Sherry Shannon knows what it's like to be isolated – not just the kind of isolation where you're alone in a space, but the kind where you withdraw, where you shut down, where you don't talk to anybody. That's what happened to her when she was homeless, she says. After she found help and an apartment with Aeon, a NeighborWorks organization in Minnesota, it still took time before she started to open up.
"It was a big day for me," she says of the day she got her apartment. "A lot of weight lifted off my shoulders. I felt like I was flying. Sometimes, life is so heavy you can barely move."
She found work at two churches, Hennepin Methodist Church and Central Lutheran, helping with food for weddings and special events, and helping feed homeless individuals. She joined and became a leader in Street Voices of Change and Street Song, where it felt like she could sing away her troubles. During her free time, she continued her advocacy work, checking on homeless individuals in the streets of Minneapolis and talking with them about resources, work for which she was awarded the 2018 Dorothy Richardson Award for community activism.
But when the pandemic hit, the weddings and events stopped. Homeless individuals received lunches to go or were directed to other organizations, all of which meant a lack of income for Shannon. Singing, deemed unsafe, stopped, and with it, Shannon's outlet. For a time, especially after the death of George Floyd and the protests that followed, buses in Minneapolis stopped, too. They were Shannon's main means of transportation.
Shannon couldn't come up with rent for her home and the thought of being homeless again made her blood pressure skyrocket. "Any time my housing is threatened, I freak out," she says. "That fear started coming back. I couldn't go out and I was worrying about this; worrying about that. When you feel isolated, you go through the frame of mind that no one cares. You have negative thinking. Sometimes I have to reach down deep and get on my knees and pray to God."
Along with worrying about rent, Shannon missed her community. She wanted to help, the way she'd helped since she came out of homelessness herself, when she first learned about the affordable housing program through Aeon. She felt herself begin to withdraw and close up again, she says. But she forced herself to reach out to her church and to her apartment manager.
Aeon helped her find rental assistance through the organization's emergency fund, which includes a grant from the NeighborWorks America Rental Resilience Fund, in partnership with the Wells Fargo Foundation. Though Shannon still worries and still needs more work and income, she says, the rental assistance was enough to bring back some of her confidence.
She found new ways to help people. When a bus driver on her usual route wouldn't let anyone without a mask on board, she gathered a collection of masks for that driver and others to offer passengers. She got a tablet and began to engage on Zoom, attending meetings about the tiny house project she hopes will become a housing solution in Minnesota. (It's hard to stay six feet apart in those houses, she says, so tours of the project are limited. But the project is moving forward.)
She still feels uneasy, she says, but things are better. "Now, I'm getting out more. I have my tablet, so I'm on Zoom and staying connected. I'm doing a little work. But I'm not out there where people need my help, talking to people and keeping their hopes alive. That's what I'm missing. That's what's weighing on me. If I can touch one person and get a smile on their face, I did my job."
As of November 30, 500 households in Aeon's 5,586 rental properties owed at least one month of back rent. The organization has distributed $200,000 in rental assistance so far and applied for assistance for 420 households through other organizations. Every person in those households has an individual story.
As an example, Aeon staff members talk about a resident who lost her job because of COVID-19. Shaken by the death of George Floyd, the resident decided to go to school to study social justice and community organizing. Rental assistance from the fund that included NeighborWorks Rental Resilience grant helped her continue on that path.
Over the months since the pandemic began, staff say that Aeon residents have been forced to choose between paying rent and buying food. They're visiting churches and food pantries. Aeon began distributing food in its communities as well – something many NeighborWorks organizations report as they pivot to help their residents. Aeon's offices, now empty as most of the staff is working from home, are filled with grocery bags of donated food items.
Jeffrey Westbrook, vice president of resident connections at Aeon, says social unrest in Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd impacted residents who'd already been impacted by COVID-19. "There's been a lot of trauma and stress," he says.
In each of Aeon's housing communities, there are residents working on the front lines and residents who have lost hours and jobs due to the pandemic. Aeon staff continue to work on the properties and check on residents. "We are essential workers," Westbrook says, adding that most residents are dealing with months' worth of stress. "Financial insecurity, food insecurity, just worry." Many of Aeon's residents are in the category of people most likely to be impacted by COVID-19, Westbrook says. Whether they've lost jobs or remained at work, "there's stress either way."
Those who work are worried about exposure. Those who have been furloughed or laid off also worry about finances, particularly rent.
A portion of residents have weathered the storm, either because their rent is subsidized or because their work is continuing, Westbrook says. "But they're still concerned." Those who receive rental help are grateful to catch up. "But there are still worries as they look to next month's rent."
As community building and engagement efforts have decreased due to COVID-19, Aeon staff members continue to check on residents' wellbeing. Some services, like food distribution, have expanded. Westbrook says a Critical Relief grant, made possible with support from NeighborWorks and the Wells Fargo Foundation, "allowed us to do our engagement activity in a different, socially distant way."
The grant helped with the purchase of cleaning supplies as staff deep-cleaned buildings, even as they closed common areas, he says. They also purchased personal protective equipment (PPE). As food became more critical, the resident connections team took over food distribution so residents, who normally picked up their food from food banks, received groceries at their door. "That became critical," Westbrook says, especially as transportation systems shut down and as residents who used to carpool were not able to ride side by side for fear of spreading the virus.
The grant "allowed us to shift to doing more of the work," Westbrook says. "We continued support of residents that way, even though everyone's world was changing in terms of limited movement or access to limited supplies."
Staff distributed puzzles and games to re-engage residents who weren't able to see each other. And they distributed toilet paper, along with PPE, including masks and cleaning supplies.
Westbrook says that as residents feel the stress, staff members feel it, too. "The service coordinators feel some of the risk of being essential workers. They recognize that many of the families need a level of support and contact, so our team feels risks." Westbrook says resident service workers are committed to the work and committed to the residents. They try to balance personal concerns verses the needs of the families they serve.
Nationwide, housing experts agree that COVID-19 has put the spotlight on the housing crisis and the many people affected by it. NeighborWorks network organizations continue to focus on that crisis – as they have all along. And they try to make sure the story their residents share is one in which they get to stay in their homes.
01/07/2021
