Walking the line: How LINC connected families to millions in rent, utility assistance
From the beginning, LINC’s effort to connect nearly 2,000 households to more than $2.8 million in U.S. rental and utility bill assistance funds was essentially a street mission.
All along, LINC’s team understood that the people who most needed help from the government’s relief funds were among those least likely to know about it, or least likely to have the online capabilities to access the funds even if they did.
That’s why, the week before Christmas, LINC’s Danisha Clarkson once again walked the line of cars and people lined up for a food distribution at LINC’s Caring Communities site at Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church, 27th and Prospect Avenue.
LINC’s team of Latricia Bradley, center, and Kachina Powell, right, talk with a client about utility bill assistance.
The air was gray, cold and getting colder. Clarkson, the LINC Caring Communities Coordinator at Morning Star, went car-to-car in her blue LINC wool hat and sweatshirt.
“I want to let you know we’re doing rental and utility assistance inside the center today!” she said with wispy breath into the opened passenger window of an idling pickup truck. “If you know anybody, please share!”
The man at the wheel called back.
“One of my employees lives in a house and they don’t have enough money to pay the water bill,” he said.
“All right. Tell them to come up to Morning Star,” Clarkson said. When? The driver asked. “They can come up now,” Clarkson said. “You can call them right now.”
Inside the center, LINC’s team of Kachina Powell and Latricia Bradley were geared up again with their laptops, scanners and printers, linked into the regional data base and the local utilities’ payment web pages, both of them trained to navigate the government’s dense application process.
“We do all the work for them,” Powell said. “The people we assist don’t have access to computers. They may not have access to printers to print out the documents they need. We enter in all the information in the utility assistance accounts to get them some help.”
LINC set up its assistance clinic in the spring of 2021 after meeting with representatives of the local utilities — Evergy, Spire and KC Water Services — and the Mid-America Assistance Coalition who had come to LINC with a problem: Millions of pandemic relief dollars were available to help families but almost no one was accessing it.
By creating a clinic, LINC was able to bring together all the resources families needed to complete the application process, and then LINC’s Caring Communities Coordinators and partners throughout some of Kansas City’s most vulnerable neighborhoods spread the word.
The City of Kansas City used LINC’s model to establish citywide clinics and soon Kansas City became one of the nation’s most effective cities in getting needy households access to the government aid.
As the pandemic relief aid neared the end, the Morning Star team redoubled its efforts to reach families in need as the holidays — and a bitter winter chill — were coming their way.
“We’re excited to be able to go outside and perhaps bless a family whose (utilities) are being shut off,” Clarkson said.
One of the people she met out in the line said that her heat was off. She learned from LINC what documents she needed to gather and went back home, able to return within the hour and get the help she needed.
“That’s the importance of going out there and letting people know, because a lot of people do not know,” Clarkson said.
By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer
LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Danisha Clarkson visits with neighbors in line outside the Morning Star Youth and Family Life Center in Kansas City.