Last week, two emergency rental assistance clinics opened inside the St. Louis city limits. Neither is lacking for clients. Though the federal eviction moratorium was extended until October 3rd, that only means that sheriffs will not enforce evictions: the legal portion of eviction proceedings can continue unabated. That’s where the emergency rental assistance clinics come in: they help connect clients with federal relief funds, provided that those clients are able to provide proof of their own need and that they were negatively impacted in any way by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shannah Nieweg is the executive director of Horizon Housing Development Company, where one of the two walk-in clinics is being housed. She says that right now, they’re seeing five to ten walk-in clients per day, along with the “150 or so” clients they work with on a regular basis.
“Housing is the foundation for everything,” Nieweg said. “It’s your foundation for security, for stability. If you’re worried about losing your house day to day, those worries are often controlling your mind.”
The other housing clinic, at the Wohl Recreation Center on North Kingshighway, has been seeing more walk-in clients than Horizon Housing. Over the week since their opening, they have called in housing specialists from the Urban League to assist with client intake.
The Urban League is also one of several organizations that these walk-in clinics funnel clients towards, depending on need. Those organizations then follow up with clients after their first round of emergency rental assistance has been disbursed. That’s something that Paula Carey-Moore, the Urban League’s Regional Director of Housing, says can happen in as little as a week — assuming that individuals have their documentation in order prior to coming to the walk-in clinic.
That documentation, though, can often be a stumbling block, according to Taiya Wright, Office Administrator at Horizon Housing. Sometimes, individuals don’t have valid IDs or birth certificates, meaning that case managers at the walk-in clinics have to solve that problem before they can get to the problem of keeping people housed.
“Individuals that don’t have valid IDs or birth certificates, just giving them a generalized resource for where to obtain those, that’s been helpful,” Wright said. Employers and landlords, too, have to provide documentation, though some are reticent: “If they work for home health agencies or large corporations, they’re often not willing to provide that documentation.”
“It’s the minor things we take for granted” that become the biggest hurdles, Carey-Moore said.
What the clinic does is make sure the eviction moratorium is being enforced and that, when it expires, people will already be connected with rental assistance organizations so the eviction process doesn’t move forward then.
“You’re not going to get kicked out that minute,” Carey-Moore said. “And hopefully what it’s going to do…it is going to allow us and other nonprofit agencies that are working to process the payments, so they will have that. We’re holistically trying to stabilize the families that are coming.”
It is clear, though, that many families facing eviction do not yet have the information they need in order to access help. Carey-Moore said that multiple individuals from the county came to the city clinic this week, as did one individual with a mortgage rather than a rental. Others, she said, may not have access to the online resources needed to navigate through the assistance application process on their own.
“The reality of people needing help that may not know how to navigate is crucial,” she said. “So we’re here helping. And the reason the walk-in clinics are essential is because everybody just cannot get an email. We still have individuals that are saying they did not know this assistance applied to them.”
Both the Horizon Housing and Wohl Recreation Center clinics are open from 9:00 a.m. to noon on Monday through Saturday, with evening clinics from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
For those needing assistance in St. Louis County, several county library branches are offering assistance with the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, along with the Salvation Army and St. Patrick Center. Those requiring assistance in St. Louis County should call the ERAP hotline at 314-806-0910, and those in the city of St. Louis should dial 2-1-1, call 800-427-4626 or email 211cares@stl.unitedway.org.