Posted Wednesday, January 12, 2022 11:05 am

By AUTUMN HUGHES

The local affordable housing picture has been bleak for some time, but is starting to look brighter due to an infusion of one-time federal funds.

Bradley County is slated to receive nearly $21 million in American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds, with $7.5 million already expended for essential worker premium pay one-time bonuses.

Nearly all of the $1 million in ARP funds set aside by the Bradley County Commission for affordable housing has been earmarked for use by nonprofit organizations.

Commissioners agreed last week to give $400,000 to City Fields to continue its efforts to rebuild or remodel 10 houses in the Blythe-Oldfield community, and $300,000 to Habitat for Humanity of Cleveland for 16 new homes in the Morelock Meadows subdivision.

Last month, in addition to Habitat for Humanity and City Fields, the United Way of the Ocoee Region, The Caring Place and Bradley/Cleveland Community Services Agency shared with commissioners how they would use ARP funding for affordable housing.

On Monday, commissioners heard again from The Caring Place and the United Way.

Corinne Freeman, executive director of The Caring Place, said that organization plans to use the ARP funds for housing stabilization.

“Those funds will be to help individuals who do not currently have stable housing, to move them into housing, and individuals who are at risk of losing housing, to help them prevent that homelessness,” she said, adding “we anticipate because of our current funding that should last us until about March, first of April.

“So we don’t have to draw down any funds from the commission until that time, and that should get us toward the fall before the end of the year,” Freeman said. “It does depend on the amount of need, how many requests that we get … .”

Freeman said $100,000 — a third of the remaining $300,000 in affordable housing funds — “gets us through 2022.”

Commissioner Milan Blake asked how COVID-19 has impacted the need for affordable housing, from The Caring Place's vantage.

“We had a housing crisis before COVID, so we had a housing need before COVID,” Freeman said. “What COVID did is it stopped a revolving door. … We had families who were continuously bouncing from house to house to house, rental to rental to rental, because they couldn’t afford what they found, or they would be with family members and they would be able to stay with family.

“What COVID did is it stopped that because we didn’t have evictions, so we actually saw all the amount of need in our community,” Freeman said. “And then it compounded that need because we had a lot of families who were kind of on the fence of being able to be stable … and they lost that safety net because they could no longer manage from week to week, paycheck to paycheck, because they might have went some time without employment.”

Tanya Mazzolini and Jaynese Waddell with the United Way also spoke to commissioners.

Mazzolini, the United Way’s chief financial officer, confirmed any ARP funds commissioners allocated to United Way will be used only in Bradley County.

Blake asked how United Way would use $100,000 in ARP funds and how long they would last.

Waddell, the United Way’s director of community impact, said “that’s very much based on the need and the call volume coming in.” She said over the past two years, the average amount given from the Tennessee Cares pandemic funding was $697 per family.

“So if you take that same average, that’s going to serve 143 families based on that $100,000,” Waddell said.

Mazzolini added that no ARP funds will be spent on administration or salaries.

Freeman also spoke about the “continuum of care,” noting The Caring Place, United Way and Bradley/Cleveland Community Services Agency (BCCSA) all provide direct assistance in the community, but they all have unique areas of specialization. For example, BCCSA is the only organization of the trio with an emergency shelter, while the United Way offers one-time assistance, and The Caring Place “offers from the beginning of need for our most vulnerable citizens — those who are without housing, unsheltered. We have outreach, rapid rehousing, and we’re able to move them onto that continuum.”

As Monday’s meeting was a work session, commissioners took no action on the additional information they heard. However, Blake aske the item will be put on next week’s voting session agenda to officially allocate ARP funds to The Caring Place and United Way.