While the world was in the global COVID crisis together, individual struggles varied widely, especially among those struggling to stay in their homes. “Maybe they lost their job during the pandemic because the organization they were working for shut down and they didn't have the type of job that allowed them to go virtual,” shares Tonya Tyler, vice president for national initiatives operations at NeighborWorks America.
That was the case for Zayrel Calderon, who lost her job in the COVID shutdown. A single mother of five and the sole income earner in her household, Calderon quickly fell behind on mortgage payments. Her loan servicer provided a COVID forbearance, but when that ran out, Calderon was still delinquent by $35,000. Dianne Jasso, a HUD-certified housing counselor at Avenue, helped Calderon get approved for the Texas Housing Assistance Fund, which brought her current with the mortgage plan.
In Pennsylvania, Estelle D’Anna was facing another crisis: Her daughter Olivia needed a heart transplant, but D’Anna had no sick time and no leave. “If I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid,” she explains. But she had to take the time to be with her daughter. By the time she got back to focusing on her mortgage, she was two months behind.
Counseling support was available for both women, thanks to the Housing Stability Counseling Program (HSCP), a federal program created by and administered through NeighborWorks America. Funding for the program came through Congress as part of the American Rescue Plan, signed into law in 2021. That law provided a $100 million appropriation to NeighborWorks to launch the HSCP, through which financial counselors across the country worked with nearly 93,000 Americans facing housing instability.
The clients were able to meet with counselors in their communities – counselors with whom they could build relationships and trust, explains Tyler, who was once a housing counselor herself. The time spent together was more than just sharing resources, but a chance for counselors to “really educate and inform. And that’s what counselors do every day.” That meant that D'Anna could focus on her daughter's health and recovery, and could take part in the rite of passage: Dropping Olivia off at her college dorm.
Only 15% of the appropriated funding for HSCP was dedicated for organizations in the NeighborWorks America network. The federal government entrusted NeighborWorks America to distribute the remainder of the funding to non-affiliate organizations it had worked win in the past, including organizations with HUD-approved housing counselors, housing intermediaries, state housing finance agencies and regional state offices.
Like Calderon and D’Anna, some of those served were homeowners. Others were renters who needed guidance on how to avoid unemployment, eviction and homelessness.
Quanton Johnson, for example, was an unemployed medical technician sleeping in his car and on family members’ and friends’ couches when he found PathStone Corporation in Rochester, New York. That’s where he met Lynmarie Hernandez, a housing counselor. Hernandez noted that Johnson and others counseled had highly unique circumstances.
“It really made our agency get creative and find those beacons of stability,” Hernandez says. “It wasn't just us saying, ‘Okay, you don't have a place to live?’ It was more like, ‘Why don't you have a place to live … ? Is it food? Is it because of your utilities? Is it because of your job? Do you need a pay raise, or do you need to transfer into a new position?”
The goal was to be a support. Hernandez connected Johnson to food-security resources and job fairs. He soon secured employment at a renowned university medical lab, then worked with Hernandez and her community connections to begin saving money, becoming food-secure, raising his credit score and finding stable housing.
HSCP was successful in helping Johnson and others because it gave counselors more time to work with clients than they might normally have, Hernandez says. “My agency took it a step further and was able to integrate them into the other programs that we offer. For me, that's really what made the difference in my successful clients versus the clients that I only saw maybe once or only spoke to over the phone.”
But Tyler says the success is also because of the dedication of the counselors themselves, who took on HSCP work in addition to their normal workload. “They have to have a set of knowledge and skills that go well beyond taking a test to be certified as a housing counselor,” she says. “They have to be a lender. They have to be a realtor. They have to know what policy is, and they also have to be build a relationship with people who are going through distress.”
Do you want to learn more about the Housing Stability Counseling Program? Our video explains the scope of the work.