The handwritten words on a white board inside the foyer are a disappointment for many:
“There are no funds for Utility Assistance …”
“Rental Assistance applications will not be accepted until further notice.”
The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis’ headquarters at 8960 Jennings Station Rd. in Jennings is one of three locations in St. Louis, St Louis County and St. Clair County. Its Ferguson location is a community empowerment center designed to help individuals improve their economic situations.
The Urban league’s city and county locations are part of a network of organizations that partner with federal, state, and local entities to provide food, mortgage, rental, weatherization, and utility assistance for people in need. That “need” has increased exponentially with the coronavirus outbreak.
With unprecedented COVID-related unemployment, evictions are just one area of dire concern. The National Low Income Housing Coalition recently issued a report estimating that some 19 million people could be evicted within the coming months.
The virus has struck vulnerable and marginalized people the hardest, but it’s also added more strain on organizations, like the Urban league, that provide rental or mortgage assistance during the crisis.
“People don’t realize that we’ve been impacted, too,” said Paula Carey-Moore, director of housing at the Urban League.
Carey-Moore oversees the housing programs for all three locations. Serving those in need has always been challenging, she explained, but the pandemic has added a multitude of new challenges. For instance, in the pre-pandemic days, people applying for assistance would come to the office, fill out an application and then schedule a face-to-face meeting with a counselor.
Once the need is accessed; the applicant would enroll in one of several classes offered by the agency. Typically, if all goes as outlined, an applicant could receive monetary assistance within 30 days.
“Now, because of the amount of applications we’re receiving, it takes five times longer,” Carey-Moore said.
Part of the problem is that the typical face-to-face meetings have been interrupted by a contagious disease. Additionally, much of the population that the Urban League serves are “challenged by technology,” Carey-Moore said.
The staff can’t walk clients through the application process which, oftentimes, results in incomplete or erroneous submissions. Getting needed documentation from employers, hospitals, landlords or mortgage companies is also problematic.
All this leads to tedious, time-consuming, follow-up work because the release of federal COVID relief funds come with strict regulations.
“It’s difficult because people used to be able to just drop it off applications. If they were looking for assistance, we’d do a financial empowerment session, make sure they have a budget and look at our other resources,” Carey-Moore said.
Other services, such as unemployment, job skills training, food and child support assistance have also been compromised as the agency works to adapt to virtual services for a virtually challenged populace.
Carey-Moore says she’s up for the challenge though. It can even be said that she was trained for it since childhood.
“I’m a HUD child,” said Carey-Moore, recalling how her mother was a longtime worker for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Minneapolis Minnesota. In 1970, when Carey-Moore was 7, her mother moved to St. Louis with her three kids to work for the local HUD agency.
Carey-Moore didn’t adjust well to the move. She missed her grade school friends like André Cymone the bass player for superstar Prince’s band. She stayed in touch with Cymone during her visits to Minneapolis to see her dad. She met a young Prince and other band members who, she said, rehearsed in her aunt’s basement.
As a child in St. Louis, Carey-Moore’s mom used to take her with her to inspect HUD homes. Married to famed St. Louis high school basketball player, Bennie Moore, Carey-Moore spent a good portion of her adulthood tending to the needs of their six children.
A friend and coworker of her mother helped Carey-Moore get started in real estate counseling. In 2011 she became a manager with NID Housing, an offshoot of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers. She became a housing counselor with the Urban League in 2006 before being named housing director in 2014.
Many people are somewhat aware that the city and county have provided CARES Act money to help people pay rent, mortgages and utility bills. What they are not prepared for, Carey-Moore stressed, is proving that their hardships are related to the pandemic.
“People get upset. They say, ‘What do you mean I haven’t been impacted?’ Well, everybody has been impacted but do you have proof that you’ve been impacted?”
That process is also cumbersome for people who have to secure documentation detailing how the loss of a job from a temporary agency or a spouse’s illness or death from the coronavirus led to their current predicament. Often, Carey-Moore and her staff must bear the brunt of impatient applicants frustrated with the long approval process.
Another white board in her office gives more detail about the Jennings location than the one in the foyer. Next to “rental/mortgage” scrawled in red marker are the words: “$80,000 in funding/$167.00 left.” The same for “utility assistance” with “$60,000 in funding/ $240.50 left.”
The frustration from clients, like the pandemic, is real. But because of her training in housing services, mediation, and counseling, coupled with her “Christian background,” Carey-Moore said she’s well prepared to serve and empower her clientele. She said knowing that she’s done her dead level best for marginalized individuals with the limited funds at hand gives her peace of mind:
“Sometimes, I find myself going home drained. But, if I’m doing right by them, I can sleep at night.”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is The St. Louis American’s inaugural Deaconess Fellow.