Metro HRA provides critical help with housing
Section 8 voucher ‘gave me a little breathing room’
When Alethea Gayden counsels women who are struggling with addiction and trying to create new lives for themselves, she knows the territory. She was there once, too.
Gayden has journeyed from drug addiction, little education, an abusive relationship and complete exhaustion to completion of her A.S. in chemical dependency counseling at Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC) and enrollment at Metro State University for a B.S.W. (social work). She raised three sons, mostly on her own. She also helped a niece through high school.
After working, raising three children and graduating from college, Alethea Gayden is able to turn in her Section 8 rent assistance voucher so that someone else can use it.
“I believe that God carried me through that whole experience for the purpose of what I am doing now,” Gayden said in her office at Resource, a Minneapolis nonprofit agency that provides employment, training, mental health and chemical health services. “My experience is what gives me such a good rapport with my clients.”
Gayden knows and values what a helping hand can mean. When she moved to Minnesota in 1997 with her three sons in tow, she landed at a shelter run by People Serving People. A woman named Mary Overton took Gayden under her wing, found her transitional housing, and helped her apply for the federal Section 8 housing voucher waiting list.
After more than two years, she learned that a voucher was available for her through Metro HRA, and she moved into an apartment in Brooklyn Park. Gayden paid 30% of her income towards the rent, and Metro HRA paid the rest.
Meanwhile, she worked as a nursing assistant at Hennepin County Medical Center. Then an injury led to back surgery and more than a year of being off her feet. During that time, she started to think about going to school so she could get a better-paying job. She initially considered nursing, but then heard about the chemical dependency counseling program at MCTC.
She continued to work while she went to school. One summer, when she wasn’t taking classes, she got a letter from the school. She was sure it was a bill saying she owed more money. When she opened it up, she learned that she was on the Dean’s List.
“I was so emotional the tears just rolled down my face,” Gayden said. She made the list three times while in school.
An internship at Resource in 2007 led to a full-time job there this year. She works both in primary treatment and relapse prevention. “I try to meet each person where they’re at,” she said. “I roll with their resistance and try to give them a different perspective.”
In May, she graduated from MCTC about the same time her twin sons graduated from high school. This fall, with all her children out on their own, Gayden will move into a new apartment in St. Paul – no longer needing a Section 8 voucher – and she will pay the entire rent herself.
“The Section 8 program helped me so much,” Gayden said. “I couldn’t have raised my kids and made it through school with the jobs I’ve had, given I had no education. Metro HRA enabled me not to be totally stressed – it gave me a little breathing room.”
“For the working poor, people with restricted incomes and people working to become self-sufficient, Section 8 can make the difference between destitution and success,” said Metropolitan Council Chair Peter Bell. “The government’s partnership with the private rental market is a good investment of public resources.”