Across the country, the COVID-19 pandemic forced small business owners to make some difficult if not impossible choices. For Michael, owner of a trade show contracting business in Philadelphia, the choice was either to lay off workers and keep his business profitable or keep his employees on payroll and figure out where else to cut corners. With the uncertainty of "unprecedented times" as his backdrop, Michael chose to keep his employees on payroll.
That decision did not come without some tough sacrifices: He couldn't pay himself a salary. By September 2022, Michael owed $48,000 in mortgage payment arrears. His home was at risk of foreclosure.
Philadelphia Legal Assistance's (PLA) Save Your Home Hotline connected Michael to a housing counseling program run by HACE, a NeighborWorks network organization. During meetings with housing counselor Iris Grin, he looked at all of the possible options available to prevent foreclosure, such as Pennsylvania Homeowners Assistance Fund (PAHAF), Homeowner Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program and loan modification. Grin explained to Michael that applying for arrears could
Before the pandemic, says Amanda Garayua, housing services program manager, HACE worked primarily with first-time homebuyers. While HACE did provide foreclosure and eviction prevention services prior to the pandemic, this was not their most commonly requested service. However, as households saw large reductions in income, the demand for foreclosure and eviction prevention services grew. This change created a burden for organizations such as HACE that needed to retrain their HUD-certified counsellors to focus on foreclosure and evictions.
Concurrent with this change was a rise in demand for housing counseling services to assist renters, Garayua says. HACE needed to hire more staff to meet growing demand. Funding from NeighborWorks America's Keeping People Housed initiative, made possible through support from Wells Fargo Foundation, helped HACE meet the changing needs of their community.
"The demand for rental delinquency-related housing services is still high and it continues to rise," says Garayua. "It is a tough situation." Her organization sees small landlords who have faced large financial setbacks because tenants were unable to pay rent. And they see the tenants unable to pay due to circumstances beyond their control. The problem doesn't look like it will end any time soon, she says. Meanwhile, HACE is there to help.
Between July 2022 and June of this year, the Keeping People Housed Initiative aided 1,060 individuals with rental counseling and assisted 1,403 homeowners through individual and group foreclosure mitigation counseling. Seventeen network organizations received funding through the program during that time period.
Meeting the need
In rural Colorado, Total Concept CEO Steven Cordova works with counties that fall at the bottom of the economic prosperity rankings. COVID-19 had an impact there, too, he says. And because there were fewer job opportunities in the region than more urban areas, those who lost jobs had a harder time regaining them. "In some cases, people just moved away," says Cordova. "Or they doubled up with family members." While the state as a whole has regained many of the jobs lost, in some of Colorado's rural areas (including Fowler, where Total Concept is based), "we are still not at pre-pandemic levels."
For those who did stay in the region – and needed help –Total Concept filled the gaps, connecting residents with rental and housing assistance. Some of the funding that aided their staff came from the Keeping People Housed initiative. "Our numbers of the people we served dramatically increased," Cordova says. Over a 12-month period ending last June the organization served 2,089 people, accounting for $12 million in rental assistance. The organization provides about $1 million a month in mortgage assistance.
How have they managed it? One way is by growing from one HUD-certified housing counselor to
Counselors at Total Concept report keeping dozens of people in their homes as they work on foreclosure prevention. In some instances, when homes were listed under foreclosure on the public trustee website, "we were able to intercede and say, 'There are resources available for you to retain your home.'"
The grant helped with the flexibility "to go where there is need," Cordova says. That might mean literal travel, including weekly trips to towns like Lamar and Trinidad to help people. It might mean buying materials or doing outreach. "Flexibility is hugely important to tailor to what's needed in an emergency."
When someone is facing foreclosure, counselors told Cordova this summer, "their strength and hope starts to disappear." But when they connect with a housing counselor, "the homeowner finally has someone they can trust to help them in a stressful situation."
The same is true in Arizona, where Primavera provided housing counseling services to 254 individuals in 2022. It was a sharp difference from 2021, when Primavera (a NeighborWorks network organization) provided housing counseling services to 181 individuals.
The COVID-19 pandemic created a set of unique, hyper-local challenges that community-based organizations understood. With the support of NeighborWorks America and initiatives such as Keeping People Housed, organizations like Primavera were able to respond.
Making connections
At the Neighbor Project in Aurora, Illinois, Executive Director Rick Guzman says the grant money – and the flexibility of the grant money – makes a difference in keeping people in their homes safely. "For many NeighborWorks organizations who are working in established, more urban areas, a lot of the most affordable housing stock is often some of the oldest," he says. "And so a big part of our focus in our goal to increase the homeownership rate in many communities has to be on ‘Keeping People Housed' – specifically helping lower-income, often elderly or disabled or otherwise fixed-income homeowners to be able to afford to stay in their homes."
Keeping homeowners in their homes sometimes often involves helping homeowners afford increasingly high-cost home repairs – especially those related to life and safety issues, Guzman says. The Neighbor Project has been able to get grants to assist, but those grants are often low on administration dollars. Grants like Keeping People Housed are helpful here, he says, because they "fill in those gaps and keep programs like this running smoothly."
Brett Campbell, a HUD-certified housing counselor at The Neighbor Project, says red tape, something that comes up frequently with government grants, kept one of his clients from being able to receive assistance. Campbell kept on it, though, "like a dog with a bone," and worked to cut through that red tape, leading to repairs on siding and windows, and lead-abatement for a mother and the adult daughter who depended on her care. He gets emotional when he talks about it. "I feel blessed that we had this grant to be able to help her," he says. "We're still not done."
