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- Helping those in need in a time of inflation and budget cuts, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by Cherry Whitehead-Thompson.

She's Deputy Director of Shelby County Division of Community Services.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- Mary Hamlett is VP of Housing Stability Programs at MIFA, thank you for being here.

- My pleasure, thank you.

- Sandy Bromley is Director of Shelby County Division of Community Services.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

So we'll start by just talking about the various programs and what you all do, and kind of talk about some of the programs that you're doing.

We're coming off of a government shutdown, federal cuts.

We had the Aging Commission, which is under the Community Services.

We had the head of the Aging Commission on last spring talking about potential cuts, same with folks from MIFA.

But let me just start with you, Sandy, and what does, it's a lot, but what does Shelby County Community Services do?

- So it is a lot, it's a large division.

We are essentially, we call ourselves the heart of Shelby County, so we do everything that interacts with community members on a daily basis.

I've got almost 300 employees, 10 different departments, everything from the Aging Commission, CSA, which is rental utility assistance, Veteran Services, and then we have a whole justice side that a lot of people don't know that we run.

We run pretrial services and behavioral health services for justice-involved adults.

And then we have a Youth and Family Resource Center for justice-involved young people.

And then we also run the Crime Victims and Rape Crisis Center.

It's actually what I used to run.

That's what I moved to town for.

- Okay, all right, let me bring Mary.

Everyone, you know, people know MIFA, they know MIFA from especially Meals on Wheels and work with seniors, but housing stability programs are probably, they're incredibly important.

We've talked about 'em before in the show, but for those not as familiar with that work from MIFA, what is that?

- What we do in Housing Stability Programs is we try to prevent homelessness whenever possible.

We have rent and mortgage assistance for people who've experienced a crisis.

We have shelter referral services for families with children who are experiencing homelessness.

We also run the city's 24-hour, now it's actually 12-hour a day, 7-day-a-week hotline for homeless families.

That is the, pretty much the array of services offered on the Housing Stability Programs side of MIFA, and we also have a rapid rehousing program for families with children who have experienced homelessness.

- We'll go through all these more, but let me go to you, Cherry, as deputy director.

You know, we try to do a show like this, I mean, we've talked to both these organizations many times over the years, but try to do something around the holidays.

We invited folks from the food bank, and they often can't come this time of year 'cause it's so busy, especially coming off the government shutdown and the limit or the pause in SNAP benefits.

But Cherry, what do you see typically and as you've done this sort of work at this time of year, and is it any different this year because of federal budget cuts were pretty big on, at the federal level and again this shutdown and the ramifications from that?

- Yeah, we've just seen, there's been a delay in our ability to serve our clients at our regular period.

For example, with Community Services Agency, which is the utility and rental and mortgage assistance program.

The fiscal year normally, or program year started October 1st normally, but because of the shutdown, we were not able to start on October 1st, but had to delay the start, at least for the utility program, until November 3rd.

And we still have not ramped up the rent and mortgage program just yet because the contract has not been received, so there have been some delays in that space.

- We've had lots of shows over the years talking about like your predecessor, Sandy, talking about, you know, housing, the need for, what's the number, Bill?

You know, tens of thousands of affordable housing units.

Then you run into a situation that's before you run into a situation where interest rates are really high, where construction costs are high, where labor costs are high, and again, we've done shows on that.

Do you feel like you're going backwards in terms of being able to deliver some of these housing.

let's just stick with housing for a second, those housing related services you wanna deliver?

- Absolutely, so it is a perfect storm of crisis right now, to be perfectly honest with you.

So in addition to, like you said, rising costs, inflation, where all of our ARPA dollars have been spent, so the extra COVID money that we got for a while that has supplemented a lot of this is now gone.

So we were already suffering that, then the policy changes.

So we talk about the funding cuts, but really the policy changes are impacting us pretty significantly as well-- - At the federal level?

- Correct.

- Talk about some of those.

