24 Feb Vail Place Offers New Housing Programs
Vail Place has offered housing support for many years to help people find safe, affordable housing. In the past year we’ve added two new innovative ways to work directly with people who need homes.
Rapid Rehousing Program
The Vail Place Rapid Re-Housing program connects prospective renters to local vacancies and provides financial assistance, renter education, and tenancy supports to result in positive rental relationships and outcomes. The program transitions unhoused people who are currently living in shelters to a new home. Vail Place Housing Case Managers assist with:
- Helping individuals obtain housing in a timely fashion and maintain housing placements long-term.
- Ensuring tenant lease requirements are being met, and that rents are paid.
- Offering rental assistance as needed.
The Rapid Re-Housing program is offered as part of the Hennepin County Emergency Funding Cares Act, a response to the COVID public health emergency. Vail Place partners with local shelters who perform assessments and prioritize people who can be referred to the program. Case managers at Vail Place then work to find the right kind of housing based on a person’s needs in terms of location, size, preferences and other specifics. The program also uses a large part of its funding for rental assistance and deposits, which can be barriers for people of lower-income looking for housing.
“The program only began in July of 2021, but we’ve already supported nearly 100 people,” said Tyler Keyes, Housing Support Manager for Vail Place. “Our Case Managers have been working diligently and we expect to increase those numbers significantly in 2022.”
Housing Stabilization Services is a new statewide program at Vail Place in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Human Services and several other providers. It is part of a new Minnesota Medical Assistance benefit to help people with disabilities, including mental illness and substance use disorder, and seniors find and keep housing. Vail Place housing support staff helps existing clients qualify for these new services. The purpose of these services is to:
- Support an individual’s transition into housing,
- Increase long-term stability in housing in the community, and
- Avoid future periods of homelessness or institutionalization.
Vail Place continues to expand its housing services as more needs arise in our communities. We also recently created a new Housing Committee to help drive our initiatives at Vail Place.
Visit VailPlace.org here to learn more about our housing programs.