Amy Vanya and her four children face eviction from their home on Dunn Road in Fayetteville.

4 — this coming Monday. Vanya fears the worst — that the family could wind up on the streets.

“We just need somewhere to go,” she says. “I don’t even have a vehicle that we could possibly sleep in.

What is happening with Amy Vanya and her children is not supposed to happen. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the state and federal governments have collectively set aside multiple billions to prevent widespread evictions.

In August, more than 11 million Americans were behind on rent, according to figures by Surgo Ventures, a nonprofit that looks at health and data. Housing advocates have been sounding the alarm for months that a wave of evictions would occur when the federal moratorium on evictions expired.

Amy Vanya has lived for four years at the home on Dunn Road, which is located just down the road from her landlord. On Tuesday, she talked about her situation, while sitting on her porch, holding her 13-month-old son, Logan.

Logan’s sister, Bella, who is 5, was playing at her mother’s feet — and also carrying a high fever. Vanya’s other children are 15-year-old son D.J., and an adult daughter, Sierra.

a lack of transportation has interrupted her full-time studies as well as hurt her ability to hold a job. Myron B.

Amy Vanya says her troubles with rent began when the family lost the monthly Supplemental Security Income check for her older son, who is 100% medically disabled. This happened a year-and-a-half ago, she says.

The tax complication left her out of federal stimulus payments she should have received. She is not clear on why she did not receive the child tax credits that started over the summer and provides monthly payments to most families with children.

Vanya fell behind on her rent at the Dunn Road home, which is $550, by eight months. She said she had kept her landlord, Renee Pridgen, apprised of what was going on and thought Pridgen would give her more time to get the matter resolved.

Along the way, Pridgen even lowered the rent from $650 to help Vanya’s family out. “I think we both thought it would be a lot quicker,” Vanya says about the SSI snag.

I haven’t been able to get a person on the phone, and I haven’t heard anything about it.”. The federal moratorium on evictions initially expired at the end of July.

Supreme Court in August. Earlier in the same month, Vanya received the notice of eviction.

“She didn’t tell me anything,” Vanya says of Pridgen. “I was just served papers.

The eviction was upheld by the court in a preceding on Sept. 24.

Pitts: COVID-19 vaccines are a moonshot and medical miracle — let’s start acting like it. Pridgen, in a phone interview, said she did not have much to say about the Vanya situation.

“We went to court, it was ruled in our favor,” she says. “And that’s all I can say about it.

4 to be out. If she’s not out by then, unfortunately, I will have to file the writ form — because she does have to leave.”.

“I think she has been a fabulous mother, but her lack of income is an issue. And I’m sorry I do have to evict her.

And I’ve had to dip into my savings account quite a bit.”. The volume of people seeking to avoid eviction has seemingly overwhelmed a program specifically designed to deal with that issue.

But the program has a backlog of more than 6,300 families. City Councilman D.J.

Beyond that, families looking to avoid eviction face a common obstacle: Navigating the maze of resources that may be available to them and sometimes poor communication between the family and agencies.

‘A lot of issues’: Fayetteville receives influx of rental assistance program applications. But Chris Cauley, the city’s economic development director, said on Thursday the program can provide assistance in the form of three months’ future rent on a new place if someone has to move.

“We can help them find somewhere and get some stability,” he said. He noted that the application process for RAP is still open.

Cauley said the program received more applications than they thought it would. But he brought attention to what he calls the historic nature of the program.

He said: “While the first payments went out after two weeks of the program being open, and we’ve awarded $4 million since June, there’s still a lot of people in the process.”. He said the city and its partner have hired additional staff, created an eviction program that assigns caseworkers to attend eviction proceedings and “contracted and paid for case managers with local nonprofits to help address the caseload.”.

She is a co-director of the Fayetteville Police Accountability Task Force. The organization is part of a statewide group, the Housing Eviction Network.

Greggs criticizes RAP for making people wait too long on payments and for poor communication with their clients. She says the resource online that tells people where they are on the wait list is sometimes not working or is inaccurate.

Why don’t we have buses from the RAP program to take people back and forth. How can people get their stuff done.

She thinks the program would operate better if the money had been used to work through groups and organizations that already work with housing and with people at risk of losing their homes. Greggs and other local activists will protest at the Cumberland County Courthouse on Tuesday and Wednesday, as part of a larger statewide protest against evictions.

With rising evictions, “Now we’re back to the homeless problem,” she says. Amy Vanya is still hoping she does not find herself and her children numbered among the homeless.

