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HomeMy WebLinkAbout5 Year Plan Task Force Meeting 2 HandoutQualitative Housing Needs Assessment Handout – Task Force Meeting 2 May 28th, 2025 1 INTERNAL S TRENGTHS AND NEEDS (FOR SERVICE IMPROVEMENTS) Client Centered Services • Need for increased equity, transparency and accountability. • Client-Driven Service Delivery puts the focus on what people need rather than reviewing what the client is eligible to receive. • Clearly communicating the role of case management to the service recipient. No sugarcoating how it is hard. • Ensuring an understanding of invisible disabilities • Services that address social and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives • Increase service hours to accommodate varying scheduling needs (those who work or go to school) • We need to provide the social infrastructure that creates belonging and acceptance. • Stop stigmatizing. People need to get service to take first step. • Need to build service capacity at a time when funds are being cut. • More case workers and continued sustainable funding for case services, including training such as trauma-informed and serving disadvantaged populations. • PGM/BIPOC experiences of racism in housing are pronounced and prevalent. o Experiences are often ignored, dismissed and/or minimized by housing service providers. There is a substantial trade-off between getting help and the mental and emotional cost of this help. o Designing services for the majority’s needs alone can perpetuate current inequities and exclusion. • Specific attention must be given to grounding equity, transparency and accountability in the Homeless Response System in organizational practices. o Training and practice are necessary to informed service delivery. • More By and For organizations such as JCIRA System Coordination • Need for increased equity, transparency and accountability. • Meeting intersecting needs requires depth of resources and coordinated service provision across different service delivery systems, including outreach and communication. • Solutions need to be developed within the context of organizational capabilities. • How do we coordinate better with other service providers [in different systems]? Access needs to go both ways. • Encourage households with children to talk to school counselors [to mitigate impacts of housing loss]. Qualitative Housing Needs Assessment Handout – Task Force Meeting 2 May 28th, 2025 2 • Housing, health and social service providers proposed forming a network for pooling basic needs resources (e.g. showers, heat, light, laundry tokens) for unsheltered individuals. • The absence of a low-income rental management option worsens the loss of affordable rental housing (19% drop in the last ten years). o Small landlords struggle to manage properties profitably. o There is a need to educate landlords [on economic and legal protections for DV and SA survivors]. • Providing a model lease available by download that followed all the rules and was legally vetted. The lease could be trusted and would help both renters and landlords. • PIT Count is undercounted - not a single youth is counted. How to work together to improve counts? Supplement January count with summer count? • Need master lease program and/or toolkit. (Master Leasing - global leasing Action: Master (Global) leases are a good tool for increasing affordable housing supply. No permitting is required but needs more funding support. [A master lease is a type of lease that gives the lessee the right to control and sublease the property during the lease, while the owner retains the legal title.] ) • Creating a broader service for identifying and matching Affordable Housing properties and people except through individual case management networking. This includes community-based rentals. • Need clear definition of supportive services for Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH). • By and For advocacy is one of the most successful means of supporting PGM navigate the housing service systems. By and For advocates need to be adequately compensated. Homelessness Prevention • Need for increased equity, transparency and accountability. • It is challenging to identify changes in circumstances. As prevention is more successful, need to improve. • Services and protections for underhoused renters are difficult to access. o Reporting landlords can potentially result in loss of housing. • There is a high administrative cost to accessing services in terms of time and effort. • Funding for [homelessness] prevention is needed and access to information and resources, like rental assistance, before you end up in homelessness. You aren’t entered into the HMIS coordinated entry system until you are homeless and case management must be in place. Eviction Prevention dollars (through OlyCAP) can cover 3 months of back rent. Before accessing, you need to have a pay or vacate notice and it takes many months for the landlord to get the money. Qualitative Housing Needs Assessment Handout – Task Force Meeting 2 May 28th, 2025 3 Structural Environment • Need for increased equity, transparency and accountability. • Addressing access to basic essentials of water and sanitation is key issue in south county. • There is a need for county government to focus less on regulation and to find ways to permit affordable alternatives. • Emergency