housing | Tedford Housing

Giving Voice: Affordable housing, causes of homelessness in Maine

December 23, 2020 By Blaine Flanders Leave a Comment

This article was published in the Times Record on 12/11/2020, and written by Blaine Flanders, Community & Donor Relations Coordinator at Tedford Housing. You can read the article on the Times Record here.

One common flaw throughout Maine is the lack of affordable housing. This gap in housing causes more people to become at risk of experiencing homelessness. Extremely low-income households, including families and individuals, struggle enough to make ends meet, and more often than not it is just not enough income to support paying their rent. Accumulating debt is likely, now more than ever, and unavoidable for some as we head into the colder months.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, 27% of all renting households in Maine are extremely low-income. Extremely low-income households are at or fall below the poverty line, or are below 30% of the area median income. The lack of affordable housing across the state and in Mid-Coast Maine has created an indefinite need for housing. A lack of affordable housing means that Tedford guests typically stay longer at emergency shelters because it is harder to find a permanent place to live. As guests stay for longer periods of time at the emergency shelters, other individuals and families are turned away due to lack of vacant beds and units. There is a chain reaction caused by the lack of affordable housing in the community. Tedford Housing turned away 266 individual adults and 133 family members in the 2020 fiscal year alone.

These extremely low-income households are often the households that have several barriers in the process to securing permanent housing, and are at the highest risk of experiencing homelessness. Some of the barriers Tedford Housing’s clients face are past convictions, mental health problems, poor or no credit, and the inability to secure a job with a steady income. At Tedford Housing, our guests and clients all receive case management services to help break down the barriers faced when finding a permanent place to live. Case management is at the core of all Tedford Housing services. From emergency shelter, supportive housing, and homeless prevention and outreach services, a case manager is actively engaged and involved in that client’s success. Tedford’s case managers also work as housing navigators to help find the most suitable and affordable place to live for those clients who may have trouble accessing resources and housing vouchers, working with landlords and completing a housing search on their own.

Other factors that contribute to the number of people experiencing homelessness in Maine are home heating expenses and the percentage of household income spent on housing costs. Most low-income households are spending over half of their income on rent every month, leaving room for little else, not to mention emergency spending on medical bills or heating costs. Some households do not have money to spend on heat during the long winters here in Maine. When a child is cold, what is a parent to do? Many community programs, such as the Tedford Housing’s Warm Thy Neighbor program, provide emergency heating bill assistance to those in the community who qualify based on income and who may be at risk of homelessness. Other programs include the Maine Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and Cumberland County’s Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP).

As more households across Maine are spending an increased amount of their income on housing, leaving little for other expenses, an increasing percentage of those households are at greater risk of experiencing homelessness. This could create more stress on emergency shelters and other supportive services across the state. Tedford Housing and other community organizations are already expecting an increase of housing and service requests within the coming months as eviction moratoriums end and winter begins. If you want to make a difference in your community, support your local non-profit housing and homelessness organizations. You can also advocate for change through your local legislator or town council. The only way to stop this problem is to increase the number of affordable housing units in the state of Maine, and those at risk of homelessness need your help.

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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: Housing people during COVID-19

May 14, 2020 By Rota Knott Leave a Comment

The following article was published in The Times Record on 5/8/20 and written by Jennifer Iacovelli, Tedford Housing’s director of development.

A week into our second monthlong stay-at-home order, and it’s hard to get away from the news stories about COVID-19. It has affected our everyday life, personally and professionally, in a way that I’m not sure any of us were ever prepared. The articles from our Giving Voice column have illustrated how Tedford Housing, The Gathering Place, Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program and Oasis Free Clinics have reacted to and adjusted services to meet the needs of our community’s most vulnerable neighbors.

While we have all had to make changes in the way in which we work with our clients, we continue to offer much-needed programs and services. Even while practicing extreme social distancing, Tedford Housing’s overarching goal continues to be to find our clients safe, permanent housing. This feat can be challenging enough without a global pandemic, as our clients have many barriers to break through in the process of finding that pathway from homelessness to home.

