Tasha Nickols takes pride in being a go-getter. She never shied away from working extra hours as a nursing assistant.
Still, it wasn’t enough to keep Nickols and her three children from becoming homeless. She felt demoralized having to call the United Way 2-1-1 Help Center early this year to find space in a shelter.
“It just felt like my world had fallen apart,” Nickols said. “I work hard. I typically keep two jobs. It was like, ‘I’m doing everything I possibly can, and now I can’t even provide a roof over our heads.’”
Greater Cleveland has historically had a reputation as an affordable area, where people with modest incomes could find a decent rent. Now, more low-wage and working-class people are facing homelessness, according to Signal Cleveland interviews with organizations that work with the unhoused.
Steadily rising rents, coupled with higher costs for some utilities, food and other essentials, have squeezed more full-time workers to the point where they can no longer afford rent. Even those, such as Nickols, who have been fortunate enough to get a Section 8 voucher have ended up homeless. The federal program is designed to keep housing affordable for low- and moderate-income people by paying a substantial portion of the rent. Some landlords who want to accept vouchers say they have to decline them. The vouchers, they say, pay less than the going rate for their rental units.
At least since late 2023, the Cleveland metro area has consistently had among the steepest percentages in rent increases among the 50 largest U.S. metro areas. Last month, Greater Cleveland ranked second, according to Zilliow’s latest monthly rental report. The typical rent here increased 7% between August 2023 and August 2024. Nationally, the typical rent rose 3.4%.
It’s hard to pinpoint how many working people are homeless. Research released by the University of Chicago in 2021 found that 53% of adults in shelters had worked in the year that they became homeless. The federal government doesn’t require emergency shelters to collect information on whether residents are working. Even if they did, such responses wouldn’t capture the true scope of such homelessness, according to Josiah Quarles, director of organizing and advocacy for the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless (NEOCH). Not all homeless people end up in shelters, he said. Many double or triple up with family or friends. Some couch surf, remaining house guests as long as they can. Others live out of their cars.
The rent is rising: Paychecks can’t keep up
Perhaps as recently as a decade ago, rents started rising faster than usual, jeopardizing the housing stability of countless low-wage workers, Quarles said. During the pandemic, federal policies covered the rent for many and paused evictions, staving off homelessness for many people. As these and other pandemic assistance programs ended, low-income and working-class families were forced to spend more of their monthly income on rent.
It has created a precarious situation that often collapses, Quarles said. Increasingly, working people and seniors who are homeless or on the verge of it contact NEOCH seeking help.
“The rent is continually rising,” Quarles said. “Wages are not matching that increase. The pandemic laid bare the reality of folks who were riding the margins.”
When more people with vouchers started showing up in Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry (LMM) homeless programs, staff saw the opportunity to troubleshoot. The nonprofit launched an effort last year to connect voucher holders with willing landlords and to ease the transition by covering some costs. The program has seen early success in moving shelter residents into homes.
“Honestly, if it wasn’t for that program, I don’t know where we probably would be,” said Nickols, whose family eventually found permanent housing through the program.
Struggling with rent: ‘It just became too much’
Nickols was already straining to keep her family in the three-bedroom Brooklyn house she rented.
In 2023, the family lost roughly $200 a month when the federal government ended the pandemic Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The benefits had helped Nickols cope with rising food costs. Then, that fall, the landlord raised the monthly rent by $150.
“I was already struggling to pay the $1,100 as it was,” she said.
There was no way she could afford $1,250, a nearly 14% increase. Though she often worked extra hours, it wasn’t enough. At the time, Nickols made about $20 an hour as a nursing assistant. She’s the sole supporter of her three school-aged children.
“It just became too much,” she said. “After I lost the food stamps, I had to take money from what would have been rent and use it to feed my family. Rent and everything else had really gone up, and my pay went up only 20 cents an hour.”
By late 2023, the predictable happened. The family was evicted. Soon, Nickols found herself making that dreaded 2-1-1 call to get her family into a homeless shelter. There was no room. There wouldn’t be a spot for them until spring. Advocates say it’s common for shelters to run out of space, especially during the colder months.
Nickols and her children found themselves briefly living out of their car. She said she began working even more hours – nearly around the clock some days so the family could stay in Airbnbs. But she grew exhausted and frustrated by spending so much time away from her kids. After weeks of this, Nickols knew she couldn’t do it much longer.
In February, Nickols got a Section 8 voucher through the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. She had been on the waiting list since 2019. With a limited number of vouchers, applicants often wait for years.
In April, a shelter called with a space for the family. Nickols had to take it. Several landlords had already rejected her voucher, saying that it didn’t cover what they said was the going rate for their units.
The voucher was proving useless.
Shelter rules often inflexible for working residents
The family’s shelter system experience often was dizzying. They couldn’t stay in one place for long and cycled through different shelters, usually run by different agencies.
Each time, they had to acclimate to a temporary home. And learn a new set of rules. One thing became apparent to Nickols: Shelters and other programs for the homeless often were not flexible enough to accommodate working people.
