
NEW HANOVER COUNTY — Tens of thousands of dollars was announced to go into the pockets of multiple people needing financial help with housing costs in New Hanover County.
READ MORE: As rent and utilities increase, 2 area nonprofits focus on offering reprieve
New H.O.P.E. CDC, a nonprofit founded by Pastor Rob Campbell of New Beginnings Church (unaffiliated with the housing organization), announced Thursday that $51,400 has been awarded to 32 people. The nonprofit opened its rental assistance application portal in February, to begin executing grants earmarked from $500,000 in relief money provided by the New Hanover County commissioners.
The money comes from the county’s Workforce Housing Services Program, now in year three, based on the county and city’s Comprehensive Housing Study to address increasing residential supply and people’s access to them, plus retain existing affordable housing stock.
Commissioners committed $15 million over five years to put back into the community as a way to mitigate the housing crisis — a nationwide issue. Upon approving New H.O.P.E. funding, they tasked the nonprofit with providing 127 people rental assistance.
“We were putting our money where our mouth is for people needing housing affordability,” Commissioner Jonathan Barfield said at Thursday’s event as the first tranche of funding was announced. “I’m looking forward to seeing all the families served through New H.O.P.E.”
“We’re really providing assistance to people who normally assist us,” Campbell added.
While upward of 90% of affordable housing programs are centered on the lowest income needs, Campbell’s vision for New H.O.P.E.’s rental program was to benefit workforce housing and the people who don’t normally qualify for public assistance. Applicants fall in the 60% to 120% of the area median income, making anywhere between $32,000 and $75,000.
“So that’s a lot of people who often feel overlooked,” he said.
In the first couple hours of opening applications, 500 were received. Some, according to Campbell, came from people who are just one accident or emergency away from being behind on a house payment.
“We saw applications where one family lost childcare due to a family death,” he explained. “Another lady had been living in her house for 11 years. The landlord kept her rent low but sold the house. A new owner comes in, and now she has to go out into the community and try to find a new house.”
Though she found a residence, Campbell said with rent costs escalating, it was too expensive for her to make a down payment and come up with the first month’s rent out of pocket — not to mention moving fees.
“Many of these people, they don’t need a handout, they just need a little help — and hope,” Campbell said.
Rents rose in Wilmington more than 60% from 2017 to 2022 but has dropped about 10% in the last year-and-a-half. Today, a one bedroom in the county rents for roughly $1,400 (versus almost $800 in 2017) with a three-bedroom costing $1,600, Campbell said.
Add to it inflation on everyday costs — around 21% more today since February 2020 — and the bills keep getting steeper while pay at many jobs can’t keep apace.
“It was eye-opening,” Chuck Mabry said of reading through applications.
He served on the risk committee who helped narrow down New H.O.P.E. grantees: “I didn’t realize before being on the committee that there was such a need for rental assistance.”
Names were redacted so the risk committee would not know the identities or any details — gender, ethnicity, race, etc. — of the applicants. The goal is to remove any implicit bias.
Applicants answered multiple questions about their situations and hardships, and provided financial documents in their submissions, including annual income, amount of monthly rent, and debt-to-income ratio. They could not be more than a month in arrears on bills and had to meet with case managers if they made it past the first round to verify documentation.
This round of grantees, Campbell said, include a nurse, dental technician, school counselor, and accountant. Not only will they receive financial assistance — roughly 33.3% of monthly rent, provided up to six months — they’ll be required to meet with a New H.O.P.E. case manager to garner information about healthy financial habits and budgeting. The goal is to make the rental assistance program educational and preventative to future financial dire straits.
Anyone who didn’t want to participate in the case management portion of the program wouldn’t qualify, Campbell said. The program also doesn’t accept applications of people living beyond their means.
“We don’t want to put a Band-Aid on it,” he said. “We want to be able to say, ‘Hey, we looked at your situation. Have you considered your cost over here, over there?’ and part of our commitment to them is, it’s not a one-and-done. So we give them this money over the course of many months.”
The next set of applications will open for three days, July 18-21, with money slated for roughly 40 people. Doug Wahl, communications director of New H.O.P.E., said they won’t know the full amount for the second round until they assess the needs of the applicants.
He surmised it could be anywhere between $130,000 to $175,000, depending on if all the people require a full six months of assistance, and whether it’s $1,400, $1,600 or $2,000 a month in rent payments.
The final tranche of funding will be the largest amount doled out. Applications will likely open for round three in early fall.
“And that was done by design,” Wahl said. “When you get close to the holidays, people, you know, their expenses just go up, and that’s when they really need help. So we purposely figured that we would leave more for the end of the year.”
The first 500 who applied and didn’t receive funding can do so again in the next rounds.
Even after all $500,000 is spent, the goal is to keep the program moving forward. New H.O.P.E. plans to continue applying for grants to oversee its goals; it’s also behind the 68-unit senior affordable living complex and 128-unit workforce housing apartments in Castle Hayne.
The nonprofit continuously looks toward local funding opportunities, whether it’s through the New Hanover Community Endowment or other federal, state and local programs.
“The hope is we can go back and say to the county commissioners, here’s what we’ve done,” Wahl said. “Help us keep helping people — hopefully they will.”
The county’s 2024 request for proposals for its Workforce Housing Services Program, which will allocate $3 million to organizations that are tackling affordable housing, are open through Aug. 5 here.
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