ND offices ready to put housing aid to use

BISMARCK – Beginning in September, regional offices in North Dakota that help people escape poverty could deploy enhanced services for housing aid. They’re taking advantage of a larger pool of state funding.

This past session, the Legislature set aside $10 million to beef up homelessness prevention programs. Two million is going to Community Action Agencies around the state.

Andrea Werner is the director of the Bismarck office, and she said they were on track to expand their programming by the start of September. She said a lot of this work involves “rapid re-housing” for people moving through emergency shelters.

“Assist them with a security deposit, with rental assistance,” said Werner, “utilizing, some, maybe, utility assistance.”

These offices assign case workers to ensure a client becomes more self-sufficient with goals of long-term housing. Werner said the funding was designed to hire more case workers around the state to meet demand.

She said a challenge is that once this type of aid ends, it’s a question of whether a client can still afford the unit they’re in, with rental prices out of reach in many communities.

Despite any challenges, Werner said, she hopes to see progress in giving more people a real chance to overcome the affordable housing crisis.

“We see a lot of people with eviction notices or imminently losing their housing,” Werner said. “And we see a lot of people coming in that are looking for affordable housing that are homeless.”

A statewide housing assessment this year found North Dakota would need an additional 20,000 housing units by 2027 to meet the projected demand, with the greatest need for lower- and moderate-income residents.

The same report says home ownership rates are down from where they were in 2012, regardless of income. The homelessness prevention grants are administered by the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency.