Transitional Housing a Growing Option:

An Interview with Vernell Leeks

Aired January 19, 2000

David C. Barnett–For those who can't even afford the relative luxuries of Section 8 housing, the street and homeless shelters are often the option. But there is another option in between, a concept called "transitional housing." Vernell Leeks is the director of transitional housing for the University Settlement Service Center, which is a social service agency on the near south side of town. She joins us on the phone to explain the concept a little more for us. Good morning, Vernell Leeks.

Vernell Leeks–Good morning.

DCB–First of all, how do you determine if a person is truly homeless?

VL–Basically, most of the shelters will provide a letter or statement if they are getting involved with shelters, and if we have people that are usually out on the streets basically involved with a type of service, like sometimes here I may have someone who dropped by in a van that maybe needs a blanket or something like that, so I could easily verify to another place that this person is homeless, so you see some type of verification if requested, and we have no difficulty getting that.

DCB–Can you give us a typical portrait of a typical client, or are we talking mostly women here, or what, exactly?

VL–Well, our largest population is female-headed households. We serve families, but we are getting more men and it's just, I guess at this point, basically two-thirds of our program is female-headed households, the other third is men. A lot of our clients have been evicted from properties for different reasons or the rent went too high and they no longer can afford to live where they are at, so they usually end up on the streets, and some of the situations are very unfortunate, where a landlord may sell a property and not notify the tenants, so I see a lot of, I guess, problems as a result of some property owners.

DCB–And this concept of transitional housing is pretty much what it sounds like, like it's kind of this transition between the streets and a real, live, owning your own home?

VL–Yeah, basically we work with homeless families to help them to become self-sufficient and move into an apartment or housing, and it's a two-year program, and during those two years we provide a case management service, and they help put the clients dealing with problems that may hamper them living in the houses on their own, like maybe drug addiction, mental health, and we work them around budgeting and housekeeping skills.

DCB–But where do you get the houses from, where are they from?

VL–Well, Mary Sanders, our executive director, she works with Third Federal Savings and different agencies and she helps secure the housing, so we have like a cluster of housing in the area. Approximately at this time, we have about 22 houses, and we have apartment buildings, so they're through puchases through HUD, and other resources. I'm not up on all the resources right now.

DCB–Well, how long is a typical use of one of these 22 houses?

VL–Two years. Our program, again, is a two-year program, so the client may stay into the home wiht any period from six months to two years.

DCB–And are these houses sort of like what we hear that Habitat for Humanity is doing, they build up these old, broken-down places?

VL–Yeah, a lot of them are those type of houses or houses that would be boarded up. Most of them are in pretty good shape, so we work and we have magnificent people here that work and do the repair. In most cases, when they are purchased, they are usually ready to move in, but we do update and work as far as repair. They're really nice houses, and I think they're good for the clients in the sense that you give them a pride and living in those houses kind of helps the client want to get housing of their own, and we also have a homebuyers' class, so eventually some of our clients can purchase homes, some of our homes are for purchase, so we work with them around those areas.

DCB–And so do they have to have these, probably, different people have different levels of knowledg in terms of keeping up a house, so they probably have to learn how to do things like cut the grass and make sure that things are in good repair and that sort of thing?

VL–Right. Again, like I said, we work with them for basically two years and you'll find people from, people that may not have any housekeeping skills that we'll work with and help them improve at, or either we would refer them to other resources that woudl ehlp them with different areas that they have problems--

DCB–Tell me this, do you have enough houses to fill the bill?

VL–No we don't, no we don't. It's heart-breaking. We have two classes that clients can attend, and I am looking at out of most of the classes, 30-40 people are finishing these classes and we cannot fill the bill, but I feel good that we can help some, but it's heart-breaking in the sense that there's so many more that need the service and I'm finding,as they go on, there's more and more homeless people,. and I think a lot of this is the result of the welfare-to-work program, and just basically people not monitoring the landlords, and some of it is the tenant's responsibility in problems as well.

DCB–Vernell Leeks, bringing us stories from the street and the transitional homes. Vernell Leeks is director of transitional housing for the University Settlement Service Center, which serves people in the Broadway area of Cleveland's near south side. Thanks for the report this morning.

VL–Thank you very much.