Thurston County needs to get more resources to those struggling to stay housed

With each passing week, the growth in unemployment numbers takes our breath away. The future is terrifying for many Americans.

Worries about paying the rent are rising. Gov. Inslee’s moratorium on evictions for non-payment is set to expire on June 4. And even if it is extended, it’s not likely to last much longer.

Landlords who need rental income to pay mortgages on their properties are worrying too. Some banks – such as Olympia Federal Savings – are offering forbearance measures to struggling mortgage holders, such as suspending a few payments now and adding them to the end of a mortgage. But there’s no data yet on whether this is an industry-wide practice.

There are very limited programs to help those who can’t make rent or mortgage payments. Just as people have struggled to get through the overwhelmed and complicated unemployment benefit system, help to pay for housing is hard to find, and can be a slow, frustrating process.

The Thurston County Housing Authority executive director Craig Chance reports that the federal CARES Act included $1.25 billion for more rental subsidies, but no one knows when or how much of it will land here.

The Community Action Council of Lewis, Mason and Thurston counties received $100,000 from the COVID-19 Fund created by the Community Foundation of South Puget Sound and the United Way of Thurston County to help affected workers pay a month’s rent or mortgage. According to the Community Action Council’s Kristin York, it’s taken the council about a month to disburse $36,000 of that fund to 33 households, even though there are 323 households on a pre-qualified waiting list.

At a city of Olympia virtual town hall meeting last week, York was asked why it’s taking so much time to get the aid to those who need it. She said it was partly because they were already busy and hadn’t added more staff, and partly because it was taking time for applicants to produce required information.

In contrast to programs for the still-housed, county and city officials have been able to help homeless folks quickly. An infusion of just under $1 million from the state has helped.

When shelters had to reduce the number of people they serve to space out beds, local governments provided motel rooms to a small number of the oldest and most vulnerable; motels are offering steeply reduced rates because they have few customers. Others have been accommodated at a new shelter that opened in just 10 days.

Local governments also have sent outreach workers into the woods to talk to people in tent camps about how to stay safe, set up hygiene stations, and distributed hand sanitizer.

And at least one church is offering precious opportunities to take showers and do laundry.

According to Keylee Marineau, the county’s Homeless Prevention and Affordable Housing Coordinator, there has not been a single known case of COVID-19 among Thurston County’s homeless population. That is an accomplishment.

But it’s unfortunate that the response to people who are already homeless has been so much faster than for those struggling to stay housed. One reason may be that people who are homeless don’t have to provide any documents, because no one worries about people faking homelessness.

People who need unemployment benefits do have to document their predicament. As the New York Times reports, that’s because unemployment benefit systems are set up to prevent fraud. The Times quotes Steve Gray, the director of Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency, who says the system was “built to assume that you’re guilty and make you prove that you’re innocent.”

The need for documentation slows down the Community Action Council and other similar programs. It is not unreasonable to want to make sure the donated funds are going to the right people, but in the midst of this crisis when so many are impacted, we wonder if there are ways to dial down such requirements and speed up the process.

Job losses and the economic panic attacks they cause are hard on families. Prolonged toxic stress can send whole families on a downhill path to despair. And the fear of homelessness is about as toxic as stress gets.

None of us knows how long our economy will be in this world of hurt. But many of us would breathe easier if we knew that none of our neighbors was at risk of becoming homeless because of this pandemic.

We urgently need housing programs that are bigger, faster, and last longer.