On the first Monday in March of this year at our outside receiving line at Bread For All Food Pantry, I checked in a man whom we hadn’t seen for a while. He explained that his bad back was keeping him from working. As I completed his check-in on my computer tablet, I noticed that the two of us were born the same year. I was born in Minnesota, and including education and training, I’ve worked as a pastor for almost forty years. He was born in Mexico, and has worked as an outside laborer and in construction for more than forty years.
Another volunteer and I visited with him further after he received his food, and we learned that he was living in his small pickup truck. For decades, he’d sent money home to family members in Mexico, but because of lack of work, he’d lost his ability to assist his family and he lost his small apartment. The other volunteer and I encouraged him to go to a local free health clinic to get his back looked at. We wished him well and gave him a blessing, which he gratefully received.
For the next number of months, he came back to the food pantry for his once-a-month provisions. Not much had changed, however. He was still living in his old pickup. His back was still giving him trouble.
When he came to the food pantry in July, I told him that we had a rent assistance program to which he could apply. I told him that if he could procure a contract or agreement to rent a place or a room, our program could help him out. He responded to say that he knew someone who could rent him a room. I gave him an application to our program and instructed him to fill out the information pages, and return it to me with a copy of an agreement for the room rental.
He had the application back to me by the next Monday at the food pantry. Our rent assistance committee (Pastor Ellen Williams, Steve Zwernemann and Paty Puente) agreed to fast-track his application. I went by the home where he was to rent a room, and visited with the landlord and verified the contract with her. I then presented her a check of $750 – covering the first month and a half of rent.
The next day, our recipient moved into his new room and parked his pickup truck on the street, bringing his pillow inside to his new bed where a proper ceiling and roof protected him from the outdoor elements. He came back to BFA a few weeks later. He had a smile on his face as he said to me, “Gracias, otra vez, pastor.” I asked how his back was. Better, he said. He also said he was working again, doing day labor.
There’s no guarantee that our neighbor recipient will continue on a favorable path. But at least he has a fighting chance, and he’s in a much better place in his rented room than where he was before, sleeping in his truck. We say that ACL’s rent assistance programs are “homelessness prevention” – sometimes they are, as in this specific case, “homelessness elimination.”
This is just one story of many from more than thirty recipients in our third rent assistance program.
A handful of women, some with children, have established new residences away from abusive men (previously in their lives) or maintained the same residence without the abuser. Asylum seekers, not always able to secure legally permitted employment, have received a desperately needed boost to their precarious financial situations. One of these recipients shares their apartment with their in-laws, twelve people total in a three-bedroom apartment. One woman, not able to work steadily for the past six months because of a grief issue, is now more secure in her apartment situation and back to work at a restaurant. Another woman, who with her partner parents three young children, casually mentioned to me that their washing machine was no longer working. Along with a two-month rent check, she also received a used Maytag washer in good shape from our ACL Move-In Ministry. She was extremely grateful.
Another woman, not yet 50, is recovering from cervical cancer and not able to work more than four hours a day. She is trusting that God will cure her of her cancer. Receiving rent assistance helps her stave off homelessness and keeps her in her apartment at this crucial juncture in her life.
Ten other families with younger children, like the mom who received the washer, received double rent checks. Most of the other recipients received the equivalent of one month’s worth of rent. (By design, ACL makes all rent checks payable to landlords or apartment complexes.)
More than $55,000 was distributed in this year’s program from a combination of private and church congregation donors. In November 2020, we distributed close to $20,000 in an initial rent assistance program, and in March 2022, we distributed more than $37,000. To date, ACL has distributed more than $110,000 in rent assistance.
Rent assistance, especially in a city with increasing inequality like Austin, is one of the best preventative measures against homelessness. In a smaller way, food pantry distributions also serve as a homelessness prevention measure. Thanks be to God for the opportunity to serve neighbors in need, in hope of short-term and longer-term favorable outcomes.
- Pastor Tim Anderson, ACL Director of Community Development