housing availability is limited relative to the number of those unsheltered. Both OlyCAP and Bayside have wait lists. (Bayside now does not have emergency shelter of any kind) • The demand for vouchers is much greater than the supply. • Peninsula Housing Authority provides 900 Section 8 vouchers for Clallam and Jefferson Counties. [About 1/5th of the vouchers are used in Jefferson County. (Equitable between counties?) • The time it takes to permit innovative solutions dilutes organizational capacity and increases development costs. • Legalize co-living in all residential zones. [Co-living homes are a low-cost, multifamily housing option in which each resident has a small, private living and sleeping room and shares with other building residents a common kitchen and other spaces. The housing type is also known as single-room occupancy (SRO), congregate housing, rooming houses, micro-housing, or residential suites.)] • There is no separate family shelter/transitional housing in Jefferson County. • Transportation schedule for south county and outside PT challenging • Childcare is desperately needed. YMCA opens at 8:30 am which is too late. • Few subsidized rental houses have laundry. Very expensive to do in coin operated laundries. Need information on who is accepting laundry vouchers. Also, what do you do with the kids while you are doing laundry? • Community is a critical resource. We need spaces that are low barrier and support being able to be transparent and open up. Identified Strengths • DSHS Stakeholder Group for the State Legislature looking at connections between health and housing. • Public Health serves people who are housed and unhoused with harm reduction. Outreach to encampments to those with active substance use. • Recovery Café is a peer support organization focused on recovery. (Open five days/wk. Free lunches.) • The Winter Welcoming Center serves about 21 people a day, some are chronically homeless. Their policy is no barriers access except for a prohibition for destroying property. • Community Build: Implementing THOW model for very low income households for purchase or rental. Community relationships are critical resource in keeping costs down. Qualitative Housing Needs Assessment Handout – Task Force Meeting 2 May 28th, 2025 4 • Habitat: Working to build at higher volume and increased scale. Last Fall EJC Habitat celebrated 25 years. o Mason Street Project – add 150 homes • Housing Solutions Network • Bayside: Focused on transitional housing and supportive housing for under 50% AMI. • Master Leasing - global leasing - OWL 360 rents house and fills it with young people. More money is needed. • Was a Gap: Permanent Supportive Housing needed for youth. • Meeting families’ intersecting needs requires depth of resources and coordinated service provision across different service delivery systems. The YMCA’s Family and Youth’s Resource Navigator Program has provided essential service in this capacity. • Olympic Connect • By and For advocacy is one of the most successful means of supporting PGM navigate the housing service systems. By and For advocates need to be adequately compensated. • Emergence of Shelter Coalition focused on system-level operations and that includes lived experts and non-housing service providers. • Many community-based landlords rent at below-market rates. Qualitative Housing Needs Assessment Handout – Task Force Meeting 2 May 28th, 2025 5 EXTERNAL GAPS AND BARRIERS Structural Inequalities 1. Racial Disparities: PGM/BIPOC individuals face systemic racism in housing and housing services and are disproportionately affected by homelessness. • Experiences are often ignored, dismissed and/or minimized by housing service providers. There is a substantial trade-off between getting help and the mental and emotional cost of this help. o Designing services for the majority’s needs alone can perpetuate current inequities and exclusion. • As BiPOC immigrant mother faces certain dynamics and challenges making it hard to access support [without mental and emotional burden] o No consideration of marginalization and legacy of trauma or the lack of access to resources. • Immigrants are from everywhere and every race but Latin POC have a hard time melding into the community. 2. Discrimination Against Vulnerable Groups: LGBTQ+, immigrants, DV survivors, and individuals with disabilities face unique challenges in accessing housing. • From a system’s view, Domestic Violence (DV) survivors are hardest to get fully served and moved into permanent housing. Client households often do not qualify for subsidized housing given the 30% AMI limit. • 17% of the Chimacum district are children with disabilities - physical, behavioral, academic. (These are not 504 plan students, i.e. students with school plan addressing disability needs.) 