CPAH just hosted our 2024 HomeWord Bound fundraiser. It was loads of fun and also, it helped us to raise money for resident services, which is core to our work and not adequately funded. Resident services staff provide eviction prevention and housing stabilization, programming for kids and seniors, community building activities that nurture essential connections, referrals to organizations that provide basic needs, including health care, and educational resources. Did I mention that services are not adequately funded, yet we could not do our job of stabilizing communities and preventing homelessness without resident services. In order to provide services we write grants, fundraise through events and asks, and look in the couch cushions. Some of our properties can contribute some amount, but overall it is something that funders require while asking agencies to cover much of the costs.
And services are important. They are essential to our work. Most importantly, they help to prevent evictions for all kinds of reasons – services link our residents to rent assistance and other resources, and service coordinators work with property management to assist in addressing additional lease enforcement issues. Also, as we believe that everyone should have the right to housing, we are more likely to say yes to applicants for housing than other private for profit housers would if the applicant has struggled to stay housed before. Some residents then will have some additional needs.
Unfortunately, other resources in the community that our residents need are not consistently available. Just because someone has a mental health crisis does not mean that they can access mental health services. Just because someone needs rent assistance due to a medical bill or job loss or fill in the blank, doesn’t mean that the resources are available. CPAH’s service coordinators work hard to find ways to keep residents housed. At CPAH, we are all of us proud of the work our services staff do.
Over the last month, there have been articles in the news about evictions in affordable rental housing. However, there is limited information about the work housing agencies do to keep residents in housing. I hope that the next time, affordable housing providers can be part of the story, so we can talk about our experiences in a system that doesn’t make adequate investments into housing and resident services while simultaneously underfunding every external system residents might need.
Despite all this, at CPAH, we provide excellent reservice services, in no small part because our supporters help us to pay for them.
Warmly –
Rachael Duke, Executive Director
