Day Harris takes a phone call at Catholic Charities in Lawrence while Namasté Manney, emergency assistant case manager with the agency, works at a computer. As an AmeriCorps member, Harris is serving at Catholic Charities for a year with a focus on housing.

Near the end of her day recently at Catholic Charities, Day Harris prepared to help a man seeking food from the agency’s pantry.

Her work at Catholic Charities focuses on housing, but Harris, like others at the Kentucky Street multipurpose social service agency, pulls regular shifts at the pantry and the phone help line.

A cheerful Harris was as grateful for her pantry tasks Wednesday as the man receiving food. Her work with Catholic Charities through AmeriCorps is a realization of a childhood goal, but with a bit of a twist.

“Growing up, I always wanted to join the Peace Corps,” she said. “When I learned about AmeriCorps, I thought it was a good alternative. It’s called the domestic Peace Corps. I can continue going to school and serve right here in the community.”

Harris is one of 19 local AmeriCorps members who started their year of service Aug. 1 and are now placed in host agencies in the community, said Linda Brandenburger, program manager for Lawrence-Douglas County United Way’s AmeriCorps program. The majority are students in the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare, but there also are students with backgrounds in law and medicine, she said. The 35 hours a week members give to AmeriCorps more than meet the 16-hour-a-week practicum required of social welfare graduate students.

For the year of service, members receive a stipend, health insurance and a $5,775 allowance they can apply to student loan debt or future tuition, she said.

President Bill Clinton created AmeriCorps in 1993 and it has had more than 1 million members fulfill one-year service obligations, Brandenburger said. The local program operates on yearly federal grants, including a 2016-2017 grant of $230,000 that provides for such things as the members’ yearly stipends, health insurance and her salary, she said.

What’s new for the local AmeriCorps is assigning members to host agencies with a housing focus, Brandenburger said. In addition to Harris at Catholic Charities, two of the members were placed at the Lawrence Community Shelter, and one each at the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority and the Lawrence Habitat for Humanity, she said.

It’s her program’s response to a critical need identified by past members, Brandenburger said.

“Members found one of the most difficult things the clients were struggling with was finding safe, affordable housing,” Brandenburger said. “We may very well expand that focus, because Lawrence is the second worst community in Kansas in terms of the availability of affordable housing. There is just not enough affordable housing here in town, and there’s a waiting list for what we have.”

Individuals or families are considered in a housing crisis if they spend more than 30 percent of their gross income on rent or home payments, Brandenburger said. In Lawrence, 34 percent of households spend more than that percentage, she said.

“Of that, almost 23 percent spend more than 50 percent on housing,” she said. “No wonder they are broke.”

AmeriCorps member Gallas Obeid, who is working at the Lawrence Housing Authority, said part of his job involved expanding affordable housing through convincing local landlords that tenants receiving Section 8 rent vouchers were not liabilities. He recently was able to successfully make that pitch to a landlord, an action that benefited a mother and her two children who were facing eviction after there was a foreclosure on the home they were renting.

“It took a while to find a landlord and convince them, but we were successful,” he said. “The woman and her children didn’t have to go to a homeless shelter.”?

Harris has had her successes, too.

“This last month we had a family with a lot of barriers to housing stability,” she said. “There was a history of violence. It wasn’t the family but it was in their neighborhood and it impacted them. We were able to get them in sustainable and safe housing.”

When talking about her program, Brandenburger repeatedly uses the words “stabilize” and “sustainable.” They are key words that dovetail with the United Way’s mission of self-sufficiency, health care access and education. They are also words AmeriCorps members on the housing team use when talking about goals with the clients they see.

“A lot of people have issues far more pressing than housing,” Harris said. “Housing is just the issue that brings them to the door. When you can’t pay your rent, that’s a big deal. After you get that month’s rent, how do we get them to stable conditions?”

It’s a discussion that starts at Catholic Charities with the in-take interviews she is a part of, Harris said. The team looks for solutions to a wide range of issues, from unemployment and money-management skills to transportation to mental health issues, which can hamper the sustainability goal. Clients are also told the help they receive will only be successful if they are active partners in working to achieve sustainability, she said.

“We make it clear, we are here to help, but in the end they have self-determination,” Harris said. “They are the experts in their situations. Giving that power back to them is really important.”

Harris and Obeid are among this year’s local AmeriCorps members recruited from the KU School of Social Welfare and both are finishing their master’s degrees during their service years and bring educational knowledge and past clinical social work experience to their assignments.

Nonetheless, Harris and Obeid said the training they received at the start of their service year was invaluable.

“Managing aggressive behavior, motivational interviewing — we’ve been trained in a lot,” Obeid said. “Motivational interview training was very helpful. It uses the strength approach to connect with clients. It taps into their strengths, what they want to change about their lives, to motivate them. If you’re not motivated to work toward a goal, you’re probably not going to be successful.”

The Housing Authority has programs available on such things as job interview coaching, resumé writing, financial management and counseling on meeting landlords’ expectations, Obeid said. The powerful motivation for the woman facing eviction was her children, he said.

“She’s now in our home ownership program,” he said. “She’s started a savings account and is working toward making a down payment on a house.”