Nickols said she had to leave one program when she was told that attending job readiness training for residents was mandatory. She already had a job, and the training was during her work hours. The last shelter where the family stayed didn’t allow her to leave her children alone. She thought it a reasonable rule, but following it proved difficult. As a hospital employee, she had to work most days her children had off from school. At 10, 13 and 14, the children were too old for any subsidized child care programs.
“I’m a single mother,” she said. “I don’t have any help. So I didn’t have anyone to watch my kids.”
In May, Nickols lost the job she’d held since 2020. Her employer said she had missed too many days. Before becoming homeless, Nickols said she hadn’t missed work often – even during the early days of the pandemic.
“Nursing isn’t a job to me,” she said. “I feel like it’s a calling.”
Nickols not only needed a job, she needed a better-paying one to afford housing. Now homeless and unemployed, she decided to enroll in a one-year Licensed Practical Nursing program.
The strategy would take a year. She was determined to see it through.
Searching for a landlord who would take a voucher
Nickols had to come up with a new game plan.
The family had been homeless for about six months. Since she had received a Section 8 voucher three months earlier, Nickols had been looking for a house or apartment to rent.
Still no takers.
Yet another landlord had turned down Nickols’ Section 8 voucher. It was the sixth time that a deal had fallen through.
This landlord had agreed to rent to her, pending finding out how much the voucher would pay. Paperwork was then submitted to CMHA, which handles most Section 8 vouchers in the county. After the unit passed inspection, the agency determined how much the voucher would pay toward the rent.
“They [landlords] were open to taking the voucher,” she said. “However, dealing with CMHA, they kept feeling like they were being low balled as far as the rent offers were concerned.”
Nickols wasn’t alone in her quest to get a landlord to accept the voucher. Only 36% of CMHA voucher holders find housing within six months of getting the subsidy, a spokeswoman told Signal Cleveland in July. CMHA has nearly 14,000 vouchers in use with another 1,900 available, according to the agency.
The amount the voucher will cover is based on a federal formula which sets “fair market” rents in different areas. The amount the agency can offer might not match the prices sought by landlords, a CMHA spokesperson told Signal Cleveland in an email, though federal rules require the rent paid should be “reasonable” or generally in line with other rents
Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry program helps shelter residents with vouchers
In May, Nickols ran into the case manager assigned to her when the family first entered the shelter system.
Ronieta Lee told Nickols she had tried to call her but couldn’t reach her because her mobile number had changed. The family was no longer in an LMM program. Lee, who works at the nonprofit, told her about a new program she believed would be a perfect fit for the family.
One of LMM’s missions is finding immediate and long-term solutions to homelessness. It runs the Men’s Shelter on Lakeside Avenue and the Haven Home family overflow shelter in Slavic Village. In August 2023, the organization started the Family Transition in Place (TIP) program.
This is how the program works. LMM leases several apartments. Shelter residents who qualify for vouchers can live in these units. Many want to permanently stay in the apartments. They remain in the unit until it passes inspection, which is necessary to receive a voucher amount. After a unit is approved and a voucher amount is set, the person can sign a lease with the property owner.
Family TIP has been essential to freeing up space in the shelter and helps voucher holders get into a home, Lee said.
“We shouldn’t have people with vouchers taking up [shelter] rooms. We need to make them available for people sleeping in their cars,” she said.
Unlucky 7: Landlord rejects voucher that doesn’t meet rent amount
A few weeks after running into Lee, Nichols and her family moved into an LMM-leased apartment in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood.
In order for the unit to become hers, it had to pass the CMHA inspection and the voucher amount had to be enough to pay the rent. Nickols was optimistic. She said the landlord told her he was prepared to bargain within about $150 of his asking price.
Nickols was hoping that this seventh try for a place to call home would be the family’s Lucky 7. They were longing for stability.
“My kids and I had gotten settled, when we found out that they needed to move,” she said.
They had heard back from CMHA. Nickols said the agency would only approve a voucher for nearly $400 a month less than what the landlord was asking.
The family was still looking for a place to live.
Finally, a place the family can call home
Nickols sits on the sofa in the living room of a two-family house in Cleveland’s Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. The family has lived in an apartment there since August. She is reading a large book, positioned in her lap, from one of her LPN courses.
The family really can call this place home. CMHA and the landlord reached agreement on the amount of the voucher.
“It is a big relief,” Nickols said, then sighed. “My son with autism needs stability. Now that we’re finally starting to see consistency, his behavior is starting to change.”
The room is sparse. After Nickols was evicted, she lost most of her furniture, unable to pay the storage fees.
“I made sure that I kept certain things like my kids’ artwork and their awards,” she said. “Those are the most important things. Other things can be replaced.”
LMM has provided most of what is now in the apartment.
Nickols could focus on the hardship. The family became homeless as winter set in and did not find a stable home until late summer.
Instead, she likes to tell how Family TIP, a small program with big promise, helped her in resetting her family’s course.
Nickols works part-time and goes to school full-time. Her new job even pays a few dollars more per hour than the last one. Nickols doesn’t want to stop with her LPN. She is determined to eventually get her Master of Science in Nursing.
Nickols remembers how hard it was for her when the family first became homeless and contrasts that with how she now feels.
“I just felt like my world had fallen apart,” she said. “Now, I feel we have a new beginning.”