One question you might ask about the first step of leaving homelessness, is how do you even begin to get a home?
If you don't have the provable income, references, credit history, or general organization, you really can't even start, if you want to play the game that everyone else is playing. It's hard enough for most people to really move into a new place, so what can be done to assist those who could obtain a residence, but face hurdles? Is there any way that those with resources could integrate homeless people into the existing market, if it's going to cost them anyway?
Master Leasing, a (somewhat awkwardly named) legal landlord-tenant-nonprofit contract, was made popular by the program Pathways to Housing, pioneered in San Francisco during the late 90's. While there are examples of great success, many such programs have received criticism in terms of the conditions that they’re able to guarantee for their clients, reports of poor living conditions are notorious.
JOIN, a Portland based nonprofit group, started in 2015. It handles the logistics that almost people can’t in terms of renting property such as that credit score negative pain mystery or criminal charges. It's not the first, but nonprofit groups acting as landlords aren't especially common.
In Portland, many existing homeless provider organizations such as Central City Concern are worried about the legal responsibilities of becoming a landlord under these circumstances. It’s a lot of liability for the organization to take on. Subsidizing the rent is relatively straightforward, and is related to however the group gets its funding. It's usually a combination of public and private money from grants and fundraisers. It gets more complicated when things like legal battles and tenant liability come into play. If the neighborhood tries to fight the landlord nonprofit, it can quickly drain what precious funding exists, and nightmare situations like the collapse due to bankruptcy proceedings of the Direct Access to Housing organization in NY during 1992, where the individuals they housed got evicted suddenly and en-mass.
This should be a tool rather than a solution in itself, while it makes the landlords and the tenants happy (a rare scenario), it is part of housing first approaches, which can mean it will save money in the long run but may implode a nonprofit organization during a legal crisis. It doesn't do much to solve the supply of housing overall, but it is a humanistic solution that prioritizes reducing human misery.
-BD
No comments:
Post a Comment