Rising rents and an overall housing crisis continues to squeeze renters, causing some to lose their homes and preventing others from getting housing. For domestic violence survivors who are seeking to get their own housing, the situation is especially severe. The Center for Hope and Safety in Salem helps women to secure housing but it’s getting ever harder for them to do that. Rachel Alexander investigated this for Salem Reporter and she joins us to share the details.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Rising rents and overall housing crisis continue to squeeze renters, causing some people to lose their homes and preventing others from getting into housing. For survivors of domestic violence who are seeking their own homes, the situation can be especially dire. Rachel Alexander looked into this issue for Salem Reporter and joins us now to share what she found. Rachel Alexander, welcome.
Rachel Alexander: Thanks for having me.
Miller: Thanks for joining us. What are some of the connections between domestic violence and homelessness?
Alexander: Domestic violence can often lead victims or survivors, who are generally women, to become homeless for a lot of reasons. Often when someone leaves a domestic violence situation, even if they’re coming from what looks to be a sort of affluent lifestyle, they don’t have the resources to get housing or otherwise support themselves because their abuser may have controlled their finances, not allowed them to hold a job or held onto all their money. In some cases, they may have taken their ID or birth certificate or other documents that they would need to get an apartment or housing. So it’s often really like starting from scratch, trying to find a place to live.
Miller: So not only might that lead to homelessness but those same elements could make it hard for somebody to get out of homelessness right.
Alexander: Exactly. Anyone who’s tried to search for an apartment in Salem or Eugene or Portland knows that it’s a tough market out there even if you have money saved for a deposit and have an ID. And if you don’t have any of that, because you just left your home rather suddenly to flee this traumatic abusive situation, you’re really at a disadvantage there.
Miller: You note in your recent article some aspects of what’s happening in Salem that make this even more challenging, specifically that Salem has an unusually high share of homeless women compared to the rest of Oregon, or compared to national numbers. What are some of the reasons for this?
Alexander: I should say those numbers are a couple of years out of date and that’s something I do want to follow up on. But regardless of where that is now, we’ve struggled a lot with just having adequate shelter space for women in general. We have a domestic violence shelter and we have two other kinds of general shelters for women and they’re essentially always full and turning people away. And then domestic violence is a big contributor to women’s homelessness in general whether or not they’re formally enrolled in domestic violence programs. And what we’re seeing now, because the housing market is so tight, is that shelter beds are being occupied for increasingly long amounts of time just because women can’t find an affordable place to live even though they’re otherwise ready to move on or have their own place. And so that kind of perpetuates the cycle where there’s just nowhere available for homeless women to go.
Miller: The numbers that you outline are really striking. You spent some time with people at a nonprofit called The Center for Hope and Safety. They opened a shelter at a converted motel about a year ago. Since they opened, the average length of stay for women or families has nearly tripled. It went from being about three or four weeks to two to three months. What exactly did you hear from people who work there?
Alexander: That’s basically a cause of the housing market being where it is. This is something I think a lot of people don’t realize that they, and a lot of other nonprofits that work with homeless people or people in crisis, are increasingly having to hire dedicated caseworkers whose job it is to search for housing full time. That’s something that didn’t really exist in a lot of programs, four or five years ago. There’s not a lot of units period and if there’s anything that’s affordable that opens up, the staff were telling me that [they] almost instantly will have five or 10 applications. So that can make it really, really difficult to find a place for a client, especially if they have other challenges going on like maybe a poor rental history or lack of identification.
Miller: What does that mean for people who are staying at a shelter?
Alexander: It essentially means that shelter stays become longer and shelters sort of become de facto housing, which isn’t really what they’re intended to do. They’re supposed to be kind of temporary emergency shelters. I spoke to a few other folks who work at women’s shelters in Salem and they’re seeing some people who are staying a year or longer in what’s supposed to be a short term shelter solely because they can’t find a place to live or can’t find an apartment. It isn’t surprising on the one hand just knowing where the housing market is, but I think it’s really incredible when you actually think about that, that it is such a barrier for people. And that means that that shelter bed then doesn’t turn over. Space isn’t opening up for someone else who would want to get off the streets and kind of begin that process of leaving homelessness.
Miller: Oh so there’s a cascade here. So as bad as it could be to have somebody be in a shelter for six months or a year, it’s more fortunate for them than people who are unsheltered because that bed is never opened up.
Alexander: Exactly. And I mean that’s something I hear all the time when I speak to unsheltered folks. And there are obviously people who don’t want to go into shelters for various reasons or who don’t feel comfortable or safe there, but there are also plenty of people who just want to be told where to go. Especially if you’re a woman in Salem, there are just no shelter beds available on a nightly basis because shelters are full and with the length of stay increasing here, that’s exacerbating the problem.
