Aug. 9, 2024
BY JOHN BAILEY
(The following is the complete two-part series about the Rapid Rehousing program in Catawba County.)
In the last year, NC 211 received nearly 1,000 calls for help with housing in Catawba County. Among those calls were 299 for emergency shelters and 370 for rent assistance.
The local Rapid Rehousing program is one resource available to help, and leading this initiative is Chasity Houck, Homelessness Response Manager at the Western Piedmont Council of Governments.
Houck, along with her team, work every day to connect the homeless to some form of shelter in four counties: Alexander, Burke, Caldwell and Catawba.
The United Way recently sat down to talk to Houck about how Rapid Rehousing works and its impact in Catawba County.
The focus of Rapid Rehousing is to provide help to families/individuals facing homelessness. Along with housing, this includes connecting them to other wrap-around services like healthcare, food resources, transportation. Examples of qualifying criteria includes being unsheltered or a survivor of domestic violence.
Houck points out that Rapid Rehousing is not meant to be a permanent solution to homelessness, but rather a first step towards permanent, sustainable housing.
“They are reviewed every three months because you’re going to encourage them to get housing, to get a job and be able to stay in that home,” Houck said. “We want to make sure we’re finding them homes that are affordable for them.”
Rapid Rehousing can also be a good stop-gap measure to help families find shelter when they either are waiting to get a housing voucher or have a voucher but are waiting to find some place to accept them.
Houck said cultivating partnerships with local landlords and landlord associations is key to having resources to offer families when they qualify for rapid rehousing.
There are several vouchers through WPCOG for families: stability vouchers, emergency housing vouchers, housing choice vouchers and mainstream vouchers.
In addition to these, local Rapid Rehousing vouchers include the back-at-home vouchers and the domestic violence vouchers.
A Coordinated Entry group of several local agencies and nonprofits meet bi-weekly to review the individuals/families on the Rapid Rehousing list and discuss what actions need to be taken to move them through the process of finding either immediate shelter or temporary housing. It’s also an opportunity to prioritize needs for those on the list.
Those priorities can vary depending on the individuals, their needs or their location.
“We’ve had insurance companies reach out to the homeless response team to talk to us about patients they have on dialysis and are unsheltered,” Houck said. “And we had an individual who was going through chemo, and we worked to get them off the street and into a shelter.”
Part 2 - Finding the right path
Once a family enters the program, the Homelessness Response team immediately sorts out their needs and begins to find ways to help with the transition into housing. This may include helping to complete applications for housing, securing deposits or transportation.
“They may have only the garments their wearing or they don’t have pots and pans or dishes they need when they move into a home,” Houck said. “It’s things we have daily in our homes that we take for granted.”
Partnerships with other agencies are key to the team’s ability to connect families to local services. They regularly work with Habitat for Humanity of Catawba Valley, Greater Hickory Cooperative Christian Ministry and Ashure Ministry, among others.
“A lot of times we’re working with people for whom housing is not always the first thing their needing. We encourage them to enter substance abuse treatment programs if needed,” Houck said. “Even if they say no initially, every time we talk to them, we go back to it.”
Despite the advice given, individuals sometimes decide to chart their own course, but the Homelessness Response team is still there for them if things go wrong.
“We remind them of the steps we suggested and ask if they’re ready to try them. It may be the third time of the fifth time, but I tell my team I want the families to know how to reach out to us because bumps happen in life,” Houck said.
Another key feature of the program is meeting families where they are in life.
The team regularly visits homeless in the field, which Houck believes helps her team make stronger connections and build greater trust with those in need.
Challenges
One of the biggest barriers Houck's team faces is the lack of affordable housing stock and affordable rentals, a problem every community in the country faces.
According to Harvard University’s Center for Housing Studies report for 2023: The supply of low-cost rental units has been declining consistently in recent years, leaving renters with lower incomes with even fewer affordable places to live. In 2021, just 17.1 percent of rental units offered contract rents below $600, the maximum amount affordable to households with incomes of $24,000 or less—about 30 percent of all renter households—down from 26.7 percent in 2011. The market has lost 3.9 million units with contract rents below $600 in the last decade, and the loss has been accelerating.
“I think getting landlords to be more positive to voucher programs is key,” Houck said. “I try to stay engaged with the landlord association and encourage them by explaining if they took someone through a voucher program, a lot of times there will be several case workers attached to that family.”
There would be a team the landlord can reach out to if issues come up with the family and if additional help is needed to keep the family in the home.