Connecting the dots from homelessness to affordable housing: Burlington groups hope to resolve housing crisis

By Barb Arland-Fye
For The Catholic Messenger

(This is part of a series.)

BURLINGTON — A cascade of challenges led a young mom with two preschool-age boys to seek shelter and support at the Burlington Area Homeless Shelter. Her employer had cut back her hours because she was missing work due to unreliable child care. With less income, she struggled to keep an apartment.

This mom, equipped with guidance and resources from the shelter, is now gainfully employed and living in her own apartment with her sons, said Jennifer Lehman, executive director of the Burlington Area Homeless Shelter. This family’s story is not unique. Obtaining and maintaining affordable housing remains a challenge for a growing number of individuals and families in southeast Iowa and beyond, particularly those with low incomes. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) reports that Iowa has a shortage of 58,674 “rental homes affordable and available for extremely low-income renters,” who represent 25% of renter households.

“Burlington is an interesting community. It is estimated that we have 300 homeless in our community, which per capita is a large number,” said Megan Brincks, who leads the Burlington Homelessness Taskforce and serves as executive director of United Way of Southeast Iowa. The taskforce formed two-and-a-half years ago to address the affordable housing crisis in Burlington.

Cheryl Bloom, a housing specialist with Community Action of Southeast Iowa — serving Des Moines, Henry, Lee and Louisa counties — said she receives 8 to 10 calls a day from people seeking help to pay their rent to avoid eviction. A growing number of them are families, said Bloom, who handles coordinated entry for the four counties, along with the Muscatine Center for Social Action. Coordinated entry connects people who are homeless or facing homelessness with housing and services. “There are approximately 500 names of people who have called into coordinated entry, fearful that they will be evicted in the next 30 days,” Bloom said.

For those who do become homeless, options are limited in Burlington (county seat of Des Moines County) and the neighboring counties of Henry, Lee and Louisa. Burlington Area Homeless Shelter accommodates up to 9 people and Transitions DMC, Inc., also in Burlington, can accommodate 13 people in its homeless shelter. One homeless shelter operates in Fort Madison (the Catholic Worker Movement’s Emma Cornelis Hospitality House), and one in Washington (the Lighthouse Center).

Over the past four years, Transitions DMC has helped 54 families with children, said Joe Myers, the nonprofit’s president and CEO. “Families are living paycheck to paycheck … they’re losing their apartments,” added Myers, a member of Divine Mercy Parish based in Burlington, which helps support the shelter.

Transitions DMC is a low-barrier shelter, which means it accepts all who seek shelter (depending on availability) unless they are sex offenders or have violated the shelter’s rules during previous stays, Myers said.

Both of the Burlington homeless shelters provide programming aimed at strengthening and reinforcing residents’ ability to obtain and maintain affordable housing. The mom with preschool-age boys, for example, met weekly with Burlington Area Homeless Shelter staff for guidance and to help search for reliable child care, a better-paying job and a more affordable apartment.

The family lived at the shelter for about three months, leaving earlier this month, Lehman said. “It’s a combination of different factors that causes someone to be unsheltered,” she added. “What we’re trying to do is help them to establish good habits, such as budgeting, and how to sustain those skills.” The shelter hosted 30 families in 2025, many of them stay for as long as three months to make the successful transition to stable, affordable housing.

Myers, whose background is developing systematic processes and standard operating procedures in the automotive industry, developed a four-week program for participants at Transitions DMC. “We average about an 86% success rate,” he said. “They go into their own place or a family situation or apartment-sharing arrangement or assisted living. Some go into subsidized housing or long-term care.”

Oftentimes, both shelters are full when Bloom, the housing specialist, calls with a request for shelter, particularly for a large family. Her only alternative is to refer people to shelters outside of their communities, as far away as Humility Homes and Services and the Salvation Army in Davenport. “What’s hard to take is when someone calls and they’re crying because they’ve been evicted and ask where they can go.”

Transitions DMC hopes to respond to that shortage by expanding its shelter to 40 beds and creating a separate homeless shelter for children who are unaccompanied. Myers said people do not realize how many kids are on their own, staying temporarily in homes of people other than their immediate family. “These children are at risk of being trafficked and/or abused,” he said. “We need to do something to protect our most valuable assets — our children.” Both projects will require fundraising. Myers estimate a cost of $1.8 million for the children’s shelter and around $400,000 to expand the existing shelter, which serves individuals and families with children.

Meanwhile, the Burl­ing­ton Homelessness Task­force is moving forward, following listening sessions in its first year. “We had to know what homelessness looks like in Burlington and how agencies were interacting,” said Brincks, who with other taskforce members completed a five-month course with the Iowa Supported Housing Institute last July. The Iowa Finance Authority chose Burlington as one of seven communities from among 11 that applied for the training, she added.

“We’re very much a grassroots team because we’ve never done this before,” Brincks said. “It’s started a lot of good conversations in our community. It’s sparked conversations with existing landlords about how to improve tenant-landlord relationships. At the end of the day, landlords want tenants and tenants want a home,” said Brincks, who is a landlord. “How can we improve the tenant-landlord relationship to keep more people housed?”

The taskforce is working on acquiring property for affordable housing. “We have iterations of what (that might look like),” she said. Ideas include an apartment complex or a combination of an apartment complex and single-family properties at scattered locations. Brincks envisions supportive housing in which people live in their own home in the middle of a neighborhood — a mixture of market-rate and low-income housing to “break down the stigma.”

Lehman, Myers and Bloom all appreciate the efforts of the Burlington Homelessness Taskforce, of which Lehman is a member. The work of the taskforce “is something that links to the homelessness situation — that’s affordable housing,” Myers said.

(Editor’s Note: Watch for future stories on the affordable housing and homelessness issue in the Diocese of Davenport.)