Since starting its hotline, Brothers Redevelopment has been flooded with over 1,000 calls per month. And the organization hasn’t even advertised the number yet.
The hotline started in June and helps people with rental assistance, eviction prevention and home ownership among other things, and also can connect people with counselors. But with just two full-time housing navigators staffing the phones, it’s been a difficult task.
“It’s more than we had originally hoped for,” said Shannon Peer, director of housing counseling for Brothers Redevelopment.
Fortunately, help is on the way after Brothers received a grant from Denver’s Office of Economic Development; the group will be able to add another employee to help out later this month.
is one of many Denver-area organizations that is benefiting from performance-based federal grants channeled through the city’s Office of Economic Development. In all, $4.9 million was awarded to local groups, with the grants announced last month.
Many recipients, like Brothers Redevelopment, are repeat winners.
“We’re looking for projects that align with the mayor’s priorities, which are jobs, children and education,” said Derek Woodbury, spokesman for the Office of Economic Development.
Brothers Redevelopment received $40,000 for the Colorado Housing Connects call center and an additional $35,000 for its counseling services.
While that may be considerably less than some other organizations, Brothers has been receiving funds for counseling for several years and has been a mainstay in Denver for the past 40 years. Brothers helps low-income, elderly and disabled individuals and families with housing. It serves six counties in the metro area, but the majority of calls come from Denver.
“They’re long-standing leaders in foreclosure education. They have a strong track record,” Woodbury said. “They’re really doing important work and have been for a long time.”
The $40,000 grant will pay for an additional employee to help service calls and take the load off the current employees. Peer said he only expected about 300 to 350 per month to start, but kept getting referrals from other organizations, leading to an overload. These are also not quick calls. Many take up to 15 minutes while the housing navigator finds the best information or best advice for the caller.
The influx in calls means a lot of callers are leaving messages that the navigators must return, which can sometimes take up to a full day.
Peer said he hopes that the ability to field more calls will help leverage more money in the future.
“I imagine that having just started the project and having received first-year funding, that we’ll be able to bring up the capacity and maybe (the city) would allocate more dollars,” he said.
Brenda Giron started as a housing navigator with Brothers Redevelopment in May and has been splitting time working with the Colorado Housing Connects call center and the foreclosure hotline that Brothers also runs.
She said calls can range from getting someone help paying rent or finding housing, to help settling a dispute with a landlord. She also said the extra help is much needed.
“It’s rewarding,” Giron said. It’s rewarding to direct someone to a source to have housing or get their electricity put back on. It feels good.”
Colorado housing connects hotline
1-844-926-6632
