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click image for full size Other articles in Part 5 Current poverty trends likely to continue Tina Eoff's Second Chance Renters Program Program explores policy options New programs take aim at poverty What you can do to help

Tina Eoff's Second Chance Renters' Program story by Andy Duncan Tina Eoff grew up in Estacada, near Portland. She was a recently divorced student at Lane Community College in Eugene in 1992 when the economic bottom dropped out of her life. The costs of child care and a small house she was renting were eating away at her resources. "I'd go to school every day hungry, but I kept my two kids fed," Eoff remembers. She found jobs in factories. "But nobody would keep me on. I'm not strong and physical," she says. "I made it to the summer, but then we had to move into a homeless camp at Armitage Park (on the outskirts of Eugene)." Eoff and her children lived in a small tent trailer loaned to her by a family at her church. She was hoping to get into low-income housing. "The winter was really scary," she remembers. "But the gamble worked. Eventually we got into low-income housing." However, experiences at the camp stayed with her. "I'd met so many homeless people and heard so many horrible stories from them," she says, "I couldn't believe it." She returned to her studies of criminal justice at the community college and, while interning at a Eugene social service organization called Clergy and Laity Concerned, found a way to help people without a home. A lot of the homeless people she'd met couldn't seem to find a place to rent even if they had the resources. Property owners and managers wouldn't give them a chance. "I'd thought about it kind of piecemeal from time to time," she says. "Then suddenly a whole idea just popped into my mind." Using Tina's idea, a woman at Clergy and Laity Concerned wrote a grant proposal and submitted it to the United Way. The agency funded the proposal and the Second Chance Renters' Rehabilitation Program was born. The program was headquartered at the Saint Vincent de Paul Society in Eugene. Tina was hired to operate it. For eight weeks participants learn the responsibilities and rights of being a tenant. They are guided by "peer counselors" who have been homeless themselves and been through the program, and by other members of the community such as lawyers and property owners. The people who go through the Second Chance Renters' Rehabilitation Program learn how to set goals, how to present themselves, and how to overcome adversity. What landlords get is a guarantee: Second Chance will pay for any damage or other financial costs caused by program graduates. "We have a 93 percent success rate in finding a place for people who go through the program and more than 500 people have gone through it," says Eoff. The program has won awards from the Oregon Coalition on Housing and Homelessness and the National Coalition for the Homeless. "It's not easy," she says. "They have to study hard and we have a high dropout rate." But there's a change, a new sense of hope, in those who complete it. "When you're homeless," adds Eoff, "it has a devastating effect on you and your children. A lot of people lose hope. It may not be your fault. You may have just lost your job. But it's really hard to get people to believe in you again."   Article 2 of 5 in Part 5   back to top

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