A year of housing loss & hard work
We first met Sara, a mom of two, in eviction court over Zoom where she was on her hospice bed in her living room. Sara had been hospitalized for a few months and had fallen behind in paying her rent. Her property manager, an out-of-state company, had hired a contract attorney.
When Sara wasn’t able to pay her rent, she was given a three-day eviction notice. On the fourth day, her property manager’s attorney filed for eviction. Five days later Sara was summoned to eviction court while she was literally on her deathbed.
Thankfully, our case management team paid Sara's rental arrears, preventing her eviction, so that she was able to pass peacefully in her home.
Sara's case is one of hundreds of Treasure Valley renters facing eviction. But we know that it’s very possible to keep people housed with a little bit of support and funding at the right time. Thanks to support from people like you, in 2021 we were able to:
Provide rental assistance and case management to 777 families in the eviction process,
Provide security deposit assistance and case management to 85 families who were at risk of homelessness,
Field almost 27,000 calls & texts on our phone line, and 3,286 applications for assistance,
Launch the Campaign to End Family Homelessness with our partners at Our Path Home,
And so much more! We look forward to sharing our 2021 annual report with you in the new year.
Thank you for being a part of this work. You have one more chance to take action this year by giving to Jesse Tree during the last day of our annual fundraising campaign, Avenues for Hope. Our success during this campaign will allow us to keep more of our neighbors housed in 2022.
We expect 2022 will be an even busier year for our team. Population growth and demand for rentals has increased and the vacancy rate is less than 1%. Renters are routinely being faced with rent increases they cannot afford. Out-of-state companies and investors continue to purchase and manage more rentals, which has led to these rentals being treated like profit centers. Oftentimes, this also causes relationships and communication between landlords and tenants to be strained. To top it off, Idaho continues to contain few protections for tenants in its code. As a result of all of this, in 2021, 873 eviction hearings were held in the Treasure Valley and 2,500 people became homeless. Those numbers only include folks we know about.
Even though the facts are intimidating, we have hope that our community can continue to work together to stay ahead of the problem of homelessness next year. Jesse Tree will be here to support as many tenants as we can.