Chattanooga woman's near-eviction shows housing struggle for those with mental health flareups

Boynton Terrace is pictured above in 2015.
Boynton Terrace is pictured above in 2015.

Chattanooga Housing Authority employees found a disturbing scene when they entered Shirley Rhodes' apartment in November 2018: Grease on the stove, bedbug droppings on the wall and the 75-year-old woman's feces on bunched-up towels and garbage bags on the bathroom floor and in the bathtub.

Just days later, the agency tasked with housing some of the city's poorest and most vulnerable citizens went to court with an eviction notice. Rhodes, a housing resident of nearly 20 years who had lapsed on her schizophrenia medicine, had caused about $3,000 in damages, officials estimated. She also violated her lease, they said, by failing to keep the apartment in a clean and safe condition, dispose of her waste or report pest infestations.

These evictions aren't uncommon in the city's roughly 2,400 public housing units, some of which need serious renovations that CHA can't easily or quickly provide on its shoestring federal budget. Between April 1, 2018, and April 1, 2019, Hamilton County General Sessions Court records show, one housing authority attorney filed 521 such eviction cases against residents.

The consequences, however, are dire and can put someone on the path to homelessness. Although the housing authority and the courts work to avoid evicting people where they can, an eviction bans someone for five years from living in other housing authority properties or participating in the Section 8 voucher program, which CHA also administers.

For Rhodes, who has paranoid schizophrenia, the stakes were even higher: Her family and legal advocates estimated she'd been off her medicine for eight months, and they scrambled to find another place for her to live and be treated. Ultimately, Rhodes was lucky. She won her case and got to stay in her room at Boynton Terrace.

But her advocates say fighting the court case was easy compared to finding Rhodes a stable housing plan for which she qualified, something that social service and medical experts say is