Beyond Shelter Frederick seeking funds to keep up emergency rental assistance services

When Heba Ibrahim got into a car crash last fall and severely damaged her vehicle, she didn’t know how she could keep paying her rent.

At the time of the crash, Ibrahim said, she wasn’t working and didn’t have any income to pay rent from October to December.

She asked around the community for anyone who could help her. Someone referred her to Beyond Shelter Frederick, which was then called the Religious Coalition for Emergency Human Needs.

“When I contacted them, I told them I am out of money for rent for three months. They agreed to pay for me,” Ibrahim said. “I’m so grateful for them. ... During that time, I didn’t have any work to earn any money from, and they were ready to help me.”

But now, Beyond Shelter can’t fulfill rental assistance requests that need thousands of dollars to resolve. Instead, the organization may only be able to give a few hundred dollars at most.

The nonprofit’s emergency rental assistance program exhausted its remaining funding this week and is searching for new sources to keep up with demand for the program.

Before exhausting its funds, the program distributed a maximum of $5,000 per household — but now, depending on the household’s makeup and situation, most will receive a maximum of $500 to $800.

Beyond Shelter usually receives 30 to 40 new requests a week for rental assistance, according to an open letter Executive Director Nick Brown sent on May 13.

“There unfortunately will be cases that we will have to turn away, not for ineligibility, but simply because the arrearage amounts are too high,” Brown wrote in an email on Thursday. “$500 up against $3000-$5000 debts won’t go terribly far.”

Rental assistance

The organization offers multiple homelessness prevention programs, including security deposit assistance, emergency utility assistance and emergency rental assistance.

In 2020, Beyond Shelter began partnering with Frederick County and the city of Frederick to put more funding toward rental assistance services in response to an anticipated rental crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brown said there were several different funding sources, and most money came through federal pipelines.

In 2022, former County Executive Jan Gardner allocated $2.8 million for Beyond Shelter through the county’s American Rescue Plan Act funds to continue the nonprofit’s services when the federal program for rental assistance expired.

Brown said the number of people benefiting from Beyond Shelter’s rental assistance services rapidly increased since the pandemic, and the rental crisis “hasn’t stopped.”

In 2022, Brown told the city of Frederick’s mayor and aldermen that the organization had given out nearly $7 million in direct rental assistance to about 1,100 households across the county.

In the last 14 months, Beyond Shelter has awarded nearly $2.8 million in rental assistance to 800 separate households, according to an open letter Brown sent to community members on May 13.

However, the nonprofit can no longer provide the same amount of assistance to nearly as many people and has returned to pre-pandemic levels of assistance.

As of May 17, Brown said the emergency rental assistance program had less than $12,000, which could be used up in a week.

Then, on Thursday, he said funds have been exhausted, and the organization is working through its current requests.

Eviction protection

Brown’s letter asks anyone to “help us seek alternate paths away from homelessness, continue to support expanded emergency eviction prevention and continue to advocate for those in need.”

The letter also included statistics on rent court filings for failing to pay rent and eviction papers during 2023 and the beginning of 2024.

From Jan. 1 to May 1, 2024, there were 3,044 rent court filings, according to statistics provided by the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office, which is 500 more than the number of filings during that same time period in 2023.

Rent court filings and evictions in Frederick County

Brown also wrote that the most significant and concerning outcome from Beyond Shelter shrinking its rental assistance program is homelessness.

“For many families, for senior citizens, for individuals, for those barely holding on, Frederick has become an unsustainable place to live. Those obstacles, coupled with the significant loss of the eviction prevention safety net, predict a bleak future for the impoverished residents of the county,” he wrote.

According to a report published in May 2023 by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, 248 people in Frederick County reported experiencing homelessness at the start of the year, up from 210 people in 2022.

Brown said Beyond Shelter has had multiple older adults “wind up on the street” who subsequently went into the nonprofit’s shelter — and losing funding for the rental assistance program could lead to a “story that’s gonna keep repeating itself” and more demand for shelter than is available.

The adult shelter has 88 beds during normal operations with overflow beds in the winter. The family shelter has 10 suites with capacity ranging from four to eight people.

Brown said the city is trying to source some funding for the rental assistance program, which wouldn’t happen until the next fiscal year begins in July.

Ramenta Cottrell, the city’s director for health and human services, wrote in an email on Wednesday that Beyond Shelter had requested money through the city’s Moderately Priced Dwelling Units fund.

“Although rental assistance has historically been supported through MPDU funds, the recent general consensus of the board of aldermen is that it is no longer deemed an applicable use,” she wrote.

County funding

In an email to The Frederick News-Post on Monday, county spokesperson Vivian Laxton said $337,500 in County Executive Jessica Fitzwater’s fiscal year 2025 operating budget was allocated to Beyond Shelter for rental assistance, shelters and prescription programs.

In fiscal year 2024, the county provided Beyond Shelter with $325,000 for rental assistance and shelter operations through the Division of Housing and Community Partnership Grants.

The County Council voted 5-2 on Tuesday to adopt a $981.5 million operating budget for fiscal year 2025.

On Monday, Laxton also said the county is anticipating a formal request from Beyond Shelter to address the need between now and July 1, when the new fiscal year begins.

“While the County does not have unallocated funds, we will seriously consider any viable options the organization presents,” she said. “We also will look at any long-term sustainable solutions Beyond Shelter Frederick is developing to address this issue.”

In a text message on Wednesday, Brown wrote that Beyond Shelter is compiling information from the last four years on its rental assistance program to evaluate trends following the pandemic.

The information will be used if Frederick can source additional funding and the county is willing to review it.

Ibrahim urged anyone with the financial resources to donate to Beyond Shelter because the help through the rental assistance program can change lives.

“All should help them because they are doing good for people,” she said. “I wish one day when I earn some money to be able to help them and donate because they are doing good things for the people.”