Keeping our neighbors housed during COVID-19
It has been a hard couple of months for everyone. We hope you are holding up and doing well. Thanks to your support and our staff's unending flexibility, dedicated work ethic, and commitment to working on the front lines of our community's housing crisis, we have been able to serve more people at risk of losing their housing than ever before. If you know any members of our team or our board, please don't hesitate to send them a word of thanks for their hard work.
After two months of serving clients remotely, Jesse Tree re-opened our physical office this week. Our team has done an incredible job at serving clients over the computer and phone, but we all felt that it was time. We've agreed to a set of rules to keep our staff and clients safe and set up our office spaces at a healthy distance apart.
As soon as COVID-19 occurred in March, our team was able to quickly transition our housing crisis line, case management and rental assistance to operating remotely. Since then, we had 10 dedicated volunteers step up to serve on the housing crisis line. We also hired two new case managers. Since we went remote on March 16th, our staff and volunteers have fielded over 1,100 calls and provided intensive supportive services to 110 families and rental assistance to 67 families, preventing their eviction. We continue to hear from new families every day who are unable to pay their rent. We know Idahoans across the state continue to wait for unemployment benefits from a gridlocked system. Others have used their stimulus checks to pay April's rent and are now facing down May and June. Our team has been attending eviction court every week- all hearings are being held telephonically - and there are more hearings being scheduled than ever before.
Currently, one of our biggest challenges is getting in touch with tenants before their court date. If anyone has an eviction court date set, they should call our housing crisis line ahead of time and we can connect them to one of our case managers and a pro bono attorney through our partnership with Concordia University School of Law's Housing Clinic. Our case managers can prepare tenants for court, help them set a household budget, and provide support and rental assistance throughout the court process so they can stay in their home.
If any tenants are in need of rental assistance, they should continue to call our housing crisis line and we'll talk through their situation on the phone. We can't provide everyone who calls with financial aid, but we can at least provide everyone some information and support, and we continue to slate a couple dozen new families every week for supportive services and rental assistance.
Although times are hard, the support we received during Idaho Gives left a lump in our throats. We received donations from 363 of you, which came to a grand total of $75,413! This will allow Jesse Tree to provide rental assistance to an additional 82 families this year, consisting of 225 individuals at risk of eviction. Another big thanks to our matching donors, the Holland & Hart Foundation, Idaho Power and the Boise Firefighter’s Community Assistance Fund, whose combined contributions matched $8,750 of your donations. Whether you contributed $15 or your $1,200 stimulus check, you gave us hope that we will be able to continue to provide support to people who most need it right now.
Let's continue keeping the traumatic, life-altering experience of eviction and homelessness from happening to our neighbors, and to our community.