Tedford Housing

Creating pathways from homelessness to home.

Giving Voice: The realities of family homelessness

By Leave a Comment

Giving Voice

The following article was published in The Times Record on 7/26/19 and written by Annie Rose, a Denning Fellow and rising senior at Bowdoin College.

Imagine, for a moment, you and your children become homeless. There’s no space at the local family shelter. With no other options, you are forced to sleep in your car or in a tent at a local campsite. Add to that situation a heat wave with temperatures reaching and consistently staying in the 90s for several days. How will you and your family survive the heat? How will you stay cool and hydrated?  

On top of managing survival in harsh weather conditions, homeless families face consistent difficulties trying to get their basic needs met. First, think of the quality of sleep parents in crisis get while in their van or in a tent, unsure if where they’ve landed for the night is safe. With a better sense of their level of exhaustion, where would it leave your energy level during the day to address the immediate needs of your family?  

Homeless families expend enormous amounts of energy every day trying to take care of basic needs that people who aren’t homeless easily take for granted. How will you stay clean and handle regular sanitary needs? Where can you access water to drink or brush your teeth? Where will you shower? How will you make sure you and your children have adequate food and nutrition?  

Beyond meeting basic needs, families experiencing homelessness face challenges externally in the greater world. What will the start of the school year look like for your school-aged children? How will you navigate enrollment processes without a household address? How will you make sure your kids get to school every day and are ready to learn?  

Many homeless families choose to not disclose their living status. For some families living in vans, cars or in tents, disclosing their living status presents certain risks. They wish not to “stand out” in society as being homeless, worried that it will invite scorn or judgment from others. Additional challenges include keeping up appearances to maintain employment. Caring for children while homeless presents additional challenges for maintaining their safety and wellbeing. Some parents choose to try and find other family members to assist during the time they are homeless, but this is not always an option. Many families choose to keep their homelessness hidden from certain people out of concern the authorities may find out and take their children away from them.  

According to MaineHousing’s annual point-in-time count, which tracks trends for people experiencing homelessness in our state, there was a slight increase in homelessness in general from 2018 to 2019. Of the households counted as homeless on Jan. 22, a third were families with children. Specifically, 448 people who responded to the count were in households with at least one child, 66 more than in 2018, showing an increase in homeless families by 17%. In 2018, Maine agencies served 6,454 unique clients experiencing homelessness, a slight increase of 1% from the prior fiscal year. Roughly 10% of these clients were homeless families.  

Tedford Housing has been serving more unsheltered folks in the southern Midcoast area overall. By unsheltered, we mean individuals living in places unfit for human habitation, such as vans, campsites, sidewalks, abandoned buildings and other unsafe situations. Currently, we are serving a notably higher number of families in unsheltered conditions.  

Local unsheltered families live in their vehicles at large retail store parking lots, or tent in nearby camp sites with the threat of remaining homeless as cold weather hits. Occasionally, families may find temporary respite in a motel through area churches, but often funds run out and they are forced to return to homelessness.  

Tedford Housing operates a family shelter on Federal Street. However, Tedford must turn away roughly 20 families a month due to lack of available space at our shelter. As of July 24, we have already turned away 26 total families in July so far, with 22 of those families calling Tedford Housing for the first time. 

Tedford Housing has the capacity to house only six families at a time. Typically, families remain at the shelter for three to six months prior to their exit into permanent housing. Families must wait to obtain widely coveted housing vouchers, due to limited affordable housing in our area. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2019 Out of Reach report, in order to afford a 2-bedroom rental home at Fair Market Rent, a household must earn $19.91/hour in the state of Maine. However, the average renter wage is $11.82 per hour, as the state minimum wage is $11 per hour. 

Many factors play a role in the onset and continuation of homelessness. Catastrophe, illness, fleeing domestic violence, divorce and family separation or any similar circumstance can contribute to a family becoming homeless. But family homelessness is not an unsolvable issue. With the right supports and availability of affordable housing resources, families will restore stability to their lives and provide a better opportunity for their children to not just survive, but to succeed and thrive.  

Annie Rose is a Denning Fellow and rising senior at Bowdoin College. Giving Voice is a weekly collaboration among four local non-profit service agencies to share information and stories about their work in the community. 

Giving voice: Creating pathways with opportunities to become involved with Tedford’s mission

By Leave a Comment

Giving Voice

The following article was published in The Times Record on 6/28/19 and written by Elise Hocking, the Maine Community Fellow at Tedford Housing and a rising sophomore at Bowdoin College. 

During my first year at Bowdoin College, I ran down Federal Street countless times on my way to the bike path along the river. Going into the summer, I felt confident navigating my way around the town of Brunswick. To my surprise, on my first day at Tedford Housing, I learned that one of the houses that I consistently ran by was Tedford Housing’s family shelter. While the shelter is not marked by a Tedford sign, I was still shocked by my lack of awareness. 