We have shared that Tedford Housing’s buildings are closed to the public and staff are working from home as much as possible. Case managers are meeting with clients mostly via phone, email or text. Zoom is used from time to time, but only if the client has the capability of using such an application.

So how does this new, different way of working affect finding housing? For one thing, it slows the already slow process down. Tedford Housing staff aren’t the only ones working remotely. Landlords and property managers may not be in their offices and only checking their email or messages once/day or even once/week. Same thing with the offices that manage housing vouchers. In-person tours of a potential apartment are no longer happening during COVID-19, so everything is done via a camera, including inspections that are required by specific housing vouchers once an apartment is found. Vetting is much more difficult for both landlord and tenant when you lose the ability to be in the same room with a person.

As far as the case managers at our adult and family shelters go, it’s business as usual. They may not be in the office every day during the week, but they continue to work with clients to find apartments, fill out applications and guide our shelter guests through the many steps it takes to get to the point of signing a lease. One of our families moved into an apartment without seeing it first. Though it made the mom a bit uncomfortable, she talked with her case manager about how she could always look at other options in a year if she wasn’t happy with the apartment. The main goal was to move out of the shelter into permanent housing.

Two of what we call long term stayers in our adult shelter and one family in our family shelter have found housing during this difficult time. Being in the shelter for over 300 days, these individuals overcame some big obstacles to sign their leases with the help of their case manager. Moving has become particularly difficult because most of our clients rely on help from friends. With social distancing and restrictions on travel with people other than your household become a challenge. Our partners at Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity’s Restore are temporarily closed, which limits our ability to help clients access the household items they need to furnish their new apartment. We have to take extra precautions with volunteers who help sort and gather donations to fulfill clients’ moving checklists. Once in an apartment, our case managers then “follow” clients for up to 12 months to help ensure a smooth transition. Losing the personal touch of on-site meetings can be tough because you lose the cues that body language can give you if a person is having a hard time. Many of our clients are struggling with isolation, financial stresses and addiction, making it harder to keep people stable and supported via the telephone.

Tedford Housing is making it work during this pandemic, especially our case managers. We are happy to report that people are still being housed even if it takes a bit more time.

The interruption of homelessness: Getting lost in the fray

November 28, 2019 By Rota Knott Leave a Comment

The following article was published in The Times Record on 11/25/19 and written by Jennifer Iacovelli, Tedford Housing’s director of development and Giff Jamison, Tedford Housing’s director of operations.

When people experience homelessness, lives in progress become lives interrupted. The longer someone remains in homelessness, the more destabilizing the effects of that interruption. Each individual or family has a story or circumstance that brought them to a place of not having a home.

Much has been written about the causes of homelessness; housing affordability, family separation, job loss, health catastrophe, etc. In recent years, homeless advocates have emphasized the cost savings of placing people in housing versus lengthy stays in shelters or other public institutions such as jails or hospitals. This is a strong argument for embracing Housing First strategies for combatting homelessness.

But perhaps we don’t talk enough about what happens to people when housing is restored. For a young man in Bath, an apartment in a Tedford Housing supportive housing building offered him a stable platform to enroll and participate in ongoing community mental health services, including medication management. As a result, he has been able to reduce the frequency of delusions and disturbing thoughts that plagued him for years when he lived on the streets.

For the mother and her teenage children in Brunswick that survived living in their vehicle for a year, stable housing in a three bedroom apartment means an older daughter enrolled in courses to learn skills in the building trades and a son on his way to graduating high school.

We can’t forget the older gentleman who lost his apartment when the building he was living in was sold. As he did the best he could sleeping in barns and the porches of friends, his physical condition worsened, and when he got to the Tedford Housing adult shelter he required a number of extensive surgeries to restore his mobility. Today, he thrives in his apartment in Lincoln County and has many supportive neighbors and friends to connect with. One need only to shake his hand to know what housing has meant to him.

These are just a few success stories that come from Tedford Housing’s broad umbrella of programs and services. The successes come with a lot of work on the part of our clients who are often doing such work in times of crises. They come with a lot of support from our amazing case managers.