She said she first came to North Carolina to escape an abusive relationship. That relationship left her with a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Her colitis symptoms have worsened, and her gastroenterologist told her the likely cause was stress. Vanya started a GoFundMe that has raised $815 of a $2,000 goal.

She says she talked this week with a lawyer with Legal Aid of North Carolina and was told she would need to come up with one month’s rent to file an appeal, “which would buy me a couple of weeks” she says. “I don’t have that, so I can’t appeal the conviction,” she says.

it has to be a different lawyer. “So far I haven’t found any shelters that can take us.

Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at [email protected] or 910-486-3559.

Support local journalism with a subscription to The Fayetteville Observer. Click the “subscribe” link at the top of this article.

Michael Fuller and his family sit quietly on a bench inside Newark’s Penn Station. It’s early morning on a weekday and at first glance, the trio appears to be waiting for a train in anticipation of a journey.

They have no train tickets or home. “We had a job, we worked at Hello Fresh,” Fuller said.

We tried our best to try to stretch what we had but then that all ran out.”. There are many others like the Fullers at Penn Station, as Essex County is home to nearly 2,000 people without a home, more than in any other county in the state.

The police have employed various ways to help the unhoused community while still making sure Penn Station employees and mass transit users are safe. Now, the city of Newark, NJ Transit and two local hospitals are trying another approach: compassion.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s Homeless Outreach Team, or HOT for short, monitors people at the station who have no home. Team members make wellness checks and talk to people few will talk to.

If the HOT team encounters an unaccompanied minor, they refer them to Covenant House where they have a connection with the outreach liaison, Mark Wilcox. “It’s about having connections and networking,” said Ramar Garner, an outreach specialist in the Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services and member of the HOT team.

The city’s HOT team works in tandem with NJ Transit police, said Commander Nicholas Capriglione. Law enforcement officers also work with mental health screeners on eight-hour shifts.

Capriglione said Christopher Trucillo, NJ Transit’s chief of police, helped change the vision of how transit operates now. He recognized that the agency had a social responsibility to help those who are troubled.

Once the city and NJ Transit started looking for solutions, they realized that solution would involve the city, public services, nonprofits, the courts and the health care sector. “There’s a lot of navigation that has to take place,” said Capriglione who is the commanding officer of Transit District 2.

The city of Newark is working with University Hospital’s crisis unit and the New Jersey Transit Police is working with Beth Israel’s crisis unit, said Sean Pfeifer, an outreach police officer at Penn Station. “It’s a great opportunity for law enforcement to learn from the mental health folks and other first responders, like Emergency Medical Services,” said Pfeifer who has worked in this role for almost eight years.

The courts have a role to play, as well. If an individual is already engaged in services and is criminally prosecuted, they automatically lose services and it becomes a barrier for them to get new services.

“So, we recognized that,” NJ Transit’s Capriglione said. “I think we’re the only law enforcement agency that’s pioneered its own compassionate court and this city being as welcoming and progressive as it is, has allowed us to do that.”.

The officer takes a photo of the card and the summons. That photo is entered into an app that’s used by the court.

You have to bring empathy to your job, says HOT crew member Ishmael Higgs, who has first-hand experience about what people living on the streets are going through. Those Transit Tuesday courts are not held at the municipal court because people don’t feel comfortable going there.

Instead, their court session is held at a wellness center run by Collaborative Support Programs of New Jersey, a local not-for-profit organization. This gives the person an opportunity to talk to providers who can help them with drug addiction, mental health issues and veterans services.

“Twenty years ago, I don’t think that there were these type of efforts in place,” Capriglione said. “I don’t think people understood how to handle these issues.

That better way begins with changing how the system interacts with those without homes. You have to bring empathy to your job, says HOT crew member Ishmael Higgs, who has first-hand experience about what people living on the streets are going through.

“And they say, ‘hey, man, my friend, you helped me out.’”. “Your family member, your friends, they hear these things.

This is what you really enjoy. ’ I say, ‘Yes, this is what I do.

And I love my job.’”. Isaiah Hayes Willoughby, another HOT crew member said talking to someone or listening to them makes a difference because he’s learned from experience that some people on the streets haven’t had someone talk to them in months, if not years.

“You as a citizen, as a human being, have the responsibility to help your fellow man.”. “Small changes can lead to huge outcomes,” he said.

It might be a beautiful experience for you and for your family and those that you might never know.”.

The Coronavirus Outbreak And The Challenges Of Online-Only Classes Listen · 3:46 3:46 Toggle more options Download Embed Embed