3. Lack of Family-Sized Rental Units: The lack of affordable family-sized rentals is made worse by the lack of separate family shelter/transitional housing in Jefferson County. • High rental costs for larger homes (e.g., $3,000/month without utilities). • Co-living arrangements price out families as landlords get 3 times amount of rent. • Seeing doubling up of families in trailers and overcrowding. • Current emphasis on planning for Emergency (EH) and Affordable Housing (AH) small units (studios and one-bedrooms) indicates a continuing shortage of family-sized units. • Families are a decreasing share of population, making serving their needs an increasing challenge. At the same time, there has been a marked increase in families experiencing homelessness. Qualitative Housing Needs Assessment Handout – Task Force Meeting 2 May 28th, 2025 6 • Basic life services for women with children are lacking, for example, busses have a limit on bags - like a toddler, stroller - and maybe a bag of laundry. Few subsidized rental houses have laundry. • Childcare is desperately needed. YMCA opens at 8:30 am which is too late. 4. Unmet Needs of Seniors: Many seniors, especially women, cannot afford to downsize. • 65% of households receiving Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) assistance are elderly and/or disabled. Currently there is a freeze on taking referrals. • Of 5371 households, 1530 senior woman living alone with medium income is $25,930 versus 1107 senior men with median income of $37520. • Hamilton Heights HOA - 80% are elderly, many living alone - and they are stuck - nowhere to go. o They may choose to "age in place" in their current home which is too big for their needs alone, sometimes facing financial challenges or difficulty with upkeep. • Since there are no places to downsize, there is a shortage of family-size homes coming on market which in turn impacts REET (Real Estate Excise Tax) funding. Qualitative Housing Needs Assessment Handout – Task Force Meeting 2 May 28th, 2025 7 Material and Economic Barriers 1. Rental Affordability: Along with too much demand for too few units, high upfront costs like first and last month's rent, security deposits, and moving expenses make rentals inaccessible. • Survivors’ lack of resources – references, financial history, and savings to pay upfront costs of new housing – present formidable additional barriers to securing housing in private market, while the eligibility requirements for low-income subsidized housing (less than $18-19/hour) is a barrier. • Difficulty with landlords asking for first and last month’s rent plus moving in funds. This can be up to $10k. Who can come up with this crazy cost? • Rentals conversion to home ownership is [a major cause of lack of housing]. Hamilton House HOA in 2020 had 23 rentals, now have 13. (700 rentals have disappeared in the last 13 years.) 2. Lack of Available Housing: There is a dire shortage of affordable rentals and family-sized units. • High mortgage rates are impacting Habitat’s model. USDA is out of mortgage lending money. • Emergency housing availability is limited relative to the number of those unsheltered. Both OlyCAP and Bayside have wait lists. 3. Regulatory Challenges: Strict zoning regulations, permitting delays, and lack of flexibility in land use prevent innovative housing solutions like tiny homes, co-living arrangements, or compost toilets. • For the last 20 years no apartments being built [exception of 7th Haven]. • No assistance or incentives for community-based rentals. • Unknown number of underhoused living in non-permitted housing. • Timelines for permitting and planning are very long because code changes take forever. Many projects still allow for the public to request hearings. • Significant barrier remains with the time it takes to change and implement changes in Comp Plan and codes. o The time it takes to permit innovative solutions affects organizational capacity, determining what housing can be built, using what land, and in what quantity. • There is a need for county government to focus less on regulation and to find ways to permit affordable alternatives. 4. Essential Basic Needs Services: There is limited access to hygiene facilities (showers, laundry), storage, and transportation. • Priority material support includes safe storage, laundry and showers. Qualitative Housing Needs Assessment Handout – Task Force Meeting 2 May 28th, 2025 8 o Basic hygiene being taken away. Believe in right to have basic hygiene services (showers, laundry) as human right. Re-open the showers at Boat Haven and at the Port o Essential basic services – laundry, heat, showers, bedding, gas vouchers – are needed for unsheltered individuals. Available public funds run out before the end of the year. • Showers o Daily [access to] showers would allow me to look for a job. • Laundry – 24 hours a day. For night workers. o Need to be able to have clean clothes. o Dirty clothes are a tax for when you take a shower. o Community shower in Quilcene Community Center. Could laundry be a part of the shower? • Rides – transportation. Gas vouchers. o Transportation [in south county] is impossible to use for most jobs. o As people move out to the county for lower housing costs, they lose ready access to community services. There is a need to increase transportation options and service hours. 