SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – Last year, U.S. Navy Veteran Chaz Gardner was homeless for six months.
“I was working for an upholstery shop, and I had keys to it. And so, I’d sleep on the floor. It had a bathroom. It was not cool at all,” Gardner said.
As fate would have it, Gardner broke his leg while helping a friend, which led to him getting a phone call in the hospital to get the help Gardner needed.
“And they asked this final question, and they were like, ‘What’s your living situation,’ and I said, ‘Well, not well,’” Gardner said.
That phone call led Gardner to a shared affordable housing opportunity from the local non-profit Adjoin.
It’s a way for unhoused people to live together and share the cost of living in a place.
“So we’ve been doing it that way because that’s the only way some people on a fixed income or a lower income can afford to be permanently housed,” Angie Striepling, Director of Veteran Service for Adjoin, said.
In an effort to be creative, another non-profit, Townspeople and Adjoin, are teamingup to use $200,000 in grant money to support more shared housing.
“We are going to, from the ground up, build a program that will pair unhoused folks with unhoused folks that could potential be great housemates,” Melissa Peterman, Executive Director for Townspeople, said.
The hope is to normalize shared housing in an effort to tackle the issue of permanent housing for the homeless.
“So, the idea is to find ways to creatively house people given the high-cost rental market that we live in and also leveraging the rental inventory that exists, which is primary multi-bedroom units," Peterman said.
Another goal is to eventually make the system region-wide and be available to more unhoused people.
“But the more people, the more opportunity there is to match to somebody. So that’s why we want to create an effective and efficient system and then scale up,” Striepling said.
As the groups work to build and scale up, Gardner hopes more people find out and use the resources around them.
“When I was in that situation, I had no clue of the benefits that I had. None whatsoever. And I think a lot of people don’t know either. I think it’s just a matter of exposing these people to these programs to help them out,” Gardner said.
The director for veteran services for Adjoin tells me if a roommate situation doesn’t work out, they do have funds available to put someone up at a temporary location and move a different roommate if conflict resolution resources aren’t working.
