40 Permanent Supportive Housing Units Lost

We lost 20 – 40 units of housing for single chronically homeless people with the Rethke/Enso project.

Getting tired of this yet?  I am, but I have at least another two blog posts coming about more lost units.

This post focuses on the affordable housing debacle at 715 Rethke Ave.

HISTORY RECAP

To catch you up – in case you haven’t been following along for the last 10-13 years . . .

• The city choosing to build housing for the homeless for the first time, ever with the “housing first” model which says that people don’t have to be “ready” (sober, not struggling with mental illness, etc) for housing, we should house people and get them the services they need.
  • March 2013 – Council passes resolution asking CDA and Planning and Development staff to explore locations, financing and partnerships for single room occupancy (SRO) for very low income housing
  • June 2013 – SRO Report is submitted
  • October 2013 – Request for Qualifications is issued to find a provider to build the housing for homeless adults.
• Choosing Heartland Housing and funding them
  • December 2013 Heartland housing is chosen by the City of Madison to provide development and financing services for housing for homeless adults $300,000
  • February 2014 – Heartland Housing and Heartland Health Outreach are chosen to manage the property, provide case management and supportive services
  • March 2015 – City does a loan agreement with Heartland for the development of permanent supportive housing at 707-709 Rethke Ave. $1,050,000 plus $950,000 from the county – the project is also supported with $5.4M Federal Low Income Tax Credits from WHEDA, a grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago and 54 project based Section 8 vouchers.
  • June 2015 – City approves more funding for Heartland $100,000
  • 2016 Heartland gets approved for another project for homeless adults at 1202 Park Street – that project never happens.
• Heartland Implodes
  • July 2021 – Tellurian takes over providing services at Rethke Terrace
  • June 2023 – News hits that the property is in receivership.
  • March 2024 – Lutheran Social Services begins providing services at Rethke Terrace
• Choosing Cinnaire
  • May 2024 – Cinnaire is chosen to take over the forclosed on property at 715 Rethke Ave and The city invests another $1,527,600 into the project.
    • Cinnaire renames the property Enso
    • Cinnaire closes the property for renovations
  • January 2025 – Enso starts to take applications again

NEW AFFORDABILITY SCHEME

At the time this passed the council, the council memo says this about affordability

• Cinnaire will rent all of the units to tenants with household incomes at or below 60% of the County Median Income. Most, including all 60 of the Rethke units, will rent to persons with incomes at or below 50% of CMI. (Reminder 50% AMI is a single person making $42,000)
• Cinnaire will maintain approximately 25% of the units (20 at Rethke, 11 at Tree Lane) as Permanent Supportive Housing units. This is down from about 90% when the properties opened.
• At Rethke, 54 of the 60 units will retain project-based housing vouchers
• Units supported with project-based vouchers will continue to serve households experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness

WHERE ARE WE AT NOW

This process has been hard.  The information dribbles out and changes for people on the ground trying to get folks into housing and everyone is frustrated.  My understanding, at this point is that the units are being rented as follows:

• 6 units remain Low Income Tax Credit Units that anyone who qualifies can rent
  • Low Income Housing Tax Credit Housing units are $1,000 a month and the tenant needs to make 2 times that amount to qualify
• 14 units are not set aside for people for people who are “at risk” of losing their housing
  • People who are chronically homeless don’t qualify/are excluded from applying for these 14 units
  • In January, we were told to qualifications for tenants for these units tenants were as follows:

• 20 units are Permanent Supportive Housing (previously it was 60)
  • To recap: Permanent Supportive housing is for people who are chronically homeless.  To be considered chronically homeless you have to have a disability and be homeless for 1 year or more or 4 times in 3 years totally 12 months)
  • People are referred to this housing through the Coordinated Entry System with the Homeless Services Consortium
• 20 units are rented to people who qualify for Rapid Rehousing
  • People are referred to this housing through the Coordinated Entry System with the Homeless Services Consortium
  • People are referred to this housing through the Coordinated Entry System with the Homeless Services Consortium

The application process to get into Enso is quite brutal.  Tenants have to

• apply to get into the housing with Enso
• go through the process to get a Section 8 voucher with CDA and
• go through the screening process with Tellurian

People have been going through that application process since February and 3 months later, still aren’t in housing.

So, to me it looks like:

• We lost 40 units of Permanent Supportive Housing and are not are not being rented to those most likely to die on the streets.  And within those
  • 14 of the units are not for people who have been homeless because to qualify they have to
    • live in housing that has characteristics associated with instability and an increased risk of homelessness;
    • moved two or more times during the 60 days immediately preceding the application for housing because of economic reasons
  • 6 units are being marketed to anyone

THE COUNT GOES UP

This one is complicated, but I count this as losing 20-40 units. 20 units are now for “at risk” or market rate folks.  20 units are no longer for chronically homeless people. You can quibble over the numbers, but any which way, its a loss of units for the most vulnerable people in our community . . .

If you are following along . . .

• 8 Porchlight SRO (Single Room Occupancy) units
• 11 – 15 Tellurian SRO units
• 32 Porchlight units (87 single room occupancy rooms (SROs) and 15 efficiency units)
• 20-40 Rethke/Enso units (and in reality, its higher than that as the units still sit empty while they are taking applications to fill them a year later)

This brings the total up to 63-87 less places for single unhoused people in our community to sleep at night.  I have at least two more posts that will add to this total.