#2 Housing Reimagined

How does a senior service agency get into the work of housing without building its own complex? Silver Key in Colorado Springs, Colorado spent months doing listening sessions to find out where the gaps were for older adults and housing. Once they started to pick up on trends they crafted a new position within their organization that supports their case managers and collaborates on a broad community basis to serve older adults in new ways. Aging with Altitude is recorded in the Pikes Peak region with a focus on topics of aging interest across the country. We talk about both the everyday and novel needs and approaches to age with altitude whether you’re in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida or Leadville, Colorado. The Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging is the producer. Learn more at Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging. Transcript: Michaela Nichols: Hello and thank you for listening to Aging with Altitude, a podcast series about how we rise above the day-to-day issues that surround aging. This series is sponsored by the Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging. Today's episode is about housing. My name is Michaela Nichols and I'm here with Dayton Romero and Erin McNabb. Mr. Romero is the director of senior assistant programs at Silver Key Senior Services, which is a nonprofit that provides services to the senior community in El Paso County. He's been with Silver Key since July of 2015. Miss McNabb has been with Silver Keys since February, solely working in the housing navigation program. The program was created in March 2019 to help seniors looking for housing in the area. Can you all explain a little bit about what the housing navigation program does? Dayton Romero: Yeah, the housing navigation program came to its fruition whenever we held a focus group as part of the Age Friendly Colorado Springs Initiative. Our case management group specifically was asked to hold this focus group to kind of have a discussion on some of the different things we were observing anecdotally across our clients, and also data wise. What we found is that there was a gap in our community specifically among seniors who were running into challenges. When they were looking for an alternative place whether it be downsizing or their rent at their current place increasing, and so we found that the extent of services offered to these individuals was to provide them a housing list that may be outdated as soon as it prints out from the Internet. And so we found a big need for a dedicated position and role, and a program to be able to provide a comprehensive navigation service for individuals. That ranges from being able to identify their preferences, their barriers and really putting them in a position where they are most likely able to find a place where they'll be able to thrive and be independent. Erin McNabb: Part of that is educating people on the changes in the housing market since the last time they were looking at housing; changes and how technology has affected how people search for housing; changes in how landlords are looking for tenants due to the lack of housing in our community as the increased rents and increased barriers. It's definitely a landlord’s market versus a renter's market. I spent a lot of time educating people on what barriers landlord’s do put in place as eligibility criteria for people to get into properties, also how to search. People often don't understand the best ways to search for housing anymore or they don't have access to the Internet and that's where you have to go. Facebook marketplace and groups are huge places where people are posting available rentals; difference between private landlords and property managers and different expectations, different barriers people put between the two groups. I spent a lot of time educating on how to search and when I do, measure those barriers and preferences that the client themselves has, talk to them about how to mitigate those to make themselves more desirable to potential landlords. A lot of it is education as well as helping them with the search themselves, and helping to identify units that will fit their needs and helping advocate on their behalf. Michaela Nichols: Older adults often rely on a fixed income such as Social Security or retirement funds for their living expenses, this can put some seniors, like you said, in challenging situations when their rent is increased or they need to downsize their homes. Can you give us a few examples of situations that arise regularly and explain how you would approach those specific situations? Erin McNabb: Some of the biggest barriers I see are of course income in general. Landlords often times are requiring you have two and a half to three times the rent in income. That becomes a large barrier for people who are on fixed incomes especially the people who are on the lower end of the spectrum for fixed incomes because oftentimes rents are above their income in general. That becomes one of the biggest barriers. Other barriers are credit. Landlords are often requiring credit scores of at least 600. And surprisingly, although not to those who are looking, animals are one of the biggest barriers. Most landlords are not allowing animals at all in their units anymore and so animals become one of the biggest barriers we deal with because a lot of people do view animals as part of their family. It's not something they're willing to give up, but landlords aren't accepting them and that becomes a very hard choice for people to make; and also prolongs the process of finding a place. We see those oftentimes all three in one situation and it's that constant search to figure out where can we go and who can we find that might be willing to work with people. That also ends up oftentimes being “we want double or triple deposit but will work with you” and that becomes another problem because who has those funds? So we have to help look elsewhere to see if we can find those funds within the community to help people get in. Dayton Romero: And I could add to that Michaela. In the scope of income, in that lens, is a lot of our clients who come through our door seeking assistance around housing are relying on their Social Security income. We've seen a lot prevalently where one single event could really put someone in a downward spiral. Whether it be a medical event, a loss of a spouse or even a car repair could put someone in a position where they're going to be on the street, or they won't have enough to make ends meet to make that rent payment. Those are the situations that will actually come bring the client into our door and we’re able to really look at the client holistically and identify what supportive services we could put in place in addition to meeting that imminent need of preventing them from becoming evicted or what other supports can be put in place so that they are able to be self-sufficient and independent. Some other barriers that have come up quite a bit where we've seen have caused problems is transportation. Again, really navigating our housing market here specifically it takes quite a bit of coordination. There's a dignity aspect to things as well so whenever, say you're looking for an apartment online, and you find an apartment that you know is on the 1st floor, it looks like it will meet all your needs and you reach out to the person; you schedule an appointment, but you don't have a vehicle. Or you don't know how to navigate our bus system, or you don't have enough resources to buy a bus pass, and other transportation services you have to wait two weeks out. By the time they are able to get to that place to view and even sign a lease or so on, someone’s put it deposit on it. It really is a big barrier in terms of being competitive where things are moving so quickly. Then the third that comes to mind is those who are suffering from mental health ailments or are chronically disabled. These two things kind of compound those already existing barriers like transportation. Those who are having difficulty presenting appropriately in front of property managers. Like Erin said, being presentable and being marketable too as a tenant to property managers on where you have the composure to be able to kind of work through the logistics and come upon an agreement in terms of what your lease will look like and that sort of thing. Michaela Nichols: Do you have a success story that you could tell us about? Erin McNabb: I actually just got a gentleman. He is going to be moving into his place within the next week or so. He is someone who needed extra support around him and found his place rather quickly. I started working with him less than a month ago. He had the support of neighbors and friends. He had the support of his pastor at his church. All of them came around him to help with the process and I would supply listings to them. They helped him with going and looking at places and talking to people and getting in place. That is what so many of our seniors are lacking, but that was a huge success because he had the support network to help him make progress and make progress quickly. Then we’re coming in and helping him with his first month’s rent to get him into his place because in his case he does have to pay double deposit. We're going to be helping him with first month rent to make sure that he secures housing. He is someone who has to leave his place because his unit is being sold. His property is being sold and he has nowhere to go. Those are what we usually find is the biggest success stories. People who have those support networks, but we also know that we have a lot of seniors who don't have the support...