This morning I listened as one of my volunteers took a call. I knew immediately it was a Rensselaer County call regarding rental assistance. I heard her say, "Well, you first need to go to DSS and get a denial letter... and then go to the Roarke Center with that letter." I groaned internally, not because my volunteer had done anything wrong, but because I knew that this rigamarole of going to one office and then another, letter in hand, for an individual already stretched thin emotionally as well as financially, may or may not produce any results, and if it did, it would be a one time benefit of up to $200. Wonderful that the Roarke Center can provide anything at all... but woefully inadequate in the long term. People that struggle to pay rent don't just struggle for one month. Case in point: upon interviewing my volunteer after the call I found out that this caller had indeed already needed help paying rent in a previous month and had received a loan from DSS to cover this rent. Since that time she had been unable to re-pay that loan, making her definitely ineligible this time around for a second loan or any cash benefit at all.
The other reason I groaned at hearing this conversation is because I knew that if this caller had called just a month and a half prior - we would have had a better answer for her. Just one month ago a more generous rent assistance program had dried up - the program called the ECHO Project offered by a partnership between Joseph's House and Unity House in Troy. This program gleaned resources from federal stimulus funds for "Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing and the funds in the amount of $700,000 which were meant to last for 22 months and were completely depleted in 10 months. These funds provided short to medium term rental assistance and kept an estimated x households from entering homeless shelters and losing their apartments in those short 10 months. (specific stats forthcoming)
Besides being wonderful people who have helped so many people, Joseph's House has been 2-1-1's #1 referred agency in Rensselaer County since the inception of HPRP last October. Since that time 2-1-1 has referred 183 callers to the program.
While the HPRP funds were a wonderful addition to our database and we felt great referring 100's of people to it each month, that fact that people keep calling in Rensselaer County for rent assistance - after the funds have been depleted - tells us something about the reality of our economic situation and the need for a true longer term solution for it. As we look into the next year, it can be expected that all the HPRP federal stimulus funds will be depleted in all areas of the Capital Region - while the need for longer-term rental assistance will remain steady.
Nancy Chiarella, the Executive Director of CARES, a non-for-profit which coordinates funds and services among all homeless providers in a four county regions, let me know that a new initiative by the federal government, called the HEARTH Act, will provide some relief to the bleak resource landscape left in the wake of depleted HPRP funds. The HEARTH Act will not solve unaffordable housing problems in the Capital Region, but it will permanently provide Homelessness Prevention resources to the poor that need a longer term solution to unaffordable housing situations, unlike the one-time HPRP funds. These funds will not be available in the scope that HPRP funds were available, but are better than referrals to DSS and the Roarke Center which provide very temporary, one time solutions and are our current referrals.
Until the time that these funds roll into our region, we will painfully watch the receding funds and hope that a longer term solution to affordable housing problems (it will take more than HEARTH Act funds) comes to the families that need it, many of them families that call 2-1-1.
