Searching For Housing Solutions

For The Region’s Neediest Tenants

By Jan Howard

A newly formed group of social services providers hopes to bring together prospective tenants and landlords to address mutual concerns and to improve the stock of housing that is affordable for people of modest means.

Housing Solutions, a group that serves the greater Danbury area, was begun in October by Trish Palmer, director of residential services for the Mental Health Association of Connecticut in Danbury. In her position, Ms Palmer is responsible for providing residential services for people with psychiatric disorders.

“I was finding that there wasn’t any housing,” Ms Palmer said. “I realized we were not the only agency having difficulty finding housing for our clients. Social service providers are not being able to find decent affordable housing for low income people.”

Ms Palmer reached out to other social services providers to see if together they could find a solution to the housing shortage. She called social service agencies, such as the Women’s Center and the Commission on Child Care Rights and Abuse and others, the mayor’s office, and state representatives.

Forty people showed up for a meeting in October, Ms Palmer said.

The agencies’ inability to find housing for clients is mostly due to the lack of affordable housing in the region, she said. While most of the social services providers are located in Danbury, they work with clients in the greater Danbury area. Towns such as Bethel and New Milford have some housing that is affordable, but housing in most area towns is more expensive than their clients can afford. Even housing in Danbury is becoming less affordable, she noted.

“People with a disability can receive a maximum of $815 a month from Social Security. Housing in this area is completely out of their range,” Ms Palmer said.

During a recent assessment of affordable housing needs in area towns, “People came back and said the first selectmen said they had no problems,” she said. “The need is everywhere. People on low incomes are just more invisible in small towns.”

The goal of Housing Solutions is to forge a connection between social service agencies and landlords so that more housing that is affordable is made available for their clients.

“What we decided is there are solutions if we’re willing to work together on answers,” she said.

Housing Solutions was officially formed in November with Ms Palmer as facilitator. The first question addressed was why the agencies could not find housing that is affordable for their clients. “We decided to ask the landlords,” Ms Palmer said.

In March, she invited landlords to a meeting of Housing Solutions. The landlords were asked what the agencies could do to have them be willing to rent to their clients.

Ms Palmer explained there are landlords who have been “burned” by tenants, but those who attended the March meeting indicated their willingness to work with the agencies. A core group of 10 to 20 social services providers and landlords now meet every month, she said.

“We are developing a relationship between social services providers and landlords,” she said.

“Our ultimate goal is to have a working partnership of landlords and social services providers to help people with low incomes to find housing that is affordable,” Ms Palmer said. “We hope to be able to have responsible tenants that landlords would continue to rent to.”

She said each social service provider has reasons why it is unable to find housing that go beyond economic reasons. She noted landlords sometimes are unwilling to rent to the family of a batterer because of possible damage to the premises, or to a psychiatric patient because he/she might have a relapse.

“We have to do some advocacy with the landlords so they know the tenants will have support,” Ms Palmer said.

She pointed out the rehabilitation aspects of social services agencies. “Our goal is to use the time to teach people skills. The idea is to try to identify what went wrong, to learn coping skills, and to reconnect with their families,” she said. Social services agencies “are making a difference,” she added. “They work one person at a time.”

At the present time, the Housing Solutions group is in the process of putting together a questionnaire to get at the concerns of the landlords, Ms Palmer said. The questionnaire was to be redefined at a meeting of Housing Solutions on June 19.

“Landlords have had some bad experiences,” Ms Palmer said. “Some are willing to try again. Our clients don’t have a lot of money, which means the landlords have to rent to them at less than market value. We need to keep expanding the pool of landlords.

“The best way to find housing is to be a good support service to help our clients be good tenants,” she said. “That will help make more housing become available.”

“I’m hoping something will come out of the meetings with landlords,” Ms Palmer said. “How to improve tenant relationships with landlords is our goal now.”

Housing Solutions is also discussing a landlord/tenant handbook that would address tenants’ rights and responsibilities in understandable terms. Ms Palmer said she has received permission from Connecticut Legal Services to include information from its Web site in the handbook. A subcommittee will be developed to take responsibility for putting the book together, she added.

 All types of housing are needed, to meet different needs, Ms Palmer said. Boarding homes or efficiency units are needed by mental health providers, while agencies that deal with families, such as the Commission on Child Care Rights and Abuse or the Women’s Center, might need three or four bedroom apartments, “if you could find one,” she noted. An apartment of that size can cost $1,300 to $1,400 a month.

 “There are people who don’t want apartments. They just want a safe place to sleep comfortably with a common kitchen,” she said. “We need the whole range of housing in Danbury.”

Ms Palmer said the Housing Solutions group needs to obtain an assessment of what the housing needs are. “The need for housing is a fluid number. People come and go, but we need to know how many people there are at some time.

“We need to become part of town planning,” Ms Palmer said. “Together we can be much stronger for applying for funding.”

While Housing Solutions will not distribute funds itself, it will offer information to tenants on where to apply for aid, as individual agencies and collectively, she said. “I don’t see us applying for and giving out money.”

Ms Palmer said Housing Solutions is a loosely organized group. Membership is open, and as the group expands she expects it will break into subcommittees to address different aspects of housing concerns.

She sees a representative of Housing Solutions serving as a mediator when a landlord seeks to evict a tenant. “Landlords prefer not to evict,” she said. “If there is a problem with noise or nonpayment of rent, if the landlord and tenant are not able to resolve the problem, a Housing Solutions representative could mediate. If we can intervene, in the long run it is better for the tenant to stay.”

Landlords should not feel they are out there by themselves, she said. “They can talk to us, too. We want to establish a relationship before a crisis happens.”

While she does not see Housing Solutions taking on an advocacy role in lobbying for more affordable housing in the region, she sees the group supporting others who do. “We want to be a part of whatever it is that makes a difference. There can be incentives to build affordable housing.”

Ms Palmer is optimistic about the relationship that is developing between landlords and the social services agencies as a result of Housing Solutions.

“The landlords are coming because they want to be part of the partnership, and people are coming because they’re getting something out of it,” she said. “They get something back.”

For information about Housing Solutions, contact Trish Palmer at 798-2853, extension 117.