12/12/2022
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The Wall St Journal
KREM
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The Wall St Journal
Shortage of affordable housing and ending of pandemic aid feed national problem
By Dan FroschFollow
| Photographs by Kyle Green for The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 11, 2022 10:00 am ET
BOISE, Idaho—Debbie Sholley always imagined she would be living comfortably by the time she reached her golden years.
Instead, the 62-year-old former social worker worries she will soon be living on the streets of this growing city, after her landlord raised the rent more than she can afford.
“I think about what it would be like, and it’s scary. Where am I going to go?” said Ms. Sholley, whose ailing husband died of Covid-19 in 2020 and who suffers from various lung ailments that keep her from working anymore. “I never thought I’d be in this position.”
Ms. Sholley is one of a rising number of older people around the country who are on the verge of homelessness or now living on the streets after falling on hard times. Homeless shelters and aging-service groups in numerous cities say they are seeing more elderly people in desperate need of housing than in years past. A confluence of factors are driving the increase, they say, including soaring rents, a nationwide shortage of affordable housing and the winding down of pandemic-related aid programs such as the federal eviction moratorium.
Unhoused people sleep outside of the Corpus Christi House, a daytime drop-in homeless shelter in Boise, Idaho.
Unhoused people fill the interior area of the Corpus Christi House.
The problem is particularly acute in Boise. Typical rents here have risen to $1,778 from $1,213 in January 2019, according to Zillow Group. The current median sales price for a single-family home in Ada County has rocketed to $525,000 from $316,999 over the same period, according to Boise Regional Realtors. During the pandemic, nine assisted-living facilities in the Boise area shut down due to staffing shortages or financial troubles, the Idaho Health Care Association said, compounding the need for elderly housing.
In a gritty corner of downtown where a pair of homeless shelters occupy two old warehouses, shelter staff say that local hospitals have taken to dropping off ailing elderly people with nowhere to go on their doorstep, sometimes still draped in hospital gowns.
“This is absolutely our biggest crisis right now,” said Jodi Peterson-Stigers, executive director of the Interfaith Sanctuary homeless shelter. “We see them out in the alleys. Some are in wheelchairs. They can’t use the bathroom or shower by themselves. They have chronic health issues. Yet here they are, flung out on the streets.”
Jodi Peterson-Stigers, executive director of Interfaith Sanctuary, gets a hug from a resident outside a shelter in Boise, Idaho.
Christine Myron, spokeswoman for St. Luke’s hospital in Boise, said the hospital works with shelter managers when it discharges patients to shelters and only discharges when they are deemed medically stable. Ms. Myron also said St. Luke’s doesn’t release patients in medical gowns.
Ms. Peterson-Stigers said facilities like hers aren’t fully equipped to handle elderly homeless with severe health needs. On a recent afternoon this month, Ms. Peterson-Stigers checked on 89-year-old Steve Werneth, who has been living for the past year in a room at the nearby Red Lion Hotel.
Interfaith has been using two floors of the hotel as an emergency homeless shelter for families and the elderly, subsidized with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the county and grant dollars. Ms. Peterson-Stigers said Mr. Werneth’s daughter informed the shelter that her father had been kicked out of an assisted-living facility when his rent was raised and he refused to pay it.
“I’m not used to this,” said Mr. Werneth. “I didn’t plan to be here more than a week or two when I came in.” He said he doesn’t have any friends at the hotel and walks to McDonald’s each morning to get breakfast. Through a wry grin, Mr. Werneth said he wants to go to a different shelter where there is better food.
Steve Werneth, 89, is staying at a hotel in Boise, Idaho, that is being used by the Interfaith Sanctuary to house the homeless.
According to the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, which operates some 300 health programs for the homeless across the U.S., the portion of its patients who are 50 and over has been steadily ticking upward, from 25% in 2008 to 36% last year. The portion of patients 65 and over has nearly tripled during that period, from 3% to 8%. The pandemic has only amplified the challenges, said Barbara DiPietro, the group’s senior director of policy.