- So you know, I think people don't understand that, you know, 80% of my budget, which is 22 plus million, eighty percent of it is grant funded, mostly from the feds.

And whether it's federal through state or federal direct to us, a big chunk of local government relies on the federal government.

And I think folks don't, maybe didn't realize the extent to which that is true.

And so we have, you know, as Cherry pointed out, some of the policy delays around just not being able to ramp up programs when our clients expect them to be ramped up, and rely and depend on them to be ramped up.

Whether it's changing the way you apply, so this year for example, we had to, we went away completely from paper applications, which may sound like a no duh, let's get to the 21st century, but we have a lot of folks who still weren't able to even create an email address in order to get on this dashboard, and it was very complicated, to be honest with you.

So just, you know, all these policy decisions, all of the funding issues, everything sort of colliding all at once, and we have just really a very heavy despair, almost.

And the despair, it really comes from uncertainty, I think more than anything.

Cherry mentioned earlier that we really were getting roughly the same amount of money, it's just delayed, but it was the uncertainty during that time that just really made things very difficult, not only for our staff, uncertain about even whether or not they'd have jobs, but you know, also for our clients who wouldn't know, you know, are my SNAP benefits gonna go away?

Are, you know, what's gonna change now?

- Yeah, go ahead, Sherry, go ahead.

- There was, during the shutdown, there was a lot of conversation around whether LIHEAP, which is the utility assistance program, was gonna be funded because we knew that that was one of the programs that our president was not really too fond of and didn't really think that he was, there was a lot of discussion around cutting those dollars, even shifting the community services block grant dollars to do other things versus paying people's mortgages and rent to keep them housed.

So there was a lot of, like she stated, uncertainty around how is the program gonna function, how are we going to move forward, what will we be able to offer the community, versus, you know, what we've done in the past, so.

- Let me bring in Bill Dries.

- Mary, talk a little bit about what rapid rehousing means in Memphis, the demand for it, and also how able you are to get into a more permanent situation for people in housing.

- Okay, Bill, so let's say five years ago, we were tapped by the Bezos Foundation because Memphis had such a great record for rehousing families in the shortest amount of time in the nation.

We were at a 14-day average.

Other cities were over 100 days.

Fast forward to post-pandemic, and it is more difficult than ever to find housing that people qualify for because the price has increased, and the requirements for three to four times the income has also made this a very steep hurdle.

We're also seeing that people in medium income areas are now experiencing homelessness because landlords are opting to sell their properties, and then the new corporate landlords don't care to rent to people who can't have that, you know, experience that increase and afford to stay there.

So we're seeing people who have never experienced any unstableness in their lives, all of a sudden not to be able to find affordable housing.

- So what does the turnover time look like in terms of going from 14 days to get someone rehoused, what does it look like now?

- Okay, so one of the things that happened after the pandemic, we became more involved with the community-wide effort around rehousing.

So now people may apply with us, they go through the city system.

It's not operated by the city, it's actually operated by Community Alliance for the Homeless.

They go into a portal, it may be a couple of months before they are referred to us.

Then once they are referred to us, instead of it taking 14 days to find something they qualify for, it's more like 45, 65, 75 days.

- Talk about aging.

Again I mentioned the Aging Commission, which is under you, and there was great concern about what, when we did a show in the spring about this, what the potential cuts, the budget wasn't done in the federal budget, and the ramifications that could happen.

Where are you now with seniors and support for seniors that you can and are able to continue to give?

- Yeah, so like I mentioned earlier, the Aging Commission is one of our entities that had a big budget cut overall this year because ARPA dollars leaving.

So that already felt like we were strapped, and our waiting lists are starting to get a little bit longer.

And then with this uncertainty, the waiting list got even a little bit longer, and so, you know, we are doing the best we can to stay on top of things, but it's certainly, it's just a different situation today than it was.

- And the services for seniors include what?

- Everything from home healthcare, - Meals on Wheels, yeah.

- Meals on Wheels that we [indistinct].

- Which is probably one of the main pieces.

