A local mom is struggling with making rent.
She looks up where to get rental assistance and a google search comes up with the Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada, which offers screening and assistance.
Her rent is in south Reno for about $1600 a month and she’s been consistently late on payments the last few years.
She alleges the woman she gets on the phone is rude and disrespectful, and says she’s told her situation doesn’t count as “hardship” even though her husband, who has been bouncing around trying to find stable work, mostly in warehouses and as a heavy equipment operator, just lost his job.
She works sales but only part-time as she has to take care of her kids and their commutes to and from school and activities.
She says after she shared her frustrations on local discussion boards others relayed similar experiences.
“I had to hang up [because] I was about to go off,” one person wrote. Another in the discussion wrote: “I’d rather struggle than be judged.” Some have similar experiences seeking rental assistance elsewhere than Catholic Charities.
“Can you help bring awareness that many in our community have been judged rudely for needing help with rental assistance when explaining their situations to the community resources,” the mom wrote to Our Town Reno. “They get told their struggle is of their own doing or have struggled so long they don’t deserve the help. I was one of these people so I made a rant on a Facebook group.”
Of her specific phone call, she wrote “she even made me feel bad that I only work part-time asking why I haven’t found something full time. I can’t work full time because I only have one car…”
She concludes: “It’s just messed up that they are there to help yet make you feel stupid for needing the help.”
We reached out to the media official at Catholic Charities Jennifer Hill who responded that she suspected the “conversation was based on the only grant we currently have for rental assistance. The first criterion for the funding is that you must have had a triggering event such as a one-time medical issue, a loss of job or some other unexpected occurrence,” she explained in an email response.
“The second criterion is that you must be sustainable moving forward, so you have to have employment/sufficient income moving forward to be stable. In this case it sounds like the triggering event was the loss of job, but sustainability would require her to work additional hours or have her husband return to work.”
Hill concluded by writing she was “sorry that she felt disrespected when I’m sure she was feeling really vulnerable.”
What has been your own experience trying to get rental assistance or other help locally?