This is the first of three stories about Rock Hill’s Rapid Rehousing Program.
Imagine for a moment that you had lived on the streets for a year and a half.
Forget what got you there, and just think about what it would mean for you to actually be out there – saving money and buying a motel room if you can, sleeping on a bunk in a crowded shelter if you can’t afford a room, and sleeping outside in your coat if all the bunks in the shelter are full.
Also, imagine that while you were out there, you were trying to overcome a mental disorder or substance addiction.
While you’re trying to figure it all out, imagine going to work sick and undergoing doctor treatment for serious illnesses like cancer or dialysis.
And imagine if no one had ever taught you, directly or indirectly, how to manage your money or open a bank account.
Then imagine that someone offers you the opportunity to live in your own home for a year. For the first three months, you pay nothing for housing. But you have to prove that you can pay part of the rent after that and that you can cope with the gradual increase in that share over time.
Imagine your responsibilities gradually increasing as you slowly learn or relearn living indoors while learning to manage your finances.
Would that be enough to set you back?
Rock Hill is betting on a yes answer. The city’s Rapid Rehousing Program (RRHP) offers a year of subsidized living expenses to homeless residents who meet certain criteria and thereby prove that they are serious about getting off the streets.
The funding – about $625,000 this year – came from money from the opioid settlement agreement that the city council set aside for Rapid Rehousing. Melissa Carlyle, executive director of the Catawba Area Coalition for the Homeless (CACH), which coordinates the city’s RRHP, said she hopes to continue receiving funds from the opioid settlement agreement for another 10 to 15 years.
The program itself involves housing brokers working with landlords and property managers to find good rental properties in the city, assess needs (such as drug addiction or other pressing issues), connect prospective tenants to rehabilitation and assistance programs through various partner agencies, and match roommates.
Most rapid re-hospitalization programs offer three months of help off the streets. Providing a year of help is a type of rapid re-hospitalization for the next generation.
The concept of rapid residential reintegration was launched in 2008 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The department launched two dozen pilot programs with a budget of $25 million based on the principle of “housing first” – the idea that all other efforts to help someone achieve a balanced life are useless if housing problems are not addressed.
By 2009, Congress had allocated $1.5 billion for rapid relocation to the United States
The problem, as it eventually turned out, was that rapid resettlement programs, which housed people for three months, had only moderate success rates. The programs’ good intentions were dissipated in the face of the fact that three months is often not enough time to transform someone from a survival and trauma mentality into a human being who can navigate the unforgiving reality of bank accounts and credit scores.
“We felt we could accomplish a lot in a year,” said Corrinne Sferrazza, executive director of Rock Hill’s Housing Development Corp., which also helps coordinate the city’s RRHP.
Gerald Adams is one of four RRHP clients you’ll meet in the next few stories. He and his wife Scarlett are currently living in a house in Rock Hill mid-year. Neither of them has any desire or intention to go back on the streets, considering it took Gerald 18 months to get off the streets and it took Scarlett about the same amount of time to go from being a regular renter to being homeless due to her cancer treatments.
And if there’s a glimmer of hope that Rock Hills RRHP is welcoming, at least to someone who doesn’t have to imagine all of these things at the beginning of this story, it’s the fact that Gerald Adams is happy to write a few checks because it feels perfectly normal to do so.
“I can pay bills again,” he said. “I can actually see money flowing into a house.”
Imagine that.
