KQED
– by Vanessa Rancaño
A couple of years ago, Larry Williams was living out of his Nissan Sentra and recovering from gunshot wounds that left him alternating between a wheelchair, crutches and a cane.
Williams, now 30, had gotten caught in the crossfire at Oakland’s Juneteenth festival at Lake Merritt in 2021, not long after the pandemic put an end to his job as a security guard.
He got a break in the spring of 2022 when an outreach worker signed him up for housing. Resources and support aligned to get him off the streets and into his own East Oakland apartment. He even got some help paying for furniture and other necessities. But there was a catch: That rental assistance came with an expiration date, and time was up.
The last of his subsidized rent payments was issued in May. Now he’s on the hook for the full $1,875 per month rent, while his only income is $1,300 a month in disability benefits, and Williams is on the verge of moving back into his car.
At a moment when Gov. Gavin Newsom is demanding cities get more people off the streets, Williams’ experience shows why that can be so difficult. He and his mother describe navigating a maze of assessments, nonprofits and public agencies that left them frustrated and discouraged. Meanwhile, providers describe working within a system crippled by scarcity and Byzantine regulations.
Their experience mirrors a scathing critique from the state auditor in April, which blasted Newsom’s administration for failing to track and evaluate its efforts to address homelessness despite allocating some $24 billion between 2019 and 2023. The report found that an alarming rate of people who entered some form of housing cycled back to the streets.
“They’re creating a revolving door,” Williams’ mother, Francine Edwards, said.
Williams was able to take advantage of a “rapid rehousing” program, temporary rental assistance meant to serve as a bridge to permanent housing. But advocates say the short-term help can also set up people like Williams, who lives on a fixed income, to fail.
…
Advocates say those who end up back on the streets are, in some cases, worse off than before they received assistance.
“When people have been on the streets for 15 years and then they go into housing and that ends with the sheriff yanking them out of the housing, it makes it harder to house them later because their experience was so bad,” said Ian Cordova Morales, head of the Berkeley nonprofit Where Do We Go and a housing navigator with the Homeless Action Center. “There’s so many reasons we want to do it right the first time.”
He’s currently assisting Williams and said he’s recently heard from a number of other people who may be facing eviction from rapid rehousing placements.
Photo credit: Beth LaBerge, KQED
Read the full article at KQED.org.
Download the Article