5. Funding Gaps: Critical programs like rental assistance and rapid rehousing are underfunded, out of funds or frozen. • Try to keep people in their house but funding is in jeopardy. o Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) rental assistance is frozen. TBRA is federal $ passed through Commerce. o 65% of households receiving Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) assistance are elderly and/or disabled. Eligible households are referred to TBRA through local Coordinated Entry Systems. Currently there is a freeze on taking referrals. • Eviction prevention funds (through OlyCAP) are insufficient, with high demand and delays in payments to landlords. • The Homeless Prevention Diversion Program (HPDF) for youth (ages 12- 24) is effective but funding ends in June 2025. • OWL 360 needs more funding for master leasing and wraparound services for youth. • Federal and state subsidies are required to build affordable housing, as costs are equivalent to market-rate housing. • Habitat for Humanity faces challenges due to high mortgage rates and the demise of the USDA mortgage loan program. Qualitative Housing Needs Assessment Handout – Task Force Meeting 2 May 28th, 2025 9 Social Barriers and Health and Behavioral Challenges 1. Stigmatization and Isolation: Homeless individuals face discrimination and layers upon layers of stigmatization, which impacts their ability to access housing and services, and often lack community connections and social support systems. • People judge one and apply it to all. • We need to include support for destigmatized spaces. Housing is not a separate need and siloed; we need to provide the social infrastructure that creates belonging and acceptance. • Stigmatization leads to substance abuse behaviors. You get high because you don’t want to talk about it - feel it. [Research shows that cumulative trauma exposure is linked to poor self-rated mental health as well as substance use disorders.] • Because of stigmatization of domestic violence and sexual assault victims, people are not speaking up or seeking services. Isolation is further barrier [to housing stability] as people need community. • To confront peer stigmatization in schools, we need to destigmatize homelessness in general. • The question of who is to be served equitably is a central one in public policy. Who deserves to be served with what and why? Do we deserve services because we have worked hard? Is being in recovery mean we deserve service vs. everyone deserves basic services. We need to make arguments for providing essential services on top of telling the stories. • We need people with the resources and funding [the service providers] to stop stigmatizing. People need to get service to take first step. • Outreach is needed. [I was] Afraid to go to shelter [as it was] a stigma thing. 2. Substance Use, Mental Health and Trauma: Homelessness often results from or exacerbates trauma, making recovery and stability more difficult. • A major cause of homelessness is the experience of repeated trauma – discrimination and exposure to violence. Once homeless, there is an increase in trauma exposure. • Limited availability of no-barrier housing and recovery housing for individuals with substance use disorders or behavioral health challenges. • Folks need to find stability in their lives. Housing can lead to success in recovery and dealing with trauma. • Trauma and healing are scary. Need people in housing services to understand to begin with. • Our individual healing is helpful. Stigma is part of trauma and healing. We come from our own trauma. Qualitative Housing Needs Assessment Handout – Task Force Meeting 2 May 28th, 2025 10 Homeless and Affordable Housing System Gaps 1. No Senior Housing Program: Supportive housing services for seniors do not exist, either mortgage or rental assistance. • There is no mortgage assistance. There is no rental assistance for seniors to stay in place. • Dove House is seeing a high population of unhoused senior woman. • Need for medical respite in community, that will allow patients to bring family and pets. 2. No Housing Options for People Experiencing SUD: Both recovery (substance-free or sober living) housing and no barrier housing are needed to address the continuum of SUD housing needs. 3. Need for Rental Management Services: Moving people out of homelessness is extremely challenging as there is no coordinated access to below-market rate rentals. • Currently, there is no service for identifying and matching AH properties and people except through individual case management networking. This includes community-based rentals. o Small landlords struggle to manage properties profitably. As rural community, we have greater share of mom-and-pop, community- based rentals. Rentals [for small landlords] are expensive and time intensive. o The few apartment buildings owned by mom and pops (who are aging) are being sold to fund their owners’ survival. Can no longer maintain as rentals. o Private AH managers do not coordinate placement with homeless service providers. • Habitat is in conversation with employers to create a rental management coalition. Employers would hold the lease. [Effort discontinued.] • The absence of a low-income rental management option worsens the loss of affordable rental housing, leading to increased housing cost burdens, evictions, and potential homelessness. 4. Lack of Renters Protection: The dire lack of affordable rentals drives homelessness, economic insecurity, and vulnerability to landlord exploitation. There is no tenants rights organization. • Renters face retaliation from landlords for seeking improvements and have little to no leverage in preventing excessive rent increases which puts them at risk for economic eviction. o In particular, renters in informal (unpermitted) housing have little to no protections from landlord abuse. o When a subsidy is late, can result in eviction notice which goes on rental history.