Crisis largely averted for Courtyard Village tenants

Here’s a review of some key Courtyard Village Apartments numbers and facts:

Tenants and households helped:

• Of the 150 units at Courtyard Village Apartments, 101 contacted the Council for the Homeless for assistance.

• Of that 101, the council helped 76 households — including 89 children — move into different situations.

• Most but not all 101 households requested financial help. The council responded with an average of $1,350 per household.

• Eight of the 76 that were helped left Clark County because they still couldn’t afford anything locally.

Contributions and donations:

• Community in general: $55,328.

• Vancouver First United Methodist Church membership: $47,262.

• Total (so far): $102,590.

Not helped:

• The council tried but could not help 25 households — largely because their incomes were just too low or barriers too high to get into local rental housing.

• Sixteen households made temporary arrangements to double up with family or friends and are still looking for something permanent.

• Five households became homeless and are still looking.

• Four households fell out of contact with the council.

Source: Council for the Homeless

A few special volunteers usually scoop up awards for extraordinary efforts when the Council for the Homeless holds its fundraising luncheon every autumn.

This year, the special volunteer being celebrated is you.

This community “did the real heavy lifting” when Courtyard Village Apartments hit the wall, council spokeswoman Charlene Welch said. Hundreds turned out for a fundraising run within weeks of the story getting out. Hundreds more made independent donations to a council emergency fund. Even more turned out at meetings and forums and convinced the Vancouver City Council to start exploring new affordable housing policies — an effort that’s underway now.

More information on the Council for the Homeless’ Oct. 9 luncheon will be announced later. For now, Welch emphasized, this year’s prizewinning volunteer is the one who made it possible to rescue Courtyard Village residents from possible homelessness: You.

Visit the council at www.councilforthehomeless.org.

— Scott Hewitt

Robert Mitchell has suffered more than his fair share of tragedies.

Mitchell’s wife of 20 years died of a sudden heart attack while their family lived in Atlanta. He and the children returned home to Vancouver and settled into a west-side rental — when the rent abruptly rose. They had barely moved in when they had to pack up and go.

They wound up at Courtyard Village Apartments in Rose Village, where Mitchell faithfully paid his rent and kept up his apartment, he said — despite what he said was a “dirty and disgusting” overall environment and a lack of responsiveness when maintenance was needed. “It was a step down” from the previous place, he said.

Then, after five years, the Mitchells got a notice from their new landlord to vacate. “The same crap happened again,” said Mitchell, 48. “It was a horrible and sudden situation. We had 20 days to find a place.” Mitchell, who was unemployed, got ready for the worst. He’d been homeless before, he said, and he desperately didn’t want to expose his kids to that.

“It was the end of the world,” he said.

Except this time, it didn’t. The Council for the Homeless, a local nonprofit that coordinates policy and operates a clearinghouse of homeless services, dipped into a new community fund to buy Mitchell a 30-day extension at Courtyard Village. Meanwhile, the Vancouver Housing Authority found units at some of its low-income apartment properties that refugees from Courtyard Village could move right into.

The transition was virtually seamless, Mitchell said. A family that half expected to wind up in homeless shelters now lives on the third floor of Orchard Glen, a VHA complex near Orchards Park. The rent is a little higher and the bedrooms fewer, Mitchell said — it was $750 for three bedrooms at Courtyard Village, it’s $775 for two at Orchard Glen — but he’s also realizing some tidy savings on electricity and laundry, he said. He no longer has to haul bucketsful of quarters to a trashy laundry room, he said — his new washer/dryer is right here in his unit.

(There’s no smoking at this property, he added, so he’s cutting down on his tobacco use and getting healthier too, despite himself.)

Best of all, he said: he looks out his third-floor balcony window and sees a well-kept property with crews busy at work. “That’s incredible,” he said. “You never saw that at Courtyard Village.”

“They saved our lives,” Mitchell said of the agencies and donors who saw to his family’s soft landing in a better place. “I am tearing up just thinking about it.”

Flexible funds

Mitchell’s experience dodging the homeless bullet — thanks to donated money and local nonprofit agencies working closely together — is more the rule than the exception, according to officials at the Council for the Homeless. Last week, executive director Andy Silver and spokeswoman Charlene Welch sat down with The Columbian to review how community generosity and smart partnerships prevented a wave of new homelessness in Clark County, they said.

Late last year, a Beaverton, Ore., development firm called Metropolitan Land Group bought Courtyard Village and started notifying the tenants — some of the lowest-income, least-able renters in the county — that renovations would spur higher rents. Month by month, hundreds of tenants at the 150-unit complex in were given the minimum legal notice — 20 days — to reapply or get out.

Nobody denied that the place was dilapidated and desperate for an upgrade. But most observers agreed that Metropolitan Land Group’s handling of the situation was insensitive to the lives and problems of the tenants — many of whom faced major barriers to finding another place to live.

Word about the crisis spread quickly, and an alarmed community rallied. Nearby Washington Elementary School hosted an information session for all affected families; the First United Methodist church cooked and served hot meals at Courtyard Village; the nonprofit Community Housing Resource Center worked with residents to clear up their credit ratings, improving their standing in landlords’ eyes; and Vancouver Housing Authority found those units to dedicate to Courtyard Village refugees.

“A unique set of partnerships developed,” Silver said.

Plus, a local fitness studio spearheaded a fundraising run that raised more than $8,500 toward a dedicated council fund that ultimately topped out at nearly $103,000, helping 76 households into new places to live. The council didn’t skim off any administrative costs, Silver said. It spent every dime on application fees, damage and rental deposits, moving expenses, stop-gap motel stays — even retiring minor debts or engaging in a little direct rental-price negotiation with landlords.

“Whatever the need, we were able to come together and figure out creative solutions. We could use those donations to cover the gaps,” Silver said. Working so flexibly with unconstrained money was a far cry from doling out the heavily programmed and regulated grant dollars the council gets from federal and state sources, he said.

That success in mind, the council has launched a new Housing Relief Fund and seeded it with a $30,000 grant from the Community Foundation Southwest Washington. The council will develop a set of assessments and rules to make sure the money is spent fairly and consistently, Silver said — but it also looks forward to the flexibility it needs to rescue people who are teetering on the brink of homelessness, he said.

“We want to be able to meet people where they are. With a little one-time help we can prevent people entering into the (homeless safety net ) system. Flexible money helps us do that,” he said.

Also, Silver pointed out, Courtyard Village was the galvanizing crisis in the city’s decision to convene an Affordable Housing Task Force that’s now working toward new policy recommendations to protect vulnerable tenants and to encourage the construction of more affordable rental housing. It is on track to make its first concrete policy recommendation in August, said Silver, who is a member. (Learn more at www.cityofvancouver.us/ced/page/affordable-housing.)

“It’s fantastic what we were able to achieve, especially given what we were fearing going into this,” he said.

Landlords wanted

But Silver and Welch added that they were distressed to discover many housing scammers out there — posting fraudulent Internet ads and eager to collect deposits and initial payments for apartments and rental houses they don’t actually own. The council managed to steer several Courtyard Village refugees away from those, they said.

The private rental market has got to play an important role in keeping low-income people housed, many local officials have agreed, but Silver said that the council and VHA keep reaching out to local landlords with incentives for taking on troubled renters — the ones with little income, bad credit, evictions, even criminal convictions — and keep getting no place, he said.

“The reality is we are still not able to find enough housing,” Silver said. “And most of the people we did help into new apartments are paying more rent than they used to.”

By the way, the Courtyard Village Apartments name has been retired; the complex at 2600 T St. is now Parc Central.