Thank you for being a part of this work
It is difficult to sum up this year in just one newsletter. Jesse Tree has been serving low-income Treasure Valley tenants for 20 years, but this one will go down as our most memorable year yet.
Jesse Tree continues to be the only Treasure Valley nonprofit focused on preventing housing loss before it starts. Over the years we've learned that giving cash and support directly to families during a crisis continues to be a proven and empowering way to keep people from being evicted and becoming homeless.
This year our services are needed more than ever. Many of our vulnerable neighbors have lost their jobs, can't pay their rent, and need help. Because the Treasure Valley was in a housing crisis before COVID hit, thankfully our team and programs were already prepared to act. Through it all, and despite many obstacles we faced, we doubled the number of families we helped this year compared to 2019. Our case management team has paid rent for over 375 families, while our volunteers have fielded over 5,000 calls on our Housing Crisis Line, contributing over 1,500 hours.
We're including a few highlights from our year below so you can relive it with us. Our community stepped up for us this year in a huge way, and we could not have done any of this without your support.
January - February: We supported 34 families with rent assistance, and we had no idea what was coming!
March: The COVID-19 pandemic hit Idaho and in line with the Governor's stay-at-home order Jesse Tree team moved our offices home. Our Operations Manager Cassandra transferred our housing crisis line to a remote line that our staff and volunteers could access, created online training materials, and on-boarded 20 community volunteers who continue to offer weekly support. We adopted new technologies to communicate with each other and serve our clients remotely.
April: Call volume on our Housing Crisis Line soared to 300% above its pre-COVID levels. We adjusted to meeting the demands while working from home. We advocated for increased funding in rental assistance and many foundations, corporations, and individuals stepped up to help. The J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation provided us with a $250,000 grant, allowing us to support an additional 20 families every month. The City of Boise came through with funding for a new Case Manager, Kendal. (Each new case manager we hire serves on average four to five new families each week with case management and rental assistance.)
May: Our staff shifted back to a hybrid home-office schedule. Requests for rental assistance did not let up, but we continued to help more families than ever before. Eviction court re-convened remotely and we attended as many hearings as we could. We were able to bring on another Case Manager through grants from PacificSource Health and United Way, and 363 individual contributions made during Idaho Gives.
June: We rolled out our Badge Program, providing online trainings on tenant and landlord rights and responsibilities, healthy communication, and financial literacy. We continued to work with the courts to find better ways to connect tenants in eviction court to financial support. We hired our new Program Manager, Evan, and Case Manager, Patti.
July: We began ramping up our efforts in a collaborative 5-year Campaign to End Family Homelessness with our partners Our Path Home, CATCH, Housing Authority, Health & Welfare, and WCA, and work in a Homeless Prevention Workgroup to define preventive efforts in the Treasure Valley with Our Path Home, Health & Welfare, and the Boise School District.
August: A record number of eviction hearings occurred when extended unemployment benefits ended. We shifted our approach to get some of our clients connected to a new rental assistance fund, financed by $15 million in CARES Act funding.
September: We held a retreat with our Board of Directors to draft our new 2-Year Strategic Plan, putting to paper our aspirations to help even more families with financial assistance in the years to come. We ramped up our work in eviction court with our legal intern staffing all court hearings. This was also the month the federal eviction moratorium was issued, but we did not see a decline in eviction court cases. (In fact, there have been over 300 eviction hearings in the Treasure Valley since September, with 25 scheduled for this week.) We received grants, individual contributions, and federal funding which allowed us to continue to add staff to our case management team with Morgan.
October: Numbers were released showing what we already knew: that the housing crisis did not let up during the pandemic. Rent increased by 10% in 2020 alone, while 30% of Treasure Valley residents continued to live paycheck-to-paycheck. We received $200,000 from the City of Boise to fund rental assistance for Boise households at risk of eviction. Our Executive Director Ali recorded her TEDx talk about our programs, and a Leadership Boise Team recorded a video of some of our clients for us so we could share their stories. We hired our Development Manager, Hannah, and our Lead Case Manager Nick brought on new AmeriCorps members.
November: We requested and received data from the Idaho Supreme Court to help us identify landlords commonly evicting tenants and strategized to get them to contact us before ending up in court. We got even more in the weeds in our work on the Campaign to End Family Homelessness and created work plans with our partners, defining how prevention will fit in with the overall plan to end homelessness.
December: We hosted a fun event - Housed for the Holidays - to celebrate our accomplishments and kick off the holiday season. We continue to raise funds for more case management and rental assistance through Avenues for Hope - please donate before the year ends if you haven't already!
Of course, throughout the year we continued our "bread and butter" Emergency Rental Assistance Program, paying rent for around 40-50 new families each month, while our volunteers fielded around 500 calls per month on the Housing Crisis Line. We also found time to support and check in with each other when times were hard.
Our 2021 vision is a community where all families have access to safe and stable housing.
As we look ahead to next year, we hope to make this vision a reality by supporting more vulnerable families than ever before. As always, we will stick to our values and offer reliable services in a compassionate and transparent way. We will use data and evidence to drive our programs and outcomes. We will work towards unprecedented collaboration in the Campaign to End Family Homelessness. We are keeping an eye on the rent relief package Congress passed, and we are hopeful for a future where we can actually help everyone who calls us. We will also be advocating to ensure that funds are distributed in a way that reaches our most vulnerable and highest-risk neighbors.
In the new year, we hope you will continue to join us in our mission to keep the traumatic, life-altering experience of eviction and homelessness from happening to our neighbors and community.
Thank you for being a part of this work.