‘Nothing rapid about it:’ NJ renters struggle to find housing even with COVID relief – NorthJersey.com
Jennie Spencer was elated — and wanted to share the good news. After spending the past six months at the Morris County homeless shelter, Spencer now saw a path to a real home for herself and her infant daughter.
She had just been approved for a new federal program designed to speed access to rental units for the homeless.
But the man who lived with her in the family unit of the shelter didn’t share her glee.
“Don’t get too excited,” he told her.
Spencer tilted her head, confused.
“It’s not what you think,” he said. “You’ll see.”
Some eight months later — still without a home — she has seen.
Even though she had qualified for a COVID-19 relief program called “rapid rehousing,” which provides money to pay rent, Spencer remained at the Homeless Solutions shelter in Morristown.
Despite filling out numerous applications, she has yet to find a landlord willing to take her on as a tenant. Her story reflects the many obstacles beyond access to rent money that stymie some people from finding a home.
After each application, interview and rejection, Spencer, 30, thought about how herown past — and the way the affordable housing system works in America — led landlords to deny her a place to live.
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, an unprecedented amount of relief poured out of Washington designed to help renters quickly secure affordable housing instead of languishing in the close quarters of shelters and on years-long waiting lists. But New Jerseyans such as Spencer who finally secured public helpto cover rent still aren’t finding properties where they can use the assistance.
Lacking a safe, stable place to live is linked to other wide-reaching, negative consequences, such as worse health outcomes, difficulty sustaining jobs, or interrupting a child’s education.
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In Spencer’s case, landlords likely have been scared off by the red flags that show up on her background checks. And the rapid rehousing program Spencer qualified for doesn’t come with an official-looking voucher or certificate. She has to repeatedly explain to landlords how the relief program works — and why they should participate.
But landlords don’t understand, aren’t familiar with the nonprofits helping administer the programs, or don’t feel secure accepting assistance that runs out after six months or a year, based on the renter’s income level. They want to know they will continue to get paid.
The federal programs “were intended to help people quickly exit homelessness during the pandemic, but they really are not doing that at all,” said Shannon Muti, associate director at Homeless Solutions. “It’s called ‘rapid rehousing,’ but there is nothing rapid about it.” The shelter also has many residents still waiting to get approved by the state after submitting applications months ago.
Morris County referred 80 people to receive CARES Act rapid rehousing to the Department of Community Affairs, the state agency that administers the program. Of the 23 people approved, five have secured housing, according to the county’s continuum of care.
That follows a statewide trend: Local nonprofits referred more than 2,200 people for help. About one-third have been approved for assistance as of mid-September. Of those 727 people, 259 signed leases and 468 are looking for housing, according to the Department of Community Affairs.
“I’m feeling defeated,” Spencer said recently, through tears. “I’m going to cry. I have a baby. Nobody should be homeless with a baby. It doesn’t make sense.”
One day in mid-August, Spencer and her daughter, who had turned 1 a week earlier, took an Uber and checked into a room at the OYO Hotel in East Hanover, worried about a possible bug infestation in the shelter. Muti said there wasn’t an infestation.
Spencer lugged a stroller, baby car seat and backpack into a room with two beds and a smudged window overlooking a parking lot. A gold-colored luggage trolley held two blue duffels and four plastic bags filled with diapers and other supplies.
She spent that weekend “in the woods” in Newton with her mom, who she said is supportive. “She tells me, ‘I wish you had a car so I could help you with your daughter,’ ” Spencer said. She’s close with her brother, and makes weekly visits to see her dad, who has dementia, at Morris View Healthcare Center.
“I can’t really talk to him like I used to, because he doesn’t remember, and is always asking where my brothers are,” Spencer said.
She wore a sky-blue Nickelodeon sweatshirt as she sat on the hotel bed, keeping a close eye on her smiling daughter, but giving her space to crawl around and grab her purple Care Bear, Vaseline bottle, purse. The toddler babbled, radiating joy.
“I must have done something right with her,” Spencer said. “She’s always dancing. It doesn’t matter what it is, from Marvin Gaye to Chris Brown. She’ll see J.J. from ‘Good Times’ on commercials and she’s like ‘Ah!’ and start laughing. I’m like, ‘Do you know him?’ ”
At the top of her child’s head was a small round poof of black hair, tied back with care. Spencer smiled shyly, gazing at her daughter as she posed, holding a purse up to her ear like a telephone.
Along with the diapers and other child care supplies, Spencer keeps another important item: a composition notebook filled with apartment names, addresses, phone numbers and real estate agent information, written with purple and green ink in round, bubbly handwriting. So far, she has little more than the neat pages to show for her diligent work.
Barriers to entry
While the federal rapid rehousing program is designed to help remove one hurdle to affordable housing for low-income families — a lack of money to pay rent — the affordable housing landscape is strewn with other roadblocks for those seeking a place to live. Spencer’s personal background has caused her to bump into many of them.
For starters, Spencer has no credit history. She didn’t even know that was something she should pay attention to until her daughter’s father couldn’t buy a used car because his credit was so bad. At least one management company sent her a letter explicitly saying her application was denied because of her nonexistent credit history.
New Jersey lawmakers were considering a bill that would force landlords to use alternative ways to judge creditworthiness for a narrow set of New Jerseyans seeking subsidized housing, such as employment, health history or other extenuating circumstances. The legislation moved out of a Senate committee, but it has not moved in the Assembly.
Another obstacle is Spencer’s criminal record from a decade ago. Spencer lived with her mother until she was 21 and then pleaded guilty in 2013 to multiple charges of possessing and distributing cocaine, Vicodin and heroin.
After participating in drug court for five years and living in an Essex County halfway house, she relapsed on heroin after her best friend died. She says she’s been clean for three years, but that slip was a violation of the drug court rules, so she was sent to prison for nearly two years.
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In June, Gov. Phil Murphy signed the “Fair Chance in Housing Act,” intended to help the formerly incarcerated, such as Spencer, ease the obstacles to find housing.
Starting Jan. 1, 2022, landlords are banned from asking about someone’s criminal history before they make a conditional offer to rent. After they provisionally accept an application, landlords can consider criminal convictions within a certain time frame.
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But the bill may not help Spencer. She pleaded guilty eight years ago to second-degree possession and third-degree distribution charges. The law says landlords can only consider second- or third-degree charges issued within the past four years. But landlords can also weigh whether a person went to prison for those charges within the last four years. Because Spencer relapsed, violated the drug court rules and went to prison until 2019, landlords could consider that when making a decision on her lease application through 2023.
If Spencer sends a message to a landlord or management company on Zillow with her name and email, she assumes they have searched her name online and read about the drug charges.
She said one landlord told her he found another renter for the unit. But when Spencer checked a week later, the apartment was still listed online as available.
Still another hurdle is that some landlords don’t understand the rapid rehousing funding program, which would cover a security deposit and a portion of six months’ to a year’s worth of rent. The amount depends on Spencer’s income, currently $231 a week from unemployment after her hours were gradually cut until she was laid off from McDonald’s in April 2020 — just after the COVID pandemic struck New Jersey. Spencer would pay 30% of her income on the rent; the assistance covers the rest.
“Even with this assistance, many participants are having a higher level of difficulty securing housing during this time due to limited availability, low income, poor credit, eviction history, or forensic history,” said Lisa Ryan, a spokesperson for the Department of Community Affairs.
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Landlords say no
To address these issues, the agency partnered with three nonprofits to work as “housing navigators”: Catholic Charities of Camden, Family Promise of Sussex County and Oaks Integrated Care. The nonprofits help renters fill out applications, work with landlords to explain the program and convince them to participate, and provide the renter with a letter explaining the benefits — something Spencer said she was not given.
Spencer works with a case manager through Catholic Charities, which declined to discuss specific clients.
“The availability of [fair market rate] units has been limited; case managers do all they can to broaden housing search areas,” said Christopher Brancato, development director for Catholic Charities. “Our case managers work with consumers on managing expectations, goal setting, and goal attainment.”
When one landlord was concerned the assistance was “not concrete enough,” Spencer’s case manager explained how the aid worked, and that if the public assistance ended, that was because she had become able to pay the rent herself.
“He didn’t want to hear it; he was just stuck on that end date,” Spencer said.
Another landlord told Spencer they had enough renters on housing assistance and didn’t want any more.
Under New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination, rejecting a renter because they would pay with public assistance is illegal. Tenants can file a civil rights complaint with the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office.
But that’s a long-term solution — it doesn’t help someone trying to find immediate housing.
“Reporting a landlord won’t help a client get into that specific unit, but hopefully will be addressed later on so it won’t happen again,” said Katelyn Ravensbergen, program director for the Hudson County Division of Housing and Community Development.
It can also be hard to prove outright discrimination.
“We’ve found if a landlord doesn’t want to rent to someone, they will find an excuse,” Ravensbergen said. “All of a sudden there is a credit issue, or an income requirement that a renter must make three times the monthly rent and wasn’t [mentioned] up front, but suddenly it’s needed.”
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Morris County is also a difficult region in which to find affordable rentals, and the tail end of the eviction moratorium is a particularly bad time to search for housing, said Maria Fodali, administrative supervisor of social work at the Morris County Office of Temporary Assistance. Tenants who can’t pay the rent and who would normally be evicted cannot be locked out in some cases through the end of the year. Other landlords say they are leaving the business entirely after going months or years without rental payments.
At the Morristown shelter, a housing specialist began accompanying Spencer to her apartment viewings twice a week.
He was able to see firsthand the hurdles that she faced. “He got to really see it,” Spencer said. “I’m starting to think they thought I was lying and sabotaging myself.”
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Uber rides and application fees
Being repeatedly turned down for an apartment has been demoralizing for Spencer. It has been an emotional roller coaster to be strung along, to have her hopes lifted only to be unceremoniously cast aside in the end.
There’s the financial pain as well — spending all that money on Uber rides to appointments, and putting down as much as$100 on application fees. Those are all sunk costs — the equivalent of burning cash.
“Maybe if I saved all the application money, I could have gotten a place without a voucher,” Spencer said.
That’s one of the biggest barriers in Hudson County, too, housing experts say.
The county sets aside funds to help housing applicants cover the cost of some application fees, but there isn’t enough money to pay the cost of six, seven, eight applications per person. There needs to be something left over to pay the rent, and often programs don’t let funds be used that way. At times, social workers will ask the landlord “Is this rental really going to happen?” before a client submits an application, said Monica Yeng, social work director for the Office of Social Services.
Hudson County is debating how to provide more incentives for landlords to rent to those receiving public aid. Will a “sign-on bonus” of a month’s rent sweeten the deal? Two months? A promise to cover damages that cost more than what a security deposit covers?
Spencer’s assistance allows the government to pay a landlord an extra $1,000 on top of all rental costs. But that incentive hasn’t worked yet.
“Why don’t they want to take this?” she asked.
In other counties and programs, public assistance doesn’t cover real estate agent fees — which many New Jersey landlords require applicants to pay and can cost a renter an additional month’s rent that they don’t have, said Siobhan O’Neil, director at CarePlus NJ, which is contracted with Bergen County to help find rentals for people experiencing homelessness.
‘I can’t give up’
Like many people experiencing homelessness, Jennie Spencer has bounced around to different places. She’s temporarily staying with family in Sussex County.
A friend of hers from Homeless Solutions recently signed a lease with the help of a Weichert real estate agent, who urged Family Promise, the group administering her rapid rehousing grant, to provide a letter on the nonprofit’s letterhead to present to landlords.
That document, a letter of recommendation and a landlord bonus of two months’ extra rent convinced the landlord to take a chance, said the real estate agent, Patricia Marshall.
“It wasn’t guaranteed because of her credit, but it just so happened there was an angel on the other side willing to hear my argument on paper, who opened his heart,” Marshall said of the landlord.
Marshall said she spoke with Spencer’s Catholic Charities representatives, but Spencer’s situation included more roadblocks than her previous client and Family Promise.
“With Family Promise, I got every document and check I asked for and was able to get through the process with the landlord within a week,” Marshall said. “In Jennie’s case, it feels like a paper shuffle. They can’t provide me with everything up front, and will only send checks through the mail. In this tight housing market, time is of the essence.”
Spencer holds out hope she’ll have the same luck as her friend, and imagines her life once she finds a home.
“When it does happen — not if, because I can’t give up — I’ll have a nice, clean, safe environment for me and my daughter, where she has enough space to play and explore and be a kid,” Spencer said.
Once she secures stable child care, she wants to go back to school, perhaps to be a social worker and use “the experience I have in the addiction world.” Or maybe she could work with kids.
“I already let a lot of time pass me by. It’s like I’ve been in a fog of my addiction and not living life for 10 years,” Spencer said. “I’m just ready to do the right thing. I was cheating myself. I owe it to myself.”
Ashley Balcerzak is a reporter in the New Jersey Statehouse. For unlimited access to her work covering New Jersey’s Legislature and political power structure, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: balcerzaka@northjersey.com
Twitter: @abalcerzak