It's a warm summer day in Lewiston, and the air conditioner is on full blast in the community room of Cindy Neff's apartment building downtown.
Having a place to stay to escape the heat is a relief after Neff, 57, spent four years living outside.
"I was getting tired and worn down, and it was taking a toll on me. It really was taking a toll on my body, physically, mentally," she said.
Neff had been living in an apartment in Lewiston, and though she was making regular payments, she had outstanding back rent and was just short. She received an eviction notice and didn't know she might have options to fight it.
And so a few days before Christmas, Neff gave up her two cats and left her apartment.
"And when I had to do that I felt like my world ended right there," she said.
She began living outside, mostly in the Auburn area. Every day, she said, was a fight.
"You always had to think, think, think," Neff said. "And you had to know what your next move was."
As housing costs have skyrocketed over the past five years, homelessness has become a much more visible challenge for some communities in Maine. People are staying unhoused for longer. And programs that are meant to help people navigate the rental market and secure permanent housing are facing more obstacles and are taking longer.
Cindy Neff said the shelters in the Lewiston-Auburn area opened late at night and were often full or only open part of the year. She spent most of her days at the Auburn library.
"They were my home for four years," she said. "Every morning I'd walk in there and they'd say, 'Morning Cindy,' 'Good morning.' Oh yeah, they got to know me."
Two years ago while walking across the street Neff was hit by a truck and severely injured.
She was hospitalized in an induced coma and spent about a month in intensive care. Despite her condition, Neff said in a way, she found some comfort in the hospital.
"I was off the streets. I had something to eat. I could wash up if I wanted to," she said.
Neff said she had to relearn how to walk, how to sit up, how to feed herself. It was scary, she said, to think about leaving the hospital.
"Here I had been in a bubble for quite some time, and now I had to be back out on the streets because I'm getting better," Neff said.
After leaving the hospital, Neff found a sober living home to continue her recovery, but she said it wasn't a good fit and she went back to living outside.
Over the years, Neff said she had occasionally connected with a caseworker and had filled out paperwork to get on waiting lists for housing. But Neff said she never heard back about any opportunities.
The last fall, Neff was connected with the nonprofit service provider Preble Street, which suggested a rapid rehousing program.
The program offers housing navigation services and financial support, with the goal of finding permanent housing quickly, ideally within two or three months. Preble Street had recently expanded its rapid rehousing services into Lewiston.
"Our biggest thing with our program is we just require our clients to engage," said caseworker Kai Cardinal. "That sounds so minimal, and it's not."
It was clear, Cardinal said, that Neff was engaged — and desperately wanted a place of her own.
The first step was helping Neff apply for new copies of her birth certificate, Social Security card and state ID, which had all been lost or stolen multiple times while Neff had been unhoused.
Then, Cardinal and Neff began looking for apartments that she could afford on Supplemental Security Income. At one point, Neff qualified for an apartment but needed a doctor's note to confirm a disability. The form wasn't properly filled out, and Neff lost the apartment.
These situations happen all the time, Cardinal said.
"At the very least, people get swept under the rug in these systems or forgotten about," they said. "And I think it's easy for folks to just write them off."
The experience was frustrating, Neff said, but: "I was raised to, if you hit a brick wall, find a way to beat it down and move on. There's always something out there waiting for you."
Eventually, Cardinal said they heard from a property manager that had worked with Preble Street before. The group had a new apartment building in Lewiston opening up, with units that Cindy could afford.
She applied, was accepted and moved in this past February.
Living inside with her own bed and shower, Neff said, has taken some getting used to.
"I really forgot what a bed felt like," she said. "There's a lot of things I forgot about it, when it came to an apartment. I learned how to do a lot of things over again."
Under the program, Cardinal will work with Neff for at least a year to make sure she's comfortable paying her rent, and tackle other life goals. She said improving her health is the biggest priority and is applying for a full-time medical caseworker.
Shortly after moving in to her new apartment, Neff adopted a new cat, a gray tabby named Rudy.
"I love him to death," she said. "He's my little world. He's my little peanut. That's my nickname for him, my little peanut."
And she also has another goal in mind — a vacation, ideally somewhere warm. Neff has her eyes on Miami.
For more on how rapid rehousing programs are working across Maine, reporter Nicole Ogrysko spoke with All Things Considered host Ari Snider.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Snider: So we just heard Cindy Neff's story, who, as you reported, eventually did find an apartment through a rapid rehousing program. So does rapid rehousing live up to its name?
Ogrysko: The programs vary. Some shelters offer "rapid rehousing" services that really amount to housing navigation, essentially helping folks look for an apartment and guide them through the complex world of housing vouchers, subsidized units, etc.
Other programs, like the one that Cindy used through Preble Street, offer financial assistance too. So in Cindy's case, the program helped her pay for a new state ID and birth certificate. The programs can also pay for a security deposit to secure an apartment, or help someone buy furniture once they have a place to live. Some participants have received financial assistance to help pay for courses or training that they need for employment.
Unfortunately in recent years, the "rapid" part of rapid rehousing has become a bit of misnomer. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the gold standard for finding permanent housing for someone enrolled in a rapid rehousing program is two to three months.
But it's taking much longer. It took Cindy about four months to get into an apartment. And across the state, officials with Maine Housing say on average, it took anywhere from four to six months for clients to find permanent housing through a rapid rehousing program. The lease-up time has fluctuated slightly over the last five years, but overall has trending upward. Providers that I spoke to said they believe without these services, it would actually take even longer for someone to find permanent housing because navigating the rental market is so complicated these days.
Can you say more about that?
So it's a confluence of different things. First, there's a limited supply of housing, particularly income-restricted housing that's subsidized in some way or that allows for vouchers.
Then, there's the lack of vouchers themselves. The vouchers, which are paid by the federal government and then managed by local housing authorities around the state, are not going as far as they used to as rents have gone up. And as a result, some housing authorities have gone over budget in issuing vouchers, and some local authorities were forced to temporarily stop issuing the vouchers altogether.
And then even if you have a voucher, there might not be a landlord willing to take it.
And then of course, what about the cost of rent, which is affecting everybody?
So providers say that's the biggest reason. People simply can't afford the housing that is available.
The goal of this program is for people successfully stay housed, and not have them return to homelessness later on.
Providers that I spoke to said oftentimes, their caseworkers will find a market rate apartment for their client, but the rent is just too high — sometimes half or more of a person's income. And that's not a realistic option for the client to keep paying in a year or two. So they'll wait, in the hope that a subsidized apartment that they can afford might eventually become available.
And then finally, there's bureaucratic obstacles. And these are not necessarily new, but when you're working in such a tight rental market and competing with others for, say, the one available apartment that's affordable, there's no room for mistakes or missed documents.
In Cindy Neff's case, she initially found an apartment that she qualified for, but she needed a doctor to fill out some paperwork in just the right way. And when it wasn't, she lost the apartment and then went back to square one.
