Facing down our community's housing crisis, one family at a time
We hope you are enjoying the change in weather and beginning of these warmer months. Our team certainly is, and we have begun to work in-person at the Jesse Tree office with clients more often. March has been a busy time at Jesse Tree, with the number of families heading to eviction court and losing their housing not letting up. The housing crisis over the last year has gone off the charts, and the cases we are seeing are only getting more complex.
A few days ago, we received a call from a family of five in Canyon County who had just had the sheriff show up at their doorstep with an order to evict them. The family had not received any notice of the eviction and when they did not show up for their hearing, the judge issued a default judgment against them. They have lived in their unit for five years and have nowhere else to go. They're worried about finding a new place for themselves and their child, who is disabled, and two grandparents who are on oxygen. The family was in shock when they called us. They had some miscommunications with their landlord for a few months and were only a little behind in their rent, the sheriff served as their first notice of an eviction. They had been attempting to contact their landlord, a company based out-of-state, but they were unable to get a hold of them to discuss options.
The Jesse Tree team responded immediately, and our work with this family is ongoing. Our legal interns are attempting to reach the landlord and their attorney about this illegal eviction (so far, we have been on hold with their out-of-state office for hours, with no response back from the attorney) and our case management team is working on identifying backup options to put up the family in a hotel for a month. Should they be unable to stay in their home, Jesse Tree will also pay for part of the hotel stay and a security deposit to get them into a new place. This is just one example of many.
We are seeing more complexity in each tenants' situation as the local housing crisis worsens. This new reality is requiring our team to think outside of the box and creatively problem-solve to keep people housed. A national report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition (https://reports.nlihc.org/gap/2019/id) shows that there are only 40 affordable and available homes per 100 renting households who are extremely low income, at a shortage of around 37,000 units in the state of Idaho. When a family loses their home, it is nearly impossible for them to find a new place they can afford. There has also been an influx of big property management companies and out-of-state investors buying up rental units, offering little in the form of communication or compassion to their tenants.
While our case loads continue to become more demanding, this month we have also worked to make many process improvements to streamline our programs. We hope these changes will make our programs even more accessible to our partners, landlords, and folks who are highly vulnerable in our community, including BIPOC, people who speak English as a second language, and others who do not have digital literacy or access. We are starting an intensive outreach campaign with landlords, nonprofits, schools, and neighborhoods and apartment complexes with a high eviction rate. We hope this outreach raises awareness about our programs to people who otherwise might not reach out for help. Our case managers are working hard with families and spending more time with them to get them connected to American Rescue Plan benefits, jobs, and other resources.
We are excited to announce a new partnership with the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho, which will allow us to connect our clients to needed mental and physical health resources in real time. We value our partnerships, and are proud of our ability to work together with other agencies to get services and funding to people who need it.
We are also excited to announce that we now have two applications for assistance available online. One is www.jessetreeidaho.org/refer - allowing other agencies and landlords to send tenants in need our way. Please feel free to use this link if you know a tenant who may need our help. We have also created an online application for tenants who are unable to connect with us by phone - www.jessetreeidaho.org/apply. We hope this creates one less barrier for people when they are in the middle of a housing crisis. Another exciting update is that in an effort to be fully transparent with our results, we have uploaded data dashboards on our website, available at www.jessetreeidaho.org/programs. I encourage you to check them out!
We are committed to tracking accurate data to continually inform and improve our program design. Despite the ongoing challenges our team is facing, we continue to make progress, one step and one family at a time. Thank you for being a part of this work.