In the Time of COVID-19: Housing and Our Neighbors

Emmaus House in the Time of COVID-19: Responding to the Needs of Our Neighbors

Part 1: Housing

New Challenges

Amber Middlebrooks found herself in need of help in the wake of a job loss resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. She was furloughed from her position with an insurance company and couldn’t pay the rent on her apartment.

Emmaus House has been there for decades for people like Amber who need help. The Episcopal mission has worked on the southside of Atlanta since the 1960s, serving residents of Peoplestown and surrounding areas. One of its missions is to help people stay in their homes through assistance with rent, mortgage payments, property taxes, and utilities. For now, during the virus threat, utility cut-offs and evictions are suspended, but if people don’t keep up with their bills, they will be far behind and at immediate risk when the ban is lifted, said Emmaus House executive director Greg Cole. “We’re helping people not to get so far behind that they can’t dig themselves out.”

Nia Miller, a single mother with two children, was unemployed last year, not knowing where to turn. A friend took her to Emmaus House, where she was connected with a job-training program and job-search network. Soon she was working for a cosmetic store. 

But with the threat of the coronavirus keeping people home-bound, women were no longer shopping for lipstick and eyeshadow. In March, Miller was laid off. She had been living paycheck-to-paycheck, and “I was really struggling,” she said.

This time she knew where to go. Emmaus House helped her pay the power bill, and, she got food from the mission’s food pantry.

“I’d been doing for myself for so long, it took me a while not to feel guilty,” Miller said. “But things were kind of falling down around my head. I thought about my two children. Sometimes you do need help to get where you’re trying to go.”

Many people seeking help these days work in the service industry, such as restaurants and stores, said Emmaus House case manager Tanisha Corporal.

A demographic study of the residents around Emmaus House shows that 16 percent work in retail and another 15 percent in “accommodation,” such as hotels. Those businesses have been hard-hit by the orders to shelter-in-place. The same study shows that even before the virus hit, unemployment in the Peoplestown-Mechanicsville area around Emmaus House was almost ten percent, three times the national average, and that median household income was only $23,711, compared to $60,293 nationally. The community – with many people already stretched financially – was being disproportionately affected by the economic implications of COVID-19.

Things Looking Up
There is some good news, however.

Emmaus House’s funding for housing and utilities will get a big boost soon when a $157,000 grant from the Stadium Neighborhoods Community Trust Fund hits the bank account. The fund was established to help the neighborhoods around the old Turner Field baseball stadium, sold to Georgia State University for $30 million in 2017. Some $5 million was designated to support projects to benefit the neighborhoods around the stadium, including those served by Emmaus House.

The sale brought with it the promise of new mixed-use developments, but many long-time residents of the Emmaus House service area regard the plans with skepticism. Upscale coffee shops and micro-breweries will do little, they say, to benefit people struggling to hold onto their homes and pay utilities. Squeezed between burgeoning businesses around the stadium and the popular BeltLine, a $4.8 billion, 22-mile project to convert old railway rights of way into a pedestrian- and bike-friendly trail, residents are finding their once-dormant community a popular place for higher-income families and singles who relish the new amenities and the brief commute to downtown. With each fancy apartment complex and cul-de-sac of new houses to appeal to the influx of new residents comes the danger of rising property taxes for people who have spent their lives in their homes.

Emmaus House staff and volunteers are working out a process to maximize use of the stadium trust funds, said Corporal. At the same time, for the foreseeable future, they have to give people the housing and utilities assistance they need without putting applicants and staff at risk through in-person contact. 

“We’ve come up with an online form that clients can access,” she said.

Using the information on the online application, the Emmaus House staff verifies the applicants’ residences, the amount they owe, and to whom, then follows up with a telephone interview and an appointment to drop off documentation.

Everything seems more complicated under the COVID-19 threat. But the help is more crucial than ever.

Help from Emmaus House “means everything to me,” said Amber Middlebrooks. “If it weren’t for them, I would probably get an eviction notice.”