By Taylor Knopf
A nonprofit in Charlotte is helping people who use drugs find stable housing, creating a pathway to stability for a population that is frequently barred from traditional rental markets.
Queen City Harm Reduction secured a grant over a year ago to help house its participants — people who come to their center in northwest Charlotte and to their mobile services for safe drug use supplies and services — and the results have been promising. Once housed, many have found employment and reduced their substance use.
The grant money for nonprofit’s Housing First program is from North Carolina’s portion of the McKinsey settlement for that company’s alleged role in fueling the opioid epidemic. Millions of dollars have begun to flow to North Carolina as the result of multi-state legal settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors — and in this case, the consulting firm that helped companies increase sales of Oxycontin. The money is intended to be used to offset the harms of opioid addiction.
Lauren Kester, associate director of Queen City Harm Reduction, knows firsthand the challenges of securing a lease while having a history of misdemeanor drug crimes. Kester said she was fortunate to never experience chronic homelessness and to have parents who helped her by co-signing leases, but she watched people close to her struggle to find jobs and housing due to their substance use.
In applying for a two-year grant to start the Housing First program, she wanted to help folks coming to the syringe exchange achieve housing stability. Many face significant challenges in securing traditional leases, including low income, low credit scores, lack of personal identification documents, criminal records, past evictions, active drug use and stigma from landlords.
“And so this came from a very personal place, and I really wanted to see people who use drugs not be barred from housing,” she said.
As of June, she said the program has housed 29 participants and is in the process of helping 25 more track down personal identification documents and find rentals that work for them. Kester said that housed participants reported an 81 percent decrease in their drug use.
Finding the right landlords
Kester argued that, historically, society has demanded that people stop using substances such as drugs and alcohol before they could receive help. However, when people’s basic needs are met — housing, food, support — they’re in a better position to succeed, she said.
Many experiments over the past two decades with the housing first model of providing services have shown stronger results when programs are well-planned and provide multiple supportive services for people making a transition from being homeless to housed.
“We’re seeing people who, once sheltered, are getting more hours and are moving from part-time to full-time work, or if they had no work, they are getting employed,” Kester said. She published some preliminary 2023 data from the pilot program as an Addiction Policy Scholars Program fellow with the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Participants have found work or increased employment hours in customer service, manual labor, security, hospitality, nursing home, service industry and house cleaning.
Getting participants ready to sign a lease and finding landlords willing to take a chance on them is no small task.
To apply for a lease, the participants have to track down key documentation that many have been missing for years, such as a driver’s license or social security card.
“They’re unhoused, so there’s a stigma. When they go to these government agencies, they know they’re going to be stared at, they may not be treated fairly. So they’re reluctant,” said Darcell Walker, a social worker and harm reduction housing specialist with the Housing First program.
In one case, Walker accompanied a participant to the Division of Motor Vehicles after the woman was initially turned away.
In addition to prepping program participants for housing, Walker must scout out potential landlords. A lot of leased properties in North Carolina are owned by big corporations with strict criteria: a high minimum credit score, an income that’s three times the rent, no evictions and no criminal background, Walker explained.
Some of those strict criteria, which exclude the people she works with, are unfair, she added.
“There should be some legislative change about some of these requirements for moving in,” Walker said. “I’ve noticed in North Carolina, if you’ve had any eviction, it’s pretty much like a sentence to be chronically homeless because no one wants to take a chance on you.
“People face all types of obstacles and situations that may cause them to be unable to pay their rent at a certain point in their life, but it shouldn’t mean that for 10 years they can’t get somewhere to live or then move out of state,” she said.
While Walker has placed a few people in rentals owned by property management groups, she has had most success building relationships with private landlords. She’s even arranged meet-ups between landlords and potential tenants to put their minds at ease about issues such as possible property damage. The Housing First program provides rent assistance until the participants graduate from the program.
No one has been evicted so far, and two have graduated.
Walker said she’s also able to reassure landlords by letting them know that she will be checking on the new tenants and their property a couple times a month during home visits.
“A lot of our people have been unhoused for years, so that transition into stable housing is scary and unfamiliar,” she said. “We try to get them out of the areas they used to frequent, so they don’t know any of the resources. So I’ll go out and show them where the bus stops are, explore the neighborhood and find the laundromat.”
The Housing First program also gives participants referrals to mental health services and employment support. Walker has witnessed participants make some big positive changes in their lives.
Success stories
One participant had been doing some odd jobs around the community while living out of her car and coming to Queen City Harm Reduction for safe drug use supplies. Though she had a little income, she didn’t make enough to secure a lease.
Walker helped the woman obtain reliable monthly income through Social Security and eventually move into her own place through the Housing First program.
“She’s been doing great,” Walker said. “She actually got into a CNA [certified nursing assistant] class, and we’re actually going to help her with the tuition.”
Success looks different for everyone though. Walker shared the story of another participant who was employed full-time in hospitality at a restaurant, but he lost his job because he developed visible sores on his arms. The man had been using fentanyl, an opioid that has recently been found frequently to be laced with xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer that can cause severe skin lesions.
He went through the program and Walker found him housing, but when it was time for him to start contributing to his own rent, he couldn’t. Walker did casework counseling with him and tried connecting him to employment services and therapy. But he continued to struggle.
“At a certain point, he realized that he wasn’t able to manage his life with all the support that he was receiving,” Walker said. “So he ended up going to detox, and now he’s in a long-term substance use facility.
“It wasn’t a traditional success in a sense of housing, but it was a success in a sense where he reached his bottom and he made a change. So he’s abstinent from all substances.”
The post Charlotte syringe exchange helps people who use drugs find homes appeared first on North Carolina Health News.
