This article was published in The Land on September 13, 2024
Author: Bob Sandrick
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A nonprofit provider of affordable housing in Cleveland has devised an innovative and perhaps groundbreaking eviction-avoidance program that it hopes will serve as a model throughout the city and even the country.
Northwest Neighborhoods, which owns and manages more than 350 rental apartment units on 15 properties in the Cudell, Detroit Shoreway and Edgewater areas, calls the program the Eviction Diversion Initiative.
Since the initiative was launched in January, it has helped more than 50 Northwest Neighborhoods tenants avoid eviction. That’s 100 percent of those who have participated in the program.
Scott Kroehle – who with his wife Anna Perlmutter owns Cleveland Housing Solutions, a nonprofit housing provider and consulting firm – helped Northwest Neighborhoods establish the Eviction Diversion Initiative.
“Evictions are traditionally a standard part of the housing business,” Kroehle said. “But we know through research and experience that eviction is a devastating experience for a low-income person who is already extremely vulnerable.
“But there has been no clearly defined alternative,” Kroehle said. “For an organization to step forward and say we are going to put our foot down and stop doing it, and meanwhile figure out an alternative, with no safety net, it’s a big lift and a substantial risk for any organization to take.”
In the Northwest Neighborhoods program, alternatives to eviction might include payment plans for renters who are struggling financially, intervention for those having disputes with neighbors and assistance in filling out forms for tenants who forgot to reapply for rent subsidies.
“We honestly don’t have an answer for every situation yet,” Kroehle said. “We’re still trying to figure it out.”
An evolving process
Northwest Neighborhoods, which is headquartered on Detroit Avenue in the Gordon Square Arts District, was established in 2021 with the merger of two former community improvement groups: Cudell Improvement Inc. and the Detroit-Shoreway Community Development Organization.
In addition to providing affordable housing, Northwest Neighborhoods offers house-repair assistance to homeowners in the Cudell, Detroit Shoreway and Edgewater sections. The group provides free tax-preparation services, helps small businesses and promotes community projects.
When the Cudell and Detroit-Shoreway organizations merged, the new Northwest Neighborhoods, with help from Kroehle and Perlmutter at Cleveland Housing Solutions, conducted a strategic planning process, a review of all of its practices and policies. Perlmutter is also board president of Northwest Neighborhoods.
“This was setting the tone and direction for the organization,” said Bridget Kent Márquez, Northwest Neighborhood’s executive director. “That plan called for pulling apart a lot of the standard ways of operating and making sure they reflected our values.”
Northwest Neighborhoods considered the financial status of the people they serve. According to the organization’s 2023 annual report, 37 percent of Cudell residents live in poverty, based on Case Western Reserve University’s Poverty Center data, and the poverty rates are 28 percent in Detroit-Shoreway and 21 percent in Edgewater. The child poverty rate is 40 percent in the Northwest Neighborhoods service area, where people also struggle with unemployment and food access.
With those numbers in mind, Northwest Neighborhoods decided in January to establish an eviction moratorium while it explored ways to become more actively involved with tenants falling behind in their rents.
“There is no straightforward solution to every case,” Kent Márquez said. “In a more normative housing model, eviction would often be the straightforward resolution, but it wasn’t something we wanted to default to.”
Kroehle and Perlmutter had previously done research in eviction diversion and had already experimented with the concept in their small, private portfolio of rental housing. Kent Márquez and her wife also had eviction-diversion experience among their rental properties going back to 2012.
“We shared not only the same values but the same practices,” Kroehle said of his, Perlmutter’s and Kent Márquez’s partnership.
However, upscaling eviction diversion from a limited number of private rental units to more than 350 apartments has required a tremendous amount of work, Kroehle said.
Understanding trauma
Northwest Neighborhoods uses the term “trauma-informed” when talking about meeting with tenants to avoid eviction. That means understanding their entire life situations, the trauma they may have experienced and the trouble they might have gaining access to health care, childcare and employment.
For example, a tenant might fail to schedule an inspection of their apartment to continue receiving a rent subsidy, or they might forget to reapply for funding, because they have too much on their plate.
Kroehle said handling such matters can be a daunting task for someone overwhelmed with other problems. Also, it’s easy to make a mistake on an application and the tenant might not know how to correct it.
“In the past, the expectation was that the tenant had to figure that out on their own,” Kroehle said. “We say no, that’s a collaborative process. This is a big, heavy bureaucracy and we’re not going to send you to it on your own. We will help.”
Sometimes the answer is simple. If a tenant doesn’t have a scanner to submit paperwork for a subsidy reapplication, a Northwest Neighborhoods staffer shows up at their door with a scanner.
In cases of neighbor disputes, which can lead to evictions, Northwest Neighborhoods has a trained mediator on staff. If both parties agree, the mediator can try to resolve the conflict.
“One of our buildings had chronic issues so we called the tenants and said we are going to meet in the community room and come up with solutions,” Kent Márquez said. “We don’t always have the answers but we need to talk to tenants and see what the problems are.”
Establishing trust is key and not always easy. Tenants haven’t viewed previous landlords as allies so they might be difficult to reach.
“One of the pieces we factor in is their experience with past landlords, which leads to systemic trauma and antagonist relationships” Perlmutter said. “When we approach any tenant having an issue, they require and deserve our understanding of their past experiences with past landlords.”
Kroehle said relationships between Northwest Neighborhoods staff and tenants have improved since the Eviction Diversion Initiative started.
“People have less fear in their lives as they navigate challenges,” Kroehle said.
A shift in mindset
Northwest Neighborhoods plans to bring eviction diversion, if necessary, to its new project, Karam Senior Living, a proposed 51-unit senior living complex with affordable rents at Detroit and West 80th Street.
Until then, Northwest Neighborhoods is constantly refining the eviction diversion program. The staff meets weekly to review challenging tenant situations and brainstorm solutions. Some ideas work, some don’t.
Throughout the learning process, the staff has been uplifted.
“It’s been cool to see a shift in the mindset of some of the staff, and the excitement among them at getting someone through a rental assistance package or connecting them to a social worker or case manager,” Kroehle said. “The sense of success when the tenant succeeds is a big win for us.”
The short-term goal for eviction diversion is to create program policy as the staff learns which measures are effective. Long-term, Northwest Neighborhoods hopes that other nonprofits and agencies will adopt similar programs.
“It’s very much on the horizon,” Kroehle said.