One year with the Housing Crisis Line
This month, Jesse Tree is proud to celebrate the one-year anniversary of our Housing Crisis Line. Much has changed in a year, and our staff and volunteers continue to provide information and support to thousands of Treasure Valley tenants every day.
How the Housing Crisis Line Started
Just over a year ago, hundreds of tenants were calling our office for rental assistance each month and we were turning many people away. We realized that we were missing an opportunity to engage with people up-front. After many conversations with our staff, board, and partners, we decided to turn our phone line into a community service. Thus, the Housing Crisis Line was born!
We hired on an additional staff member, Cassandra, to run the program and created a conversation template we follow with each client. In each conversation we offer problem-solving questions, resources to direct people to, information, and advice.
We collect anonymized data on all callers, which allowed us to quickly realize the value of what we were doing. We learned over a third of people who've called us have not yet talked to their landlord, and we provide them with tips and tricks on landlord communication and how to set up a payment plan. Over a third of callers already have a three-day eviction notice, so we tell them about their rights and options. Our staff and volunteers are also resource experts and we've made thousands of referrals to other agencies.
Along with being a service, the phone line also acts as the entry point to our Emergency Rental Assistance program. We conduct a brief needs questionnaire on the Housing Crisis Line, which allows us to assess people's history with housing and financial insecurity and other issues. This allows us to triage requests for rental assistance and ensure our financial resources go to people who need them the most. Right now, we are able to assist on average 35% of people who call with rental assistance, even though many are highly vulnerable to homelessness and eviction:
16% of callers have been evicted before,
31% have been homeless before,
34% have been incarcerated before,
26% do not have a bank account, and
96% have a low or no credit score.
Housing Crisis Line During COVID
Since COVID happened, the demands on the Housing Crisis Line have increased and our call volume has tripled. As soon as we were required to work from home, Cassandra was able to move the phone line to remote and our team recruited ten dedicated volunteers, who continue to contribute at least 150 hours per month having supportive conversations with people at risk of eviction on the phone.
We very much need and appreciate our Housing Crisis Line volunteers - you can see below the difference in call volume that occurred between March and April. Since quarantine happened in mid-March, we have fielded over 2,000 calls, and we continue to field around 500 calls per month.
The people who are calling us are good people who are experiencing a temporary financial crisis, brave enough to reach out for help. Asking for help certainly isn't easy, especially if you've never had to do it before. If you know anyone in need of rental assistance, information and support, please don't hesitate to have them call us at 208-383-9486.
Thank you for staying engaged with our mission and for your ongoing support. We continue to grow our ability to meet the community's need for what we do during this difficult time because of our partners, funders, and volunteers. Let's keep the traumatic, life-altering experience of eviction and homelessness from happening to our neighbors, and to our community.