Since its launch in Summit County three years ago, Lavender Landing has helped about 100 queer, homeless young people find housing. The MICAH Project has helped even more HIV-positive residents get off the streets.
But a decision by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to eliminate funding for both programs means each will shut down in the coming weeks. The MICAH Project will cease at the end of the month, while Lavender Landing will end in October.
“How I’m feeling is devastated, then anxious,” said Megan LaConte, the director of operations for Community AIDS Network/Akron Pride Initiative, known as CANAPI, which runs both programs. “I think of clients we could be helping in the future that we aren’t able to. I think of the gaps that are going to occur.”
For residents, the effects are disquieting. One, an 18-year-old bisexual man who said he goes by the nickname Blu Hellfox, grew up in foster care then was homeless for a few weeks this spring after he and the older brother he was living with were evicted.
Hellfox has been in Lavender Landing’s transitional housing program since May and said it’s the first place he’s felt like he can be himself. Before, he was worried about being bullied.
“I felt safe here, safer than I ever have,” he said. “Before this, I was scared to tell people who I am and what I like.”
The possibility of becoming homeless again, if Lavender Landing closes, is daunting.
“I probably wouldn’t take it very well mentally,” Hellfox said. “Not knowing what comes next — it scares me, to be honest.”
The MICAH Project
CANAPI will continue to provide HIV testing and shelter through Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS, or HOPWA, grants, but LaConte said the $331,000 blow, which cuts both The MICAH Project and Lavender Landing entirely, will have a big impact.
The MICAH project, which serves about 25 people a year and started in 2016, is a rapid rehousing program for homeless individuals who are HIV positive. Through the $121,000 program, CANAPI is able to pay security deposits to landlords to help get people into housing as well as provide rental assistance for up to a year.
There are currently five people being served by the program. All five will be able to transfer to the HOPWA program, but because that program doesn’t provide assistance for paying security deposits, it limits who can take advantage of the service.
The people who are eligible for the MICAH Project live in tents, vehicles, abandoned houses or homeless shelters, LaConte said, and wouldn’t have the average of $800 they need for a security deposit to get them into secure housing.
“There isn’t a lot of security deposit assistance,” she said.
Additionally, she said, transferring the five people in the MICAH Project program to HOPWA means five fewer people who can be served through that grant. CANAPI has the capacity to house 50 people through HOPWA; with the funding loss, 45 will be in the program.
And while HUD didn’t cut HOPWA funding, LaConte said she fears that could be next, “just because everything is so uncertain right now.”
Lavender Landing
Lavender Landing was started in 2022 to help LGBTQ+ people between the ages of 18 and 29 who are similarly unhoused, LaConte said. She said that group is twice as likely as the general population to live in a place that’s not meant for human habitation.
With its $210,000 budget, Lavender Landing rents a four-bedroom transitional house that people like Hellfox can stay in for up to a year. It also provides up to a year of rental assistance for other program participants. In both the Lavender Landing and MICAH Project rental assistance programs, participants don’t pay more than 30% of their income. CANAPI picks up the rest.
Now, there are four people living in the transitional house in Akron and eight whom CANAPI is providing rental assistance to, LaConte said. Although the program’s funding doesn’t run out until October, LaConte said she doesn’t plan to accept any new referrals.
Hellfox, who was in foster care from age eight until 18, said he’s currently studying for his GED — he completed the third of four tests Wednesday. He said since he first entered the program in May, it took him several weeks to feel comfortable opening up to the other Lavender Landing residents, but now that he has, “I like it a lot.”
“I opened up more than I ever have before,” he said. “Now that it’s getting shut down, I fear that safety’s going to go away, too.”
Those who have gone through Lavender Landing were able to use the program to help stabilize their lives, LaConte said, graduating from school, getting jobs and moving into their own apartments. She said there are no similar programs in Summit County.
“They’re 18, 19 years old and they’re kicked out of their parents’ house because of who they are,” LaConte said. “They sleep in their car or in the woods somewhere. It’s dangerous. These are really young people.”
Additionally, LaConte said, those circumstances make it difficult to show up at school on time, or to apply for a job. The transitional housing makes that possible.
“That happens all the time,” she said of the stabilizing effect of housing. “It’s their success, and we’re grateful to be part of it.”
Fundraising to continue Lavender Landing
CANAPI is putting out a fundraising call, and with $75,000 can try to keep part of the Lavender Landing program together, LaConte said. Without that, the organization will have to let the rental house, and the transitional housing program, go.
As of Wednesday afternoon, there had been no new donations. CANAPI got word that the programs would be eliminated Aug. 8, and it was first reported Wednesday by the Akron Beacon Journal.
LaConte said she plans to find places for everyone to go, and Hellfox said he was told CANAPI will try to place everyone. But he worries about what will happen if it can’t be done.
“If this place gets shut down, there’s a possibility I could be homeless again,” he said. “I’ll be right back where I started. … I like stability. I like a stable situation.”
The cut grants represent about a quarter of CANAPI’s budget. The organization, which is currently searching for an executive director, will not fill two positions — a case manager and a resident coordinator — to save money available from the remaining grants. Instead, the remaining staff of seven will absorb that work.
LaConte said that, normally, CANAPI would get a letter from HUD in the spring affirming that the money was going to be renewed. She said it did not come this year, but she chalked it up to the chaos in the federal government as Donald Trump’s administration sought to cut jobs and spending.
It’s particularly difficult to navigate the funding loss at the same time that Akron is celebrating Pride this weekend, LaConte said. In a statement, CANAPI Board President Julie Beckert called the defunding “a clear targeted attack against the LGBTQ+ community,” particularly youth.
“We’re living in a hostile time to queer people, particularly queer youth,” LaConte said. “We have to remember that Pride began as a protest, and really a riot. I’m not suggesting we riot, but in some ways, we need to get back to our roots and advocate for members of our community who are most at risk.”