This summer, as the Maine Community Fellow at Tedford Housing, my primary job is to evaluate and improve Tedford’s volunteer program. However, in order to do this work, I need to be familiar with the needs of the community of Brunswick and the nonprofits and individuals seeking to address these needs. Over the course of the last several weeks, I have spent much of my time talking to staff at other nonprofits, active community members, and guests at Tedford’s shelters in order to deepen my understanding of the pressing, yet often overlooked, challenges that exist right here in Brunswick. 

Although my time at Tedford has just begun, I have come to witness how homelessness intensifies every other struggle an individual faces. Food insecurity, domestic abuse, substance abuse, and mental health issues are all escalated by homelessness. In high school, I spent significant time focused on anti-poverty efforts through the lens of education. My belief in the transformative power of education has certainly not diminished, however, I have quickly adopted the mindset of Housing First. 

Without the stability of a place to stay each night, it is unlikely that someone facing homelessness will have the ability to devote sufficient energy to seek out additional resources. Homelessness produces a short-term mindset because an individual has to constantly worry about physical safety and shelter. Before someone can be expected to take the necessary and often complicated steps to improve their situation, they should have access to housing, nutritious food and support. 

My role in furthering Tedford’s mission of “creating pathways from homelessness to home by partnering with people and their communities in Midcoast Maine,” is to increase community support through volunteers. In beginning this work, I met with the volunteer coordinators at Midcoast Hunger Prevention Program and The Gathering Place to learn about best practices in recruiting, retaining, and appreciating volunteers. Unlike MCHPP or The Gathering Place, some people do not know that it is possible to volunteer for Tedford. While Tedford’s volunteer program is not as developed as that of our partners, Tedford still relies on the contributions of volunteers to support its services. 

Volunteers for Tedford work in the office, the storage unit that houses donations, the gardens, and in their own kitchens. Tedford’s largest volunteer effort is the Meal-A-Month program through which restaurants, churches, neighborhood groups and individuals take turns providing a meal for guests at the adult shelter every single night of the year. 

Beyond our Meal-A-Month program, Tedford Housing is currently looking to grow our other volunteer roles. If you are a gardener, you can help maintain our plots at our family shelter and affordable housing units. If you are creative and organized, you can help us connect entering and exiting guests with donated items. If you are already a supporter of Tedford Housing, you can help us relaunch the Friends of Tedford group. These are just a few of the ways you can get involved in Tedford Housing’s mission. If you are interested in volunteering or becoming more involved with Tedford, please email me at volunteer@tedfordhousing.org. We would love to have you join us in Tedford’s many initiatives to end homelessness. 

Giving Voice: Thinking Long-term with Supportive Housing

By Leave a Comment

The following article was published in The Times Record on 5/3/19 and written by Jennifer Iacovelli, Tedford Housing’s director of development.

Between 2005 and 2011, Tedford Housing embarked on a campaign to develop six supportive housing facilities for previously homeless individuals and families. These buildings, located in Brunswick, Bath, Lewiston, Auburn and Augusta, offered permanent housing with key case management services attached to them. Tenants have regular leases and no predetermined or expected length of stay. 

Supportive housing provides a vital platform for people to move forward in other areas of their lives like employment, education and improved health. Using a Housing First approach, Tedford Housing’s 37 supportive units provide safe, clean and affordable apartments with on-site case management for previously homeless individuals and families. Many are occupied by adults and families who have experienced disabling conditions like mental illness and/or substance abuse and/or catastrophic events like domestic violence that have resulted in homelessness. Many have had multiple shelter stays. 

According to HUD, taking a Housing First approach means that individuals and families experiencing homelessness are quickly connected to permanent housing without preconditions and barriers to entry, such as sobriety, treatment or service participation requirements. While still a relatively new approach, it has seen some promising results in keeping tenants in housing and off the streets and/or out of shelters. Tedford’s supportive housing case management services include assistance with applying to available benefits such as MaineCare and SSI, referrals to job training and employment services, coordination of services with health care providers, crisis prevention, referrals to substance abuse counseling and treatment, assistance with basic living skills and mitigating landlord-tenant issues. 

The services and resources that supportive housing provides are essential for people like Brian. Brian, 44, has lived in our Everett Street supportive housing unit since 2013. He had been in and out of homelessness, with several stays at Tedford’s adult shelter, since 2009. At one point, he had sold two cars and quit a job in Maine with the hope and promise of a job from a friend who was living in South Carolina, only to find out that the job fell through when he arrived. When he came back home to Maine, without a car or a job, his mom drove him to Tedford Housing. 