- Yeah, absolutely.

We have an information and assistance line, so our staff really does the information line, and then we contract out with folks to do a lot of the services.

We have an ombudsman program.

It's a hard word to say, and just, you know, all kinds of ways for seniors to hopefully stay in their homes as stable as possible for as long as possible.

- Yeah, 'cause like Medicare, signing up for that, signing up for SNAP benefits, 'cause that's what, they also work with that piece of it, helping individuals, seniors, and those with disabilities sign up for SNAP benefits, and then they send those to the state for approval, so a lot of hands-on with seniors and those with disabilities.

- With, we'll stick with SNAP and food, I mean, the dollars from SNAP don't, in any program, the dollars from your paycheck don't go as far in many cases, right?

So I mean, they started in COVID, I mean, it's not a political thing about Trump or Biden or whatever it is, it has happened, right?

And one of the things that we all learned, none of us, you know, took economics in high school or not enough of us, that inflation is different than cost, right?

Inflation goes up at whatever rate, and rarely does it come back down, right?

And so suddenly, things are just all that accumulated, two, and three, and 4% interest.

That must be hitting people who are kind of on the margins particularly hard, or seniors on fixed income.

- Right, definitely, because the income is fixed, right?

They don't necessarily, you know, most of the time, they get the increase once a year for cost of living, but in many cases and in most cases, the cost of living does not keep pace with what they bring in, right?

And so they have to make decisions sometimes about medication versus food.

And so grateful for the Meals on Wheels program, because they definitely serve so many of our seniors who need consistency in their meals.

But it is a little bit difficult for many of the seniors, and this program does a really great job at just meeting, the Aging Commission of the Mid-South with trying to meet those needs, and where we can't meet them internally, work to try to at least farm out that to others within the community that may be able to provide support.

So for example, if you do need funds to assist with meals, maybe you can take whatever you're making and you can buy food, and maybe Community Services Agency can cover the cost of your utilities.

So a lot of that's like the trade-off, if you can connect with other service programs.

- And the seniors are actually the fastest-growing population of folks facing and experiencing homelessness currently.

So couple would not have been able to afford food and utilities, now their rent, so a lot of people don't own their homes.

- True.

- Or when taxes on houses increase and their income is fixed.

All those things coupled together, as Sandy mentioned, it's just a perfect storm for destabilization, and we see it from families with children, you know, how many children are experiencing homelessness, to now seniors, people over 55, representing the fastest increase in folks experiencing homelessness.

- Yeah.

Bill.

- Is some of this a function of living paycheck to paycheck?

And then all of a sudden there's a bump, not even really losing the job, but just having some kind of financial emergency, or maybe a big bill to repair a car, and next thing you know, you can't make ends meet.

How common is that?

- Quite common.

- That's what we see every day.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- That's why our rent and mortgage assistance program is centered around a crisis.

Either you had to miss work because you were ill and you have a job that does not pay you when you're off work, so you had a dip in income, or you had a car repair that totally destabilized you, you had a pipe that started to leak in your home and you had to pay a plumber, and your money, there's no wiggle room.

It is paycheck to paycheck and every penny, and you already needed more than you were getting, and now you've had something that totally disrupts everything.

And that's why these programs are so essential for people because, as you were mentioning, costs keep going up.

- Absolutely.

- Incomes don't, and not just seniors, almost everybody is on a fixed income.

- Right.

- You know, we get modest increases yearly most of the time, but by the time you get the increases, the cost of things have gone up so much, you're always playing catch-up.

And it's even more prevalent I think nowadays because people are so living on the margins, and even people who used to.

Somebody told me $50,000 used to be a decent income, you could pretty much get what you needed.

We know $50,000, especially if you have a child, it doesn't go very far.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- For people who, listen, we have 10 minutes left in the show here.

Programs that might be one thing with a senior on a fixed income, they're not gonna go back to work.

