been in a public housing unit for seniors that is subsidized, so he pays 30 percent of his monthly income for rent — no matter what that income may be. He wouldn’t be able to afford anything more, not even the $100 The Salvation Army was asking him to pay as they stepped him down, he says.

Before his current spot, he was staying at a motel for three months, after being moved from the original extended-stay hotel he was in after the staff there found a dead body, and before that, he was living in an encampment.

He wasn’t sleeping in the cold anymore, but while he waited at a motel for his current place, the environment wasn’t safe.

“It was scary — there's a lot of drugs out there. Especially fentanyl that's laced with embalming fluid, it's killing a lot of people. I lost a few friends out there,” he says. “There are no security guards at night. And it just goes wild. There are shootings there, there's robberies, there's stabbings, there's fights. And I've still got friends that live out there that are waiting for housing right now. They've gotten their Section 8 approval. They're just waiting to find the place.”

Finding a landlord that accepts Section 8 vouchers is creating a bottleneck in the Rapid Rehousing system. Even though the voucher gives guaranteed rent, homeless service providers try to sweeten the deal by offering case management along the way.

“I think the landlords have been the challenge — recruiting new owners to work with the voucher or to accept persons with challenging backgrounds,” Murray says. “Because even for our Rapid Rehousing people, it might not just be the criminal background, but poor credit history. So everyone is running some sort of check on the person. So it's convincing them that everyone deserves that second chance, right?”

Of the organizations taking part, Safe Haven has housed the largest number — more than 200 individuals at last count. But many of their clients are families with children and they have existing landlord connections — they are starting out with 27 connections compared to The Contributor’s zero, for example.

Community Care Fellowship was able to up its number to 60 with the help of 48 units soon to be available to their clients at a refurbished senior living center called High Road.

The list for Section 8 housing choice vouchers won’t open again until November of 2023, though some are receiving vouchers today that got on the 10,000 person waiting list when it was open back in 2019. Social workers also watch for wait lists to open at MDHA’s project-based properties monthly. Not open spots, but open wait lists. If that sounds bleak, that’s because it is.

Outside of subsidized options like these, there are few options that are affordable, where within a year's time, people could step down from having their rent totally paid for, to having enough income and wherewithal to pay for the whole price themselves.

Basham now has a case manager at Centerstone, and recently won the chili cook off at his apartment complex. In the span of being part of Rapid Rehousing he got sober, got an emotional support dog named Roxy, and made some friends along the way. But it’s not his last stop — he hopes to get a bigger apartment so his family can visit more.

“Thank God the Salvation Army took care of my end, because I couldn't afford [rent]. And now they have gotten me into this place which I thank God every day for and life is good right now,” Basham says.

Ryan LaSuer of Community Care Fellowship says the Rapid Rehousing program has created more unity amongst homeless service providers. With such scarcity in affordable units and willing landlords, it can often feel like a competition between organizations. He says they were all being more transparent about their goals, strategies, and working in unison with this program.

“We saw it, honestly, as an opportunity that might not come around again,” LaSuer says. “Just to see that opportunity and to want to be a part of it collectively with the other community members that were partaking in that funding.”

This CARES Act-funded Rapid Rehousing is indicative of what homeless service providers have going for them now — money, government money, aplenty. But it remains to be seen if that can all be converted to homes for people experiencing homelessness, places they can stay put for the long run. There simply aren’t enough of those places. If homeless service providers can’t wrap it up by this time next year, those folks will be back on the streets.