Miller: You touched on this, but I want to dig deeper into it because there was a line from one of the housing workers that you talked to at a nonprofit that really stood out. She said that it would be difficult for many of her clients to find a rental without a dedicated advocate at a nonprofit like hers. What kind of work are these advocates doing?
Alexander: Some of it is just having the time to look at housing listings and know when apartments are available, because with this market so tight it’s important to get in applications right away. Domestic violence survivors have other things going on in their lives. They have to take care of their children. They’re looking for jobs. They can’t spend their entire day every day looking for housing. But some of it is about having relationships with landlords and sort of negotiating. So often folks who are leaving a violent situation may not have a great rental history. Sometimes that’s because their abuser has maybe behaved in a way that led to them getting evicted or caused problems or things like that. So these advocates are often trying to negotiate and say, “hey, if we pay a little more than the multi-thousand dollar deposit that you’re already asking for, would you be willing to take a chance on this person or if we’re able to sort of guarantee this other thing?” And then they’re also working on finding rental vouchers and subsidized rentals to help folks be able to afford apartments, especially folks who are disabled or on a fixed income and just really don’t have a path towards paying market rent.
Miller: And there are a few different programs set up to help people. Let’s look at both those in turn. One of them is a pot of federal money for what’s known as Rapid Re-Housing. How does that work?
Alexander: This is not unique to Salem or to Oregon. Rapid Re-Housing is basically where an agency or a nonprofit will get a grant from the feds and that pot of money is supposed to be used to help people who generally have a pathway toward becoming self-sufficient, but need some help to get back on their feet. So it’s often used for deposit– first/last month’s rent–because that’s a lot of money for someone to save up. It’s not too far off a down payment these days for what some apartments are going for. And then also to subsidize or sometimes pay the entirety of someone’s rent for a period of time. That kind of lets them build up some savings, find a job, get back on their feet. So that’s one pot of money that’s available and that the Center for Hope and Safety uses quite a bit for their survivors who they’re trying to find housing for.
Miller: There’s also Section 8. How is that different?
Alexander: Section 8 is basically a permanent federal subsidy for rental. So once you get that rental subsidy and get into an apartment, it pays your rent or a chunk of your rent essentially forever or for a long period of time. It’s intended for people who are, in general, not going to be able to cover those rental costs. So that may be someone on Social Security. The average monthly Social Security payment is less than the median rental cost in Salem and certainly in other cities in Oregon as well. Those vouchers can be really, really helpful. The challenge that we’re seeing now is that the amount the voucher pays in rent is well below market rental rates, so it’s not really having the intended effect because getting the voucher is no guarantee that you can actually find an apartment to rent at that price.
Miller: I wonder if you could tell us a story you heard about a domestic abuse survivor who is also a senior on a fixed income and who was on the waiting list for a Section 8 voucher.
Alexander: This is something that one of the advocates told me. She was working with this woman who like you said, is on a fixed income. So her monthly take home is well below the median rental rate. She was waiting to hear back from the housing authority on her voucher, which is a process that can take a while, though the Center for Hope and Safety has some kind of pools they can use to expedite that for survivors they’re working with. A unit came up while they were waiting on that housing voucher and this survivor had her application denied because the voucher was still pending. The housing advocate had to check in with the screening company and do all this legwork asking if they could put the application on hold. She got approval to pay more for a deposit and that still wasn’t enough to get the apartment. The survivor did eventually have her voucher come through and then was able to get an apartment, but she spent a little over three months at the shelter and a month and a half searching for housing, which is not near the upper length of what I heard from people. But that’s one illustration about just how that process can take a long time and how someone stayed in a shelter longer than they really needed to, just because they can’t find a place to live.
Miller: Many of the people that you talk to said something we’ve heard before: that more affordable housing is the real long term solution here. How many units of affordable housing are actually in the works right now in Salem?
Alexander: I couldn’t tell you the total number, but the Center for Hope and Safety does have a big project they’re working on and this is a direction that they’ve grown in as they’ve seen the need. So they have a 20-unit building that just started construction in downtown Salem at their headquarters and it got a fair bit of both state and federal funding to move forward with that. They’re hoping to open that in the spring of 2024 so it’s still a ways out. Those will be units generally for people who are exiting shelters and may need some of that permanent rental subsidy or a little more ongoing help. That’s one example of a project.
There are a lot of apartments under construction in Salem now. Some of them have a provision that a certain number of units be affordable. Affordable can also mean a lot of different things. So there’s some units that are “affordable” that are still above what a voucher would actually pay for. And that’s another challenge I hear about a lot.
Miller: Rachel, thanks very much.
Alexander: Thank you.
Miller: Rachel Alexander is managing editor for the Salem Reporter. And as I noted, you can read her article about the housing challenges that survivors of domestic abuse can face. There’s a link on our website: opb.org/thinkoutloud.
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