I mean, they are where they are, but getting people out of being, I don't wanna say this coldly, but getting people out of being reliant on some of the programs, the utility programs and so on, where does Community Services, I mean, how much of your focus is on let's get you back where you don't need that help?

And I would think there's a lot of people who don't want the help, I mean, that they would rather, you know, work, pay, live on their own without the need for assistance.

How do you, how does that fit in your priorities?

- So across our division, we work really hard to be people-focused, people-centered, and make sure that we're addressing the whole person, right?

Because they come to us with one issue, of they're a victim of crime, or they come to us because they need utility assistance.

But often, there's a lot of overlap, there's, you know, overlaps of oppression.

But one thing we do try when life is better and a little easier, we've definitely started more self-sufficiency programs, tried to do more empowerment type programming.

But I will say during this time where we are literally just putting Band-Aids on bullet wounds, that's what we're doing every day.

So we frankly just aren't doing the level of self-sufficiency work or empowerment work that we would hope to do, because we're just trying to get the money out the door as quickly as possible to stem whatever we can.

- Yeah, other thoughts on self-sufficiency?

- You know, we have unique situations when we're working with families through rapid rehousing.

So we help them to find a new place, we provide the upfront money, and some subsequent months of assistance if needed.

During that time, we also are able to connect them with training opportunities, educational opportunities, and jobs that will increase their income so that they can remain stable for the long-term, so but that's just a handful of the thousands of people we serve every year.

We serve about 70 families through rapid rehousing.

So the other people, much as Sandy says, you know, Band-Aid on a bullet wound, also as Sandy said, you know, we do Meals on Wheels, that's 60% of our income is from federal funding.

Our housing stability program's over 45% of that.

So the one thing we know for sure is that whether the funding stays, increases, or leaves, the needs remain, and it's not a gap we can fill through, you know, philanthropy and donations.

- Let's talk, I mean, Shelby County is the whole county.

It encompasses everything from Memphis to Millington to Collierville to Germantown.

I think stereotypically, probably people think, "Well, this is really a Memphis problem, not a suburban problem."

- Not at all.

- Yeah.

- Not at all.

We work with all the different municipalities, all seven.

There's great need across our county, right?

There is obviously, like you said, it's stereotypical that you would think it's just the city.

It's not at all.

In fact, we have a new program called the Connector Program where we have a connector in each area of the county, and we have actually uncovered a lot more need up north, Northaven, Arlington areas, Millington even.

So I mean, places that maybe we didn't necessarily focus on before, 'cause to be honest, 90% of our clients are city of Memphis residents.

However, now that we're getting out into those communities, we're starting to see more and more need coming to us.

- Well, and I assume from a housing, I mean, housing is, in general, more expensive out in some of these suburbs so that margin for error that you talked about, if somebody, you know, hits hard times, there's less, far less affordable housing in many of these suburbs than there are in Memphis, and there's not enough in Memphis.

- Very true, and what we find is oftentimes when people who live in the nicer suburbs come to us for assistance, we have a cap, and their mortgages are so steep that what we can provide, the banks turn down, it's just not enough.

So you're right, for folks who are making a decent amount, living in nicer places, once they hit the wall, it takes a lot more to kinda help them recover.

- And Sandy, you mentioned the connectors, and that's one person per County Commission district, correct?

- Correct.

- So you have 13 who are able to kind of give you an overview of the district or a more granular view of it, right?

- That's absolutely correct.

So yeah, each of our connectors works to get to know neighborhood-level resources.

They know their district inside and out.

And it's been such a beautiful project for our division, because like I said, it's changing the way we do work, because we're connecting with a lot more people than we ever had before.

We're also realizing there's even more need, like I said earlier, than we even knew about.

But it's been a really, it's a really amazing program, and that is a specialty-funded program, so we're gonna have to work to incorporate that in to our work as across the division moving forward.

- Right.

We've done several shows, we've done a lot of shows, actually, on the overall shortage in affordable housing.

So when you get more affordable housing, which we've seen come on the line, I think people view that as kind of longer term.

Does that impact the short-term problem?

