NEWS: Madison organizations aim to offer more affordable housing resources

Amid unsheltered population increase nonprofit organizations close equity gaps in marginalized communities through a holistic perspective.

Homelessness in Madison has increased over the past few years and recent changes in policy for housing choice vouchers means they now have an expiration date. On just one night in January 2022, there were an estimated 700 individuals experiencing homelessness in Madison.

In Madison, two local organizations, Urban Triage and Porchlight Inc., work towards closing equity gaps in the community through workshops and shelter renovations while striving for stability in financial support to serve low-income and homeless populations.

In the United States since 2020, shelters have increased their capacity for people experiencing homelessness yet there was an 8% decrease in people choosing to stay in shelters. Wisconsin ranks 26 in the nation for total individuals experiencing homelessness.

Porchlight Inc. heard about two people experiencing homelessness freezing to death in Madison, which resulted in church groups beginning and establishing their first men’s shelter in 1987. But the solution to homelessness is more than a shelter – wraparound services and resources are necessary for vulnerable populations.

Despite shelters offering people experiencing homelessness a place to stay, those same individuals also need supplies to support other aspects of their health and well-being.

Porchlight’s executive director Karla Thennes emphasized that affordable housing efforts are key to helping the homeless population in Madison and is working tow

ards these goals in the upcoming years. Porchlight is one of the leading nonprofit organizations that serve people experiencing homelessness and affordable housing priorities in Madison.

“Homeless folks need a lot of different things. There's mental health issues, substance use issues, physical health issues [and] just straight up poverty,” Thennes said. “You can’t work on any of those things [just] staying in a shelter. It’s next to impossible to be sleeping in the shelter and staying sober [and] staying on your mental health meds, so affordable housing has to be the next step.”

Urban Triage Founder and CEO Brandi Grayson said her nonprofit organization focuses on three main systems – housing, educational and criminal justice systems. Her primary goal for Urban Triage is to empower and inspire people to take action in their personal lives with the understanding that the same work will translate into the community.

Grayson also mentioned the organization’s priority of looking at equity gaps in our community through a more holistic lens for individuals living in poverty or suffering from institutional oppression.

“We focus on these systems because those are the systems that have the most impact in the lives of those who are surviving poverty. It’s important for us to support families as they navigate institutions and advocate for our parents to get the support they need,” Grayson said.”

The Housing Voucher Program is the nation’s largest source of rental assistance and provides low-income families and individuals with federal assistance to pay for privately owned housing. If a person does not get a house in 30-60 days, the voucher is withheld, playing a factor in the increased homeless population. So, how do we keep individuals out of poverty and homelessness altogether?

“Our job as an organization is to figure out what is holding [people] back and what is stopping us from focusing on our personal development and personal change,” Grayson said. “How do we unpack trauma and position people in a place where they’re dealing with their stories that often are passed down through generations?”

Thennes also notes that a lot of what we see in affordable housing developments are not exactly fulfilling the same affordable housing goals she has in mind.

“I often hear [affordable] thrown around [when] cities build affordable housing and developers devote ‘X’ amount of affordable housing. It is very rarely affordable housing for the folks that we serve, which needs to be 30% of county median income or less,” Thennes said.

The lack of true affordable housing from city developers results in organizations like Porchlight to produce more affordable housing options.

According to Thennes, Porchlight has 375 units of affordable housing initiatives. In the Madison location alone, it has 100 units of single rooms, resembling a college dorm hall. Individuals each have their own rooms while sharing a kitchen and bathroom on their respective floors. However, they have a year and a half-long waiting list due to higher demand than what is available.

As a result, Thennes with Porchlight is working to renovate its current shelter through an internal strategic plan. Over the next three to five years, it is planning to repair roofs, repair boilers and install new windows in the building.

“We strongly believe that [when] we move somebody into a place that looks nice, they’ll keep it nice and learn those tenant-landlord skills that are needed once they move out of our housing and move into the community,” Thennes said. “We’ve been writing grants, we’ve been setting aside funds, and any time we have money, we’ve been getting new windows [and] roofs.”

The city has a team of designers that are in contact with Porchlight staff to coordinate with residents of the shelter and community advocates to determine what the priorities of the individuals in the shelter are.

Thennes emphasized that these changes are not design-based but rather centered around necessary services to expand and cater to more people. A number of previous rules of the shelter were lifted to appeal more towards individuals who thought there were too many restrictions on housing in shelters.

“We got rid of a majority of our rules that used to be on all of the shelters in town. Your nightly limit for the year– that you can only stay in shelters for 90 nights– has been lifted. You can now come into the shelters every night,” Thennes said.

Urban Triage provides hands-on services to Black and other marginalized communities to help them navigate through the housing process. The organization provides support in housing and builds relationships with landlords so people do not go without basic necessities.

According to Grayson, Urban Triage has placed over 200 individuals and families into permanent housing by connecting with landlords and negotiating leases for new tenants. With these two organization’s changes and developments comes a need for financial assistance from the state and support from the community.

“I think our biggest challenge is restrictive funding,” Grayson said. “Urban Triage grew pretty quickly and it’s all based on grants, and that’s not sustainable. But the grants have offered us the opportunity to basically prove to our community that we have the expertise, the reach, the social capital, and we know what we’re doing.”

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Porchlight used 500 thousand dollars per year to keep its shelter open and running. Today, it costs 2.4 million dollars yearly.

Both Porchlight and Urban Triage depend on community donations to help cover these costs.

“What we need from our community is more sustainability, and we [can] only do that through private donations. So, we need recurring donations,” Grayson said. “We need people to donate what they can, even if it's $10.”

Besides financing, these organizations are actively seeking volunteers to donate their time to the organization’s services. One of Porchlight’s biggest needs right now is staffing and volunteers to run the men’s shelter.

Elizabeth Tryon former assistant director of the UW-Madison Morgridge Center created structural, educational changes for students looking to volunteer and learn in a way that is not exploitative to the more vulnerable populations in our community.

“Let’s talk about researchers and how we feel like they just want to see a homeless person and write a paper, and go away,” Tryon said. “[Organizations] never get to see the result. [They’re] exploited. Fortunately, the Morgridge Center was very open to the idea of supporting better partnership through infrastructure to streamline projects.”

Tryon notes the funding challenges for nonprofit organizations which can make it difficult for them to turn down even exploitative work from community members. She encourages students and community members to understand that although you may volunteer for an organization, the work is not always as productive as it could be.

Understanding that besides financial struggles, members of minority groups grew up with a different culture and raised with biases directed towards them is important when volunteering to help nonprofit organizations.

“It’s really important [students] understand that not everybody came up the same way they did,” Tryon said. It’s not up to us to shame them for that. The more that people just can slow down to listen to each other both from the nonprofit community and the side of the students, the better.”