The two biggest barriers to finding housing for Brian were high rents and location. His mother and daughter live in Woolwich so it was important for him to be somewhat close to them. His advice for people who find themselves in and out of homelessness as he did is to be patient. Finding housing can take time when you factor in the paperwork, searching and waiting for vouchers and available units. He was lucky to get the call from Tedford’s shelter alerting him of an open unit becoming available at Everett Street. 

Located in the heart of Brunswick, Everett Street offers easy access to the essentials. The location is a quick walk to Hannaford, RiteAid, Curtis Memorial Library and to Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program, where Brian also volunteers. Without transportation, it’s important for Brian and other tenants to be able to walk or take the bus. They can hop on the Brunswick Explorer from Hannaford and get to places like Walmart and Sweetser. Brian is thankful for the support he gets from Tedford and says they are “good people to work with.” 

Brian says that the best part about living at Everett Street is the community. There are eight single studio units. People tend to keep to themselves, he says, but they are there for each other if someone needs help. He is appreciative of the support from case management and from the community, especially during the holidays. 

The average length of stay for tenants at Everett Street is 4.2 years, and the average length of stay across all of our supportive housing units is 2.7. While evictions still do occur in supportive housing, some tenants also end up moving on to other permanent housing option and pay market rental rates. Many, like Brian, thrive in the supportive housing setting and have no immediate plans to move from their found community. 

What’s Next for the Tedford Housing Resource Center

By Leave a Comment

The strength of the people of this region who understand and empathize with the lived experience of homelessness is very powerful. The staff and board of Tedford Housing are very grateful for the support it has received from the community as the Town of Brunswick wound its way through a zoning ordinance process for shelters and Tedford Housing advocated for reasonable outcomes. After a little over one year, the moratorium on building shelters in Brunswick has ended. A zoning ordinance is in the books, as is a licensing process for shelters, which is somewhat unique for Maine municipalities.

So what’s next? For now, Tedford Housing is assessing where we are and where we want to go in the short term in regards to building a new facility. We do know that increasing numbers of adults and families experiencing homelessness exceeds our capacity, and we are committed to leading a community response that addresses this gap. We will continue to work with our partners on identifying possible sites for the full vision of a resource center. Throughout this process, in addition to discussing the technical aspects of zoning, we hope we have at least increased the knowledge within the whole community of the nature and extent of homelessness in Brunswick and the surrounding area.

Tedford Housing officials catching their breath before restarting planning for new Brunswick facilities (Times Record, April 15, 2019)

Brunswick Town Council approves zoning rules for homeless shelters (The Forecaster,  April 10, 2019)

Brunswick Town Council to Hold Special Meeting on Shelters Monday, April 8th

By Leave a Comment

The Brunswick Town Council has scheduled a special meeting focused specifically on shelters for Monday, April 8, 2019 at 6:30pm. The public meeting will be held in the council chambers in the town hall located at 85 Union Street in Brunswick. As usual, these meetings are open to the public and available for viewing on Brunswick Cable TV3.

The meeting and its agenda has not been posted to the town’s website as of the publishing of this article, but it is expected that it will include a public hearing and possibly voting on both ordinances for zoning and licensing for shelters. If the council gets to vote in this meeting, after the public hearing and discussion by the council regarding the proposed ordinances, the moratorium on building shelters in Brunswick will come to en end.

UPDATE: The meeting agenda and packet documents were published to the town’s website a few hours after this post was published. You can view these documents in the list of links at the bottom of this post.

 If you are looking for ways in which to show your support for Tedford’s comprehensive and important approach to creating pathways from homelessness to home in our community, here are a few actions step you can take:

  • Attend this upcoming meeting on April 8th and any that follow, if necessary. Consider speaking about how valuable a resource Tedford is to the community. (You can find posted agendas from the town here or look for updates on our website here.)
  • If you are a Brunswick resident, you can contact your town council representative directly (a list of members can be found here).
  • Write a letter to the editor of The Times Record (find guidelines here)

Here are a few talking points to consider:

  • Any performance standard must be reasonable and should not single out shelters. Tedford is an organization that has been in the community for over 30 years and is already held to a number of best practices and other accountabilities through MaineHousing and other funding resources.
  • Tedford Housing’s vision will help reduce the high amount of individuals and families turned away every month, while also increasing efficiencies in delivering our essential programs and services. (Our FY2018 program and financial stats can be found here.)
  • A comprehensive approach will result in the reduced risk of homelessness in the Brunswick area community, a faster return to housing stability for youth, adults and families, healthier households and increased self-sufficiency.
  • It is important that Brunswick, as a regional center, includes districts that allow services to help our neighbors who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.

If you have any questions regarding Tedford Housing, this project or anything related to the zoning or licensing ordinance process, contact executive director Craig Phillips at 207-729-1161, #102 or craig@tedfordhousing.org.

FMI and some history, visit the following links:

Sign up for our monthly e-newsletter

MailChimp
reCAPTCHA

PO Box 958, Brunswick ME 04011