These successes can get lost in the fray when tragic and unexpected incidents like the one that happened at Tedford Housing’s family shelter earlier this week occur. The bulk of this article was written before the shooting occurred and we are heartbroken that our clients, staff and those surrounding us were exposed to the trauma an event like this causes. We are thankful for the support we have received from our partners and community members. For people who stopped by with hugs, food and a willingness to help in any way they were able. We are thankful for the efforts of the mental health community who are working with us to provide the counseling support for families in our shelter and others affected.

Getting our fellow citizens experiencing homelessness out of the cold and roughness of the Maine weather is a compelling enough reason to offer shelter and, ultimately, housing. But when housing is restored for people who have gone without it, sometimes for months or years, so too is the progress in their lives. We cannot lose sight of this simple fact. As Thanksgiving and the holidays approach, this may be a good time to think about the meaning of home, and why providing shelter is just the first step of the work we do at Tedford Housing, with the ultimate goal being stable, permanent housing.

A Day in the Life at Tedford Housing

July 18, 2018 By Rota Knott Leave a Comment

The following article was published in The Times Record on 7/13/18

If you ask people in the Brunswick community about what Tedford does, many respond that we provide a shelter for people that are homeless. In fact, many people still call our organization Tedford Shelter, referring to our adult shelter on Cumberland Street. (We changed our name to Tedford Housing in 2006 in recognition of the organization’s evolution to include permanent supportive housing and homeless prevention services. Of course, we also have a family shelter in Brunswick as well.)

On a given day in June, we took a count of how many lives Tedford touched in a single day. This exercise provides a more comprehensive view of the role that Tedford plays as being the organization that delivers comprehensive services to individuals and families experiencing homelessness or at risk of becoming homeless in southern Midcoast Maine.

We first looked at our emergency shelters for adults and families which serves those who meet the definition of being literally homeless (living in cars, on the streets or in places unfit for human habitation). The adult shelter provided beds for 16 individuals, including 12 men and 4 women. Our family shelter provided safe and temporary housing for 6 families which included 23 family members. In addition, Tedford Housing case managers assisted 13 families and 1 individual (a total of 35 family members) who were homeless and unsheltered in our community through homeless prevention outreach services.

That’s a total of 74 people Tedford served in the Brunswick community who were literally homeless. (And, yes, that’s a technical term in housing.)

Next, we counted those individuals and families receiving what we call follow-up stability case management services. These “stability” clients have been housed by our case managers after a period of being homeless. Our case managers “follow” these clients for up to a year to help make sure they are able to maintain housing. On this day in June, stability services were provided to 13 individuals and another 6 families, which included 15 family members. On the same day, our homeless prevention program provided security deposits and other assistance to 12 households, with 27 family members, who were at risk of becoming homeless.

Still counting? Those numbers get us up to 129 people served by Tedford Housing on this day in June with homeless prevention and emergency shelter services.

Our Merrymeeting Project for homeless youth provided case management and direct services to 32 homeless and unaccompanied youth in the Brunswick, RSU1 and SAD75 school districts. Though school is now over, these services are provided year round to help ensure continuity of education and stability for these youth.

Adding our youngest clients brings us up to 161 individuals being served by Tedford on any one given day.

Next, we look at our most stable clients in our supportive housing units in Bath, Brunswick, Lewiston, Auburn and Augusta. These apartments for individuals and families provide a home, complete with on-site case management support, to 64 individuals and family members. As an extension of our supportive housing in the Lewiston / Auburn area, we also counted 9 literally homeless persons being served through our outreach case management. An additional 8 household members received stability services in the area.

While the impact of providing overnight emergency shelter to 39 individuals and family members can’t be over stated, the numbers above reveal the full range of services Tedford Housing delivers every day through its case managers, shelter staff, administrative support and dedicated volunteers.

On this day in June, collectively, 242 persons who were either experiencing homelessness, at risk, or striving to maintain stability after having emerged from homelessness, were connected to Tedford Housing’s programs. All of our programs work together towards a common goal, to provide pathways to stable homes and futures for our neighbors who have experienced homelessness in the Southern Midcoast.