Helping Our Neighbors

While Montgomery County has a reputation for affluence, more than 76,100 residents of our county live on incomes below the Federal Poverty Line. It costs about $135,500 a year for a family with two working parents and two children to afford necessities without subsidies.  (Source: Glasmeier, Amy K. Living Wage Calculator. 2024. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/24031.) That covers just the basics: no birthday presents, no occasional treat at a fast food restaurant, and no financial cushion to cover things like your car needing a new tire.

Helping these neighbors is the mission of Interfaith Works (IW), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that serves people experiencing poverty and homelessness through emergency shelter, supportive housing, essential needs, and employment programs. IW serves 35,000 residents of Montgomery County every year. There are concerning trends in our community. An annual snapshot of people experiencing homelessness conducted in 2024 found a significant increase in homelessness from 2023 to 2024. There was a 28% increase, from 894 to 1,144 people. To put this in the state context, Montgomery County accounts for nearly 20% of the people who are experiencing homelessness in Maryland.

Those doing the survey also reported seeing more people experiencing homelessness in communities that are atypical, including Potomac and North Bethesda.

 WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?  
There are numerous factors contributing to this increase, including:  

• the lack of affordable housing in the Montgomery County;  
• continually increasing rents;  
• inflation;  
• denial of housing applications due to criminal or credit history;  
• source-of-income discrimination by landlords;  
• increased evictions;  
• dwindling eligibility for federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program funds; and  
• the significant inflow of unhoused individuals into the County from other jurisdictions. 

Homelessness is something that happens for a wide array of reasons. These include:

• loss of job;
• loss of spouse;
• the need to flee an abusive spouse or partner;
• sudden illness;
• chronic illness or disability that limits the person’s ability to hold down a job;
• traumatic experiences with behavioral health impacts;
• overwhelming health care debt;
• involvement in the legal/criminal justice system that limits ability to find employment and/or housing;
• rents that are outpacing wages;
• and a rental system that that doesn’t protect renters adequately, leaving them vulnerable to sudden evictions with limited due process.  

Because of the high cost of living in Montgomery County, people are getting by on very thin margins. One client, a bus driver, missed a couple days of work simply because his normal shift fell on two holidays, so he went unpaid. As a result, he was unable to make rent that month.
 
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
Interfaith Works is among several service providers in Montgomery County that are committed to making the experience of homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring. A first step can be providing emergency shelter to stabilize an individual’s situation and then working with them to pursue their personal goals and move toward more permanent housing. Montgomery County’s Rapid Rehousing Program, a successful effort in which IW participates, seeks to move people out of the shelter environment as soon as they are able and into stable housing options.   

Another effective strategy is providing prevention programs, so individuals and families never experience homelessness or instability in the first place. IW has two such programs. IW Connections provides our neighbors with emergency financial assistance to help them pay back rent, potentially avoiding eviction, and pay overdue utility bills so they do not suffer in the cold or heat.

The IW Vocational Services Program (VSP) also provides a crucial prevention lifeline, helping people become job-ready as well as seek and land jobs. In addition to providing resume and interviewing assistance, VSP’s Paid Training Program helps people find training and pays the registration costs as well as a stipend for every hour they are in training so they don’t lose income. With this support, the completion rate for training programs shot up to over 90%.  Those placed in jobs last year earned an average hourly wage of $18.53.

And beyond helping put people back to work, VSP is a critical economic engine for our community. Over the past five years, VSP clients – Montgomery County residents – collectively earned annual starting salaries totaling $12.5 million. That is money flowing back into our economy through taxes and buying power.

What can you do? Consider becoming a partner with Interfaith Works. There are many opportunities to be part of the solution by volunteering and supporting this important work through in-kind donations and if you would like to learn more about opportunities at Interfaith Works, please contact Julian Peters at [email protected].

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