Shirley Brackett knew Dec. 8 would be busy. It was the Monday after late rent day — the 6th of the month — when people would get notices from their landlord about unpaid rent.
Within a few hours of the Hampton Roads’ Housing Crisis Hotline opening, case managers had already answered nearly 150 phone calls. Calls poured in from people seeking rent assistance to avoid eviction.
“The answer is probably going to be, we don't have anything for you today in your situation,” Brackett said. “And it is far more humane to tell them that once, instead of having them call six, eight, 10, 20 places to hear that same answer over and over and over again.”
The Housing Crisis Hotline is run out of ForKids, a housing nonprofit with an office in Chesapeake. The hotline started in 2010 when local organizations and municipalities decided to create a call center to centralize available housing resources. Case managers collect callers’ information to connect them with programs for rent assistance, legal help and homelessness prevention.
The hotline received more than 77,000 calls total in 2024 and again in 2025 — an all-time high. Most of it has to do with the lack of affordable housing.
“All roads lead back to housing affordability,” said Thaler McCormick, CEO of ForKids. “Once you can't afford your house, everything else falls apart.”
McCormick and Brackett said they expect more people to call the hotline next year, as safety net programs like SNAP and Medicaid are rolled back.
‘Minute-to-minute’
After answering hotline calls for a decade, Brackett said everyone tells a different version of a similar story. Something unexpected happens that begins the steady march towards housing insecurity. An injury, sick child, car repair or medical bill can make already-tight budgets tighter.
“We say they’re living ‘check to check,’ but it’s really more ‘minute-to-minute,’” she said.
Once someone is late on rent, a $1,200 base rent can quickly become nearly $1,700 as late fees, court fees and attorney fees pile on, Brackett said. Then, the next month is due.
People with low or limited incomes are forced to make impossible choices between rent, utilities, food and medicine every month, McCormick said.
“The issue of housing is the great connector of many other issues in the community,” she said.
Building more affordable housing will take decades. In the meantime, there has to be a “smart, efficient safety net system” to help people grow their way out of poverty, rather than trapping them in it, McCormick said.
One policy-level change ForKids is advocating for is capping attorney fees for eviction cases, which are often inflated, said Jordan Crouthamel, senior program manager for the Virginia Eviction Reduction Pilot with ForKids.
Attorney fees for eviction cases average around $250 in Hampton Roads, but can be as high as $1,000, when they should be closer to $100 max, based on the amount of time and work involved, he said.
Tenants typically have to pay these attorney fees before their case is heard, Crouthamel said, adding it would make more sense if they had to pay these fees after a judge awards them in court.
Another legislative change is to give people 14 days — when they would get their next paycheck — to pay overdue rent, rather than the current five days, he said.
“Let's make this where they can have a fair shot at catching up,” Crouthamel said.
‘Hunkered down’
When federal changes to SNAP and Medicaid make it harder for people to put food on the table and increase the cost of health care, more people will struggle to make rent, McCormick said.
“Our prediction, to the extent I have one, is that next year is going to be pretty rough,” she said.
Already, there aren’t enough local programs and funding to help everyone in need, McCormick said.
“What we see is almost 90% of people calling the hotline, there is not an available resource in our community, and that is extraordinarily challenging for the people in our community and for the folks in our call center that are really wanting to help people,” she said.
Resources can be donations, rent assistance, education programs, shelter programs and food assistance, all of which address the complex nature of homelessness and housing insecurity, Brackett said.
“Every resource that we have just makes a difference,” she said.
Another concern is capacity at the hotline.
Current staff can handle up to 375 calls a day, McCormick said.
On a “quiet” Monday, the call center will receive about 400 phone calls, Brackett said. On Fridays, that’ll drop to up to 350.
But on the 6th of the month, they can receive upwards of 700 calls in a single day, Brackett said. They received 1,000 calls on a single day this past September — a record high.
Artificial intelligence could help share the load and keep wait times low, McCormick said. The hotline started using AI to help callers after hours this year, and plans to use it for high-demand days next year, McCormick said.
“We're being very experimental,” McCormick said. “We're trying to deploy everything we possibly can to be able to help families today, but really shore up for what is potentially going to hit next year.”