“This is a level of a problem that we have not seen before,” she said. “We are seeing older people in shelters and encampments, or who are living in their cars at a rate that we never had before.“
At Senior Support Services in Denver, a nonprofit that helps low-income seniors find housing, food and medical services, the number of elderly people signing up to receive case-management services has tripled this year, the group said.
In Boston, the group Hearth, Inc., which aids elderly homeless, said it had noticed a rise in newly homeless clients, in addition to those who are chronically homeless. Dawn Matchett, the group’s chief program officer, said the first-time elderly homeless demographic struggled more with economic hardship than other problems like substance abuse or mental illness.
In Boise, the nonprofit Jesse Tree, which works with low-income people facing eviction, has also noticed an uptick in elderly clients over the past two years, according to Executive Director Ali Rabe.
Ali Rabe runs Jesse Tree, a nonprofit that provides emergency rent assistance and aids in homelessness prevention.
The group has been helping Debbie Sholley access various pandemic-related assistance programs so she can make the $1,550 rent on the small house she lives in, which was raised last year from $1,200, according to Ms. Sholley.
Ms. Sholley said she gets about $1,700 a month in disability and spousal survivor benefits. But cobbling together enough money for rent is never a sure thing, and she has incurred late fees. She drained her retirement savings years ago to help care for her sick husband.
Ms. Sholley has family in the Boise area, but there is scant space for her and her chihuahua-corgi mix, Annie. She is on a waiting list for the Section 8 low-income federal housing program, but that could take well over a year, she said.
“When people think about the homeless population, they don’t think about the elderly,” Ms. Sholley said, wiping away tears. “One change to your life, one crisis, and in a heartbeat, you could be facing the same situation that I’m facing.”
Write to Dan Frosch at dan.frosch@wsj.com
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KREM
The non-profit Project ID is looking for a new home. This is because they'll have to pay about $5471 a month starting next year, almost double what they pay now.
SPOKANE, Wash. —
The non-profit Project ID is looking for a new home after the company's landlord looks to nearly double their rent.
But since then, there's been an overwhelming amount of support for the organization.
Project ID provides programs for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Their current home is a 13,000 square foot former movie theater on pacific avenue.
Right now they currently pay $3331 a month. That includes property taxes, insurance, and amenities like snow removal.
But starting next year, they'll have to pay about $5471 a month just in rent. That monthly rent's expected to increase more than $1000 every year after.
This does not include insurance or property taxes. Project ID's executive director says this isn't feasible for them.
Brad Dawson has a brother in Project ID. He first brought his brother Marcus to Project ID six years ago.
Since then, Brad says Marcus's confidence has been at an all-time high.
So, when Brad heard that project ID was in danger of shutting down, he started a gofundme page.
"Well I hope it stays open for years to come. Because the Spokane community of special needs people is underserved. I think they need an outlet and having this place is an outlet," said Dawson.
Project ID executive director Bob Hutchinson says it's not only Brad that's stepped in to help.
Since he made the news of the rent increase public, he's received an overwhelming amount of support from outside community members and area churches.
"Worst case scenario is we're no longer able to exist. But I also believe in the Spokane community. And people of Spokane are so generous," said Hutchinson.
But even with the support, Hutchinson says there's no way Project ID can continue operating in their current space.
The building's ending its five-year lease at the end of next month.
Hutchinson said, "I find it sad for us to look at leaving that behind. But we will make another space that will make it great."
When Hutchinson offered to raise his current rent by 20 percent, his landlord Jessey Nagra told him that wasn't enough and his rent has to abide by the fair market rental value.
In a statement to KREM 2, landlord Jessey Nagra said quote, "The tenant has received a hugely discounted rate and our offer was still a lot less than I would list it on the market for, and a lot less than what they obligated to pay in order to renew the lease."
Even with their unclear future, Project ID board president Joshua Simmons says no matter what, Project ID will always be there for people.
"That we have no doubt that we will be around. And so for our members we're going to be here for you, we love you. A building may change, but the purpose and love will be around forever," said Simmons.
Hutchinson says he hopes to ask his landlord to give him until march to move out of their building.
He says that over the next several weeks, he'll also ask different churches and school districts if they can use those spaces