Community-funded program aims to help homeless families find stability through rental subsidies, support services

March 30--Security deposits. Rental payments. Utility bills. Furniture.

The costs of moving to a new house or apartment add up quickly. Then there are the intangible responsibilities that come with autonomous living: work, child care, health care, transportation.

For families making the leap from life on the streets or in a homeless shelter to a permanent living situation, the money and skills required to juggle the transition can be particularly difficult. Some rise to the challenge, but others find the obstacles insurmountable and end up back in the very life they sought so desperately to leave.

Neil Donnelly, the Religious Coalition for Emergency Human Needs' family shelter director, has seen this scenario play out with the homeless families the agency serves as well as clients of other area family transitional shelters.

"One of our challenges is, with most of our families in the shelter for just 21 days before they leave," Donnelly said. "They don't have savings built up, or furniture. They often lack a support network to rely on."

Providing that support -- financial, education and mentorship -- is the goal behind a new program the Religious Coalition will launch. "After the Storm" follows the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Rapid Re-Housing Program but instead relies on community donations to provide a gradually decreasing rental subsidy to families transitioning from homelessness to permanent housing.

The program also offers case management and budget coaching services to help participants establish the savings needed to become financially independent, partnering participants with community mentors to offer emotional support and encouragement along the way.

With the program still in its infancy, Donnelly was working this week to identify a few prospective homeless families to begin, partnering them with sponsor congregation St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in the coming months. The downtown Frederick church raised $4,600 to support one or more family participants during an Advent fundraising campaign, according to Leslie Mansfield, the church's ministry leader for peace and social justice.

The funding will be used to subsidize a portion of participants' rent for six months, and to pay for what Donnelly called "normalcy" activities -- amusement park outings or baseball game tickets, not necessities but things that families in need might not otherwise be able to afford.

The coalition's case managers will provide regular check-ins with clients, helping them to set goals to improve their economic and social circumstances. This includes establishing a monthly savings plan of 2 to 5 percent of their monthly income and a separate emergency fund with enough to cover a full month's rent by the end of the sixth month, when the subsidy runs out.

Mansfield framed the program as a natural fit with the church's other social service programs, including as a host site for the St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore's parish conferences, which offer food, utility and rental assistance to families in need.

Mansfield noted how some of the families who might get help with a security deposit through St. Vincent de Paul end up returning later, faced with eviction.

"The idea of this project, of helping people develop the tools to be sustainable on their own, is really great," Mansfield said.

The mentorship component also gives parishioners the opportunity to better understand the struggles that those in need endure, she said.

As outreach spreads and program requirements solidify, Donnelly hoped to expand the program to include families from other agencies' shelters as well as clients from the coalition's Alan P. Linton Jr. Emergency Shelter.

Asked if he thought Frederick needed more affordable housing options for families leaving homelessness, Ken Allread, executive director of Advocates for Homeless Families, said yes.

Allread was "on the fence" as to the effectiveness of rental subsidies as a whole. Of the 15 families to whom Advocates providing short-term subsidies through HUD funding in fiscal 2017, three have since become homeless again, he said. The Religious Coalition, which has received HUD funding for rapid rehousing in the past, saw an even lower success rate, with four of the 11 households it helped with rental subsidies no longer in those housing situations, according to Nick Brown, the coalition's executive director.

But unlike HUD-funded subsidies, which have stringent eligibility requirements, the community-funded coalition program can be tailored to clients' specific needs, Donnelly said. It also offers an alternate funding stream amid uncertainty about federal funding for social service programs, which Brown hailed as a "major motivation" for the independent program.

Donnelly emphasized the motivation of participants as the deciding factor in success.

"A lot of is really up to them," he said. "They have to secure the lease, to put in the work. They have to want it."

Follow Nancy Lavin on Twitter: @NancyKLavin.

___

(c)2018 The Frederick News-Post (Frederick, Md.)

Visit The Frederick News-Post (Frederick, Md.) at www.fredericknewspost.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.