4 December 14 - 20, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents TIME FLIES Homeless people in Dallas’ Rapid Rehousing program face a ticking clock to keep roofs over their heads. BY JACOB VAUGHN M aria Childs was fleeing an abusive relationship when she entered a Fort Worth homeless shelter called Safe Haven. She stayed there as long as she could, 30 days, before she had to move to Austin Street Cen- ter, a shelter in Dallas. She had no income, and health problems like a pacemaker and a bad knee kept her from working, but she needed a way out of the shelter. Childs, 71, was able to enroll in a program that would help cover her rent at an apartment in Northwest Dallas for a year. Her time in the program hasn’t been the best, and now that it’s nearly up, she’s not sure where she’ll go next. The carpet in the apartment she was placed in was a mess. She had bed bugs, and maintenance requests wouldn’t always be answered in a timely manner. That program is part of a regional initia- tive called the R.E.A.L. Time Rehousing Ini- tiative, which has a goal of rehousing 6,000 homeless people by 2025. R.E.A.L. stands for Responsible, Equitable, Accountable and Legitimate. The initiative has seen some success, housing more than 2,700 people in two years. The idea is that people in the R.E.A.L. Time Rehousing Initiative will reach some form of self-sustainability once their rental subsidy runs out and their case management is up. That can happen in a number of ways: it could be by reconnecting with family or finding a good job or getting set up with the right assistance to help pay the rent. But some participants end up in apart- ments with poor conditions, don’t get the support they need to become independent and are left wondering where they’ll go next. At first, Childs didn’t completely grasp the finer points of the program. She thought she would be receiving a permanent hous- ing subsidy, not a temporary one like rapid rehousing offers. “That’s how we under- stood it,” she said. The organization set her up in an apart- ment in Northwest Dallas in February 2022. It was far from Child’s doctors, but it was one of the only places the organization could find for her. She said the choice was either to take the apartment or start all over in the system. She was unable to see the apartment in advance, and although she thought she was moving into a one-bedroom unit, she was placed into an efficiency instead. She didn’t like the place, partly because it was far away from her doctors. She told her caseworker that, but it seemed the apartment was the only option. “I told them I didn’t want to stay here. They go ‘Well, you either stay here and move into this apartment or we can’t help you,’” Childs recalled. “I had no choice because I had nowhere else to go.” So, she signed the lease. She said the car- pet was filthy in her apartment when she first set foot in it. The air-conditioning unit was also too loud for her, and the landlord threatened to evict her for asking someone to check it out. She called her case worker, and eventually Childs got a window unit in- stalled in her apartment. But one day she came home to find water on the counters and on the floor. She said it took days to fix. The water in her apartment was starting to smell, so she stayed at a neighbor’s unit for a couple days, sleeping on their couch. It took several at- tempts, but the maintenance team at the apartment complex was finally able to fix the leak. “It shouldn’t have taken that long,” she said. As time passed, more problems pre- sented themselves. One week, the apart- ment complex didn’t have hot water. There was also a problem with bed bugs in her unit, and she would wake up with bites all over her. Childs initially thought it was mos- quitos biting her in the night. But one night as she went to bed she saw little brown bugs crawling along the side of it. “I thought to myself, ‘What the heck is that?’” she said. She looked it up on her phone, and it ap- peared to her that they were bed bugs. The next morning she went to her land- lord to tell her about the bugs and ended up throwing all of her bedding away and re- placing it. The landlord accused her of bringing the bed bugs from the shelter and tried to make her pay for the exterminator to come out and take care of them. “I was going to have to pay $365,” she said. She ended up not having to pay for the exterminator. Childs’ lease is up on Feb. 12, with a re- quirement that she give notice in December if she isn’t going to renew it. Her case worker asked if she planned to re-sign the lease. “I said ‘There’s no way I’m going to pay $1,295 for an efficiency,’” Childs explained. “I can go somewhere else and probably find one better than this place.” She’s currently looking for a new apart- ment with help from her brothers, the local organization Catholic Charities and home- lessness advocate Lisa Marshall. She’s also considering moving in with a roommate. To Childs, the rapid rehousing program has been fine in most ways. It’s allowed her to get on Social Security and save up for a new place to live. That’s an improvement over where she was not all that long ago. But, she added, her case worker is supposed to come check on her once a month, and she’s only seen her about three times since she’s been in the program. She said she’s called her caseworker repeatedly over the last couple of weeks, but she hasn’t gotten an answer. While things will be tight, Childs thinks she can make it on her own now, but she’s less sure about others in the program. “There are all these people that are going to have to move, and they don’t know what they’re going to do because they don’t have the income to pay for it,” she said. “So, I don’t know what some of these people are going to do on housing.” W hile the R.E.A.L. Time Rehousing Ini- tiative has had success with rapid re- housing, this intervention isn’t for everyone and it doesn’t always work. A 2021 article in the journal Housing Policy Debate identifies some issues with rapid rehousing as a cure for homelessness. The article dives into a rapid rehousing program in Salt Lake County, Utah, where about 70% of people in the program obtain permanent housing within three months, but some 10%–50% become homeless again within two years. Participants noted several reasons, citing medical emergencies, unreli- able or low-paying jobs, transportation issues, criminal charges and substance abuse as fac- tors that made it difficult to stay in housing. Kevin Harrison, 60, who also participates in the local R.E.A.L. Time Rehousing Initia- tive, isn’t sure what will happen to him when his rental subsidy runs out. For | UNFAIR PARK | Mike Brooks Kevin Harrison is unsure about his future with his housing subsidy running out. >> p6
