Triangle Family Services is one of the most comprehensive social service agencies in the multi-county area around Raleigh/Cary/Durham/Chapel Hill. The list of services they provide is exhaustive, many of their staff have been there for 10-25 years, and the agency has been learning the ropes of the social-service and family-service biz for 75 years. So they're just very, very good at what they do.
Many friends and acquaintances have visited TFS when they've sought affordable quality counseling, dealt with a teen going through a really rough time, needed help when their electricity is being shut off, or decided to take some firm steps in budget planning. All have been impressed with TFS and their super-dedicated and knowledgeable staff. Many's the time that TFS staff have kept the door open long past the 5 p.m. closing time because ... well ... because they felt their work wasn't done for the day.
But as the economic picture gets bleaker and bleaker for nonprofit organizations, the wolves are sniffing at the door of this agency that provides food for the hungry, mental-health services for those suffering from anything from stress to severe emotional disorders, financial management and counseling for the underemployed and unemployed, keeps families together, and so much more.
If TFS goes down, thousands of families will go down with them. That's no exaggeration.
Can you chip in a couple bucks a month to keep TFS focused on service to individuals and families rather than how to keep from having to close that door for good?
Recently I went to Triangle Family Services for a seminar on federal mortgage assistance funds for people who have lost their jobs or facing other catastrophic hardship. I was laid off from my full-time-with-benefits job last year, and although my credit union has been amazing, it was time for me to start on some more practical planning than just hoping that I'll find a job even though I haven't had the least bit of luck in 15 months and I've got this little friend in my skull that's not going away anytime soon.
Last year, when the official unemployment rate in North Carolina topped 11% and the Employment Security Commission itself was having to lay off staff because of state budget cuts, North Carolina received $500,000,000 in federal funds to help ameliorate the epidemic of home foreclosures. Several agencies have been certified to process applications for this assistance through North Carolina Foreclosure Prevention Fund's Mortgage Payment Program. But as I did my research, I learned that TFS has the highest rate of acceptance for clients who apply because they most carefully vet each and every application.
Many people may not know that these funds are not only available but that our neighborhoods, counties, and states really need people to apply for them. Banks and credit unions can't afford to hire the staff required when they are saddled with a slew of foreclosed homes. Cities and towns don't want to deal with the blight that inevitably comes along with abandoned homes. Police don't want empty homes on their beat that have become spots where young people have found a great place to hang out for fun and mischief and increasingly frustrated neighbors take matters into their own hands -- often to unnecessarily escalated ends.
It just makes a lot of sense for people to take advantage of these services, programs, and funds that are available. It's good for families. It's good for neighborhoods. It's good for communities. It's good for getting our families' and nation's economies back on their feet.
So that money is out there. Now comes the part where we need certified and qualified housing counselors vetting the applications that come in for these funds. We don't want situations like the savings & loans fiascos of the 1980s, where people who were supposed to be trustworthy arbiters of our funds used them instead to put Picassos in their yachts and pay people a few bucks to move their Claes Oldenburg statues around their estates for big corporate parties with well-dressed legislators on the guest list. What we want is the best. What we want is accountability. What we want is assurance that these funds to go exactly where they'll do the most good.
We want people like Harriet Reynolds, a housing counselor at one of the Raleigh offices of Triangle Family Services.
Harriet's been counseling families on budgets and housing at TFS for more than 25 years. And she is one of my personal heroes. Back in the early 1960s, Harriet's family took her and her siblings to a drive-in to see the new film "To Kill a Mockingbird." The very next day, Harriet decided she wanted to go to the elementary school that was nearest her home in Florida. The one the school board wouldn't let her go to. Because, you see, Harriet was "colored," and that school didn't teach colored students. But that's the school Harriet wanted to go to, and her family fought for her right to attend that school. Despite the fact that U.S. law ordered desegregation for public school students, for two years Harriet was escorted to school by FBI agents every single day, because local law-enforcement workers refused to escort her and because this bright little girl whose sense of justice was fired up by Harper Lee's story on the big screen was the target of threats, physical assaults, and no end of abuse.
Harriet Reynolds knows about sacrifice. She knows about facing down all the unjust "no's" in this world. She knows about the importance of creating a humane place where people are treated with respect even in the most challenging of circumstances.
In a normal year at Triangle Family Services, Harriet would process 500 applications for mortgage assistance at TFS. But in recent months, with the escalating financial crises for people in the Triangle area and word about the new foreclosure prevention funds slowly leaking through the community, that number has spiked precipitously. As more and more people are losing their jobs and either not finding new ones or having to take minimum-wage jobs without benefits and that don't pay for anything even close to standard housing, Harriet's gone from working with 500 families a year to processing 800 applications a month.
And even so, her team has the highest acceptance rate in all of North Carolina for these grants and loans. Talk about dedication to every single client. Talk about stewardship of public dollars. Talk about caring enough to ensure that every family and every individual walking in through that door gets the very best service even from a lowly nonprofit organization that doesn't charge a penny for most of its services.
Agencies like TFS can't afford to hire workers to take on all this new work brought on by increased poverty and need. Which is why Harriet was at her desk last Sunday evening at 10:30 when she picked up the ringing phone and found an irate woman calling to demand an explanation as to why TFS was "enabling lazy people" to get free money from hard-working taxpayers. Harriet calmly asked whether it seemed reasonable that she would be answering the phone at 10:30 at night on a Sunday to help some lazy deadbeats. The hostility went down a couple notches then, but did not stop. Those sorts of calls come in daily at TFS. Which is why funding is in such a precarious situation these days.
I was aghast. Why? Why would anyone question the work of an organization whose very mission is to create stronger families who can be self-sufficient and successful? Seriously? The very people who preach self-sufficiency are against it? Argh.
It was too much for me. I asked Harriet how I might help in some small way -- could I give a client's-eye perspective to legislators about the wide-ranging benefits of continued funding for this agency? try to create some links between public-health researchers who are working in impoverished neighborhoods to address some of the root issues that prevent poor and disenfranchised people from getting needed medical treatment? create fundraising coalitions with agencies and organizations working with the same publics?
Well, we're working on that. I'm definitely going to be working with some legislators. I didn't work so hard to get some of them elected just so I'd sit on my hands when I can be funneling important work their way.
In the meantime, I offer you this incredible opportunity to invest in the work of people like Harriet Reynolds. Every single person in her office knows that their work can make the difference between maintaining family self-sufficiency and real families losing their children, losing their ability to eat regularly and get the medications they vitally need, losing their hope, their homes, their grip on life.
Please, even if you don't have a couple bucks to give right now or you have other contributions to make, check out this link and take a look at what Harriet and her colleagues do seven days a week. Even at 10:30 p.m. on a Sunday. Simply because they know that their time may be limited, and they may get the call any day that there's not enough money to keep operations going.
We need more Harriet Reynolds--not fewer--helping resolve the effects of job loss, family instability, and just plain bad stuff that happens. We need more Harriets to teach families how to create and maintain budgets and make the wisest possible financial decisions. Here's someone who made the sacrifices it took to change a bad system in the 1960s. Here's someone who is making the sacrifices it takes to be at her desk at 10:30 on a Sunday evening so that a couple families would be able to keep their homes this month. She's the link between historical change in the past and our hopes for historical changes to come.
Harriet, if somehow you find time in your busy days or weeks to read this, please know how much you matter. You are hope embodied. You are the standing-up each of us must do. You are the alchemist toiling day to day to create a more golden place for our children and their children. You save families, and you save lives as surely as a firefighter or any other emergency-response professional.
You're a hero, Harriet Reynolds. Plain and simple. And we stand with you in this battle.