- Well, no it doesn't right now, because what we're seeing is more people not be able to afford housing.

It takes so long, you know, to get approvals to build, for neighborhoods to accept, you know, mixed-income rental properties, or let alone, you know, low income rental properties, that it would be hard for us to catch up because we're so far behind.

It's over 40,000, I think the units short are over 40,000 in the city of Memphis, so you can imagine what it would take to actually have us reach a point where we've addressed the shortages for affordable housing.

- Right, right, and most people associate affordable housing with home ownership, although there's more discussion lately of solving the problem with a mix of ownership and rental as well.

- Yes, because what you get when you own a home is the extra expense that a lot of people don't understand they're gonna incur, and then people get these loans, and we saw that during the bubble burst of '08.

People got all these loans, some were predatory of course, but they also didn't understand the additional expenses attached to own a home.

So it's nice as it sounds, home ownership of course is not for everyone.

- All right.

- With just a couple, oh, I'm sorry.

- Go ahead.

- With just a couple minutes left, and I don't mean this in a political way 'cause it's a very political issue, but right now with the Memphis Safe Task Force here, we've done a ton of shows on that, a lot of reporting on it, there's a lot of anecdotal stories about the pressure on immigrant communities, people who are afraid to leave their homes, all of that.

Where does that, without getting into the politics of it, how much does that impact your work?

- So I would say that the task force has impacted our work across the board.

Whether there's more people being arrested and then losing jobs, and then therefore, more economic instability as a whole, or people being afraid of being arrested, and therefore not leaving the house or not coming to seek services, and then situations get worse because they're just literally afraid to leave their house.

So we've definitely seen that.

We've seen a tiny tick in our victim services, people coming forward for victim services.

But mostly we're suffering, mostly on the offender side of things right now, where so many people are getting arrested for everything.

And you know, obviously our jail's full, and our pretrial services staff are overworked and underpaid, and you know, you know, there's just, there's just ripples of impact that it's causing, of course.

- Immigrant communities and might focus specifically on housing, is that having an impact or not so much?

- Well, we're not seeing any applications over the last few months, and we never had a huge number of immigrant applicants, just because of the paperwork that's required.

But the thing that's gonna impact us is the upcoming HUD grant for the community, and how that will impact our ability to serve people who are not citizens or legally here, because before, HUD was a little bit silent on it, and now there are some directives around making sure that people are citizens if-- - So you wouldn't be able to fund someone into a rapid rehousing.

- Exactly.

- Or any of these programs if they don't have a green card or aren't citizens, so on and so forth.

- Exactly, exactly.

- With just a minute left, I cut Bill off, did you have anything?

Sorry about that.

- Just about the criminal justice system work that you do, that's obviously been impacted by this, but without this, is the demand for those services growing?

- Oh, absolutely, I mean, you know, one of the things that our division did recently, about a little over a year ago, started our Joint Office of Neighborhood Safety, because we know that public safety is way more than just your criminal justice, your traditional criminal justice system.

And so we see it every day, the connections between these basic needs and criminal activity, and we've gotta start addressing the whole thing, and unfortunately at this point with the task force, they're still addressing just the criminal side of things without the backend resources available for us.

- So it sounds like when the task force exits under whatever circumstances, you've got a lot more work to do.

- I'm concerned about that, yes.

- We're out of time.

People can learn more about what MIFA is doing, MIFA.org.

- www.mifa.org.

- Yeah, and they can probably search for Shelby County Community Services and get all the the range of things that you all do.

Thank you all for being here, appreciate it.

I should have mentioned, we taped this a week ago.

I don't think that would have any impact, but I should have mentioned at the top of the show.

That is all the time we have tonight, though.

If you missed any of the episodes, you can go to wkno.org, The Daily Memphian, search for us on YouTube.

Recent shows have included Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, Interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond, Justin Pearson, Steven Cohen, that's all at wkno.org or on YouTube or The Daily Memphian, or available as a podcast.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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