Here’s How The Spring is Helping Families Find Home.
Affordable long-term housing is a huge need across our state. Partnerships are making a key difference for the people we serve.
Kedrick Nettleton, Community Engagement Manager
When The Spring first unveiled its new transitional living program last year, we spent a lot of time discussing the why behind our program.
Our excitement wasn’t about the beauty of our new property or the idea of expansion, but about the ways we could help the people we serve build independence, life skills, and a future to thrive in. The whole program was about creating foundations for long-term success.
Now that we’re half a year into running transitional living, it’s time to talk about what comes after someone’s time in our program, and that conversation often revolves around affordable housing. This is a huge issue for the people we serve, but not just for them — according to studies, the city of Tulsa needs 13,000 new units in the next decade, and the city government is working to prioritize this goal.
On a smaller scale, we’ve seen some exciting program partnerships come to fruition in the past months, and these long-term housing success stories are worth celebrating. Lynn Bryant, The Spring’s non-residential coordinator, has spent months working on these partnerships. She joined us this February to share her perspective on long-term housing, how it affects our clients, and how The Spring can help eliminate barriers.
First off, can you share an example of these housing wins we’ve seen over the past few months?
Of course! Our most recent win comes from a relationship with Tulsa Day Center’s Rapid Rehousing Program. Over the past few months, we’ve worked hard to steward that partnership, because they make allowance for survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, and they’ll often move those individuals ‘up the list,’ so to speak.
“We have one long-term client in our transitional program who was recently presented with a housing match, and it really did represent life-change. This is somebody who has been homeless for a long time even before coming into the program. She was able to have her interview, and they selected housing for her that was a huge upgrade — closer to her family, creates a much easier commute for her to get to her job, and has a system built in to help her afford rent. It’s really the best-case scenario for this individual as she leaves our program and continues on her path to recovery. Our whole team was ecstatic when we heard about that one.”
What kinds of barriers to housing exist for the people we serve? What walls are they running into when they try to find their next step?
“I think the most common one that we’re running into is just our clients’ records. Essentially, people will have evictions on their record, or they’ll have convictions on their record — even if they’re the abused, and not the abuser. Sometimes, both parties will get evicted in a domestic violence situation, and then when they do actually split up, that eviction is still on their record, and they don’t know how to get it off.
“Sometimes the people that we serve need help getting their documents, specifically if they’ve been in a trafficking situation. Sometimes the people that we serve have been chronically homeless, and they don’t have the resources or understanding or maybe aren’t in a state mentally at the moment to be able to go out and overcome these obstacles themselves. Every situation is different, of course, but these are some of the most common obstacles that we’re seeing.”
We’ve written before about the overlap of domestic violence and homelessness. Is that data something that you’re seeing firsthand in the people interacting with The Spring’s programs?
“It absolutely is, and it’s a lot of the time it’s specific to those DV-related evictions that I noted before. Renters will see that, or housing programs here in Tulsa will see that, and it will damage the chances of someone who has that on their record to find their way to the top of the list.”
You work with a lot of other service-oriented nonprofits. How common would you say this challenge — finding long-term housing — is?
“Most of those interactions you’re talking about are because I’ve been going to these rapid rehousing meetings and looking for resources. And I would say, yes, that this is consistently one of the biggest problems that exists for vulnerable client populations. We are certainly not the only organization struggling to find these resources for our people, but I’ll also point out the positive: there’s a really great community forming to help address this.
“You mentioned earlier that there are city government initiatives to try to create more housing, but that’s something that’s going to take time. In the meantime, this is something that all of these organizations, including us here at The Spring, are going to continue to face.”
We always want to give supporters a step to take to help solve the problem, but this is an issue that’s a little more complicated. Is there anything that people reading this can do?
“I actually do think there are things that people can do to help, and I’d point to two things in particular. One is that we need renters who are willing to overlook some of the things that can normally stand as barriers for people. We recently had a property company reach out to us that wants to do just that — they want to partner with us and help our clients move into long-term housing, and they are willing to work with the experience that our clients often have.
“There’s also a need for maintenance. I had one client who actually did have a house on a piece of property, but that house needed some major work to be livable. Holes in the floors, and the pipes had frozen, things like that. And I could see that as a really great volunteer opportunity for people who have those skills to help these people fix their homes and make them livable again.”