Keene family faces tough road amid state's housing crunch

Oct. 1—A family of four has spent the past two years moving around Keene and the Monadnock Region — exhausting themselves and the resources available to people who are unhoused in the area. The family now includes a fifth member: a baby girl, born earlier this week.

Krista Dahl, 32, and her children Belle, 10, and George, 7, began a long journey in 2020 to find stable housing after the apartment where they lived in Claremont was sold to a developer, Dahl said.

This displacement led the family to Keene to stay with Dahl's friend and now partner, Christopher Searles, 38, until history repeated itself and the family was forced to leave when the property was sold, Dahl said. They've since had a patchwork of housing solutions: Hundred Nights shelter, the city and local churches have paid for hotel stays; and Home Healthcare, Hospice and Community Services paid for two weeks at a local campground. The family has also stayed in a relative's yard and their car.

"I pray for a miracle that we get [an apartment] before the baby is born. 'Cause like right now we don't even have anything for the baby, besides ... HCS has a portable crib for us and some baby clothes," Dahl said earlier this month.

Her third child, Mae, was born by C-section two weeks early, on Wednesday morning.

At one time, the family had a voucher from Keene Housing to help pay for an apartment. But they weren't able to find a landlord who would accept the voucher and Dahl's service dog, who provides support for her spinal cord injury and PTSD, Dahl said. Then the voucher expired (they have since applied for another). Dahl fears her service dog, 4-year-old Harley, may prohibit them from finding housing quickly, since they cannot afford to officially register her and the vouchers would not cover that expense.

Dahl has been on a waiting list for one of Keene Housing's affordable units for about two years, she said.

Waiting times for vouchers and housing can vary depending on people's circumstances, said Josh Meehan, Keene Housing's executive director. The wait list for housing consistently averages more than 2,000 households, Meehan said.

"Anytime I am in a public forum talking about lack of affordable housing and I tell people how large our waiting list is, jaws hit the table," he said. "A lot of people don't realize how dramatic the lack of affordable housing is in our region and how profoundly that is affecting our economic and social wellbeing."

Dahl is no stranger to surviving on little. She was raised on a homestead in Alstead without running water or electricity.

"We survived 'rustic,' I guess you could call it," Dahl said. "I grew up like that, so I am not picky. I am not expecting some high-end housing, just a roof that's stable to bring the baby home to and that my kids can call home."

The city of Keene is paying for the family to stay at the Days Inn because local shelters are full, but that requires a weekly check-in with the city's Human Services Department, and it's not a long-term solution.

In May, the family began meeting with staff at Home Healthcare, Hospice and Community Services' Healthy Starts program, which supports families who are expecting a child and parents with children up to 19 years old. HCS has provided gas cards and paid for the family to camp in Winchester for two weeks so they would not have to stay in their car over the summer.

Shirley Kohler of Healthy Starts said the program's staff work primarily to provide emotional support and help navigate the mounds of paperwork that come with applying for housing, vouchers and assistance. Kohler and colleague Mary LaValley, who works closely with Dahl on a weekly basis, noted how well-informed Dahl is about connecting with local organizations like Keene Housing and Southwestern Community Services. However, even with information and help with paperwork at her disposal, Dahl has been unsuccessful in securing permanent housing.

The lack of affordable housing continues to be a huge problem in the region, with a tight housing market only getting tighter in the past three years, Meehan said. Keene Housing, which provides vouchers to help with rent payments on privately owned apartments and has its own affordable housing units, started a program in 2021 to incentivize landlords to accept the vouchers.

"Folks who are voucher holders are taking longer to find an apartment and are having trouble finding an apartment, which is why we are participating in this incentive program. It is designed to increase the success rate of those who have our vouchers," Meehan said.

"It's even more difficult to find housing for people with disabilities," he said.

The incentive program offers $1,000 to landlords who rent to a voucher holder for the first time, and $500 for landlords who are willing to do so again.

Meehan hopes the program will bring in and retain landlords willing to work with voucher holders; he said the process can seem mysterious and hard to navigate to landlords who have not participated before. Dahl noted some landlords said they would not rent to her because they didn't know how to use vouchers.

"I think when someone comes with a voucher and the landlord doesn't know the program there's this stigma attached that they can't afford housing, and that's a big problem," said Kohler, of HCS.

"I think once people take the risk they realize that a large portion of the rent will come from an agency ... it's less of a risk. It's a problem of education, so maybe if they had more education on the voucher programs they might be more likely to rent to these families."

Cheshire County's vacancy rate is at 0.6 percent for a two-bedroom apartment, equivalent to one vacant apartment for every 200 available rentals, J.B. Mack, principal planner at Southwest Region Planning Commission, told The Sentinel. He said a healthy vacancy rate is about 5 percent.

When the Dahls went to Hundred Nights, there wasn't space for families in the Lamson Street shelter nor on its bus that was purchased with CARES Act funding to increase space at the shelter. So Hundred Nights put them up at a local hotel from December through April, when the shelter's hotel assistance funding ended, said Executive Director Mindy Cambiar. She said Hundred Nights plans to have more space for families once its new Water Street facility opens in May.

Though Dahl and Searles have looked for housing in other southern New Hampshire cities, they would prefer to stay close to Keene, where Dahl's children, Belle and George, have "really excelled" at their elementary school, Dahl said. The family maintains hope as they move closer to the top of the housing list, although reaching the top doesn't guarantee they'll quickly find a place to live.

Dahl and Searles currently work part-time at the Wash House laundromat and Romy's on Marlboro Street. The couple began working at the laundromat over the summer, to have a place to park their car when they were sleeping in it, and somewhere to go with air-conditioning during the summer.

At one time, Searles delivered papers for The Sentinel, and Dahl worked at a fire department in high school and went through the fire academy. The family has plans for the future — including Dahl finishing a degree in emergency management that she started at Community College of Vermont, or pursuing fire sciences — once they find themselves back on stable ground.

"We just want our voices to be heard and people to actually be aware of the homeless crisis, which has been affecting families as well," Dahl said.

Hannah Schroeder is The Sentinel's visual journalist. She can be reached at 603-355-8560 or hschroeder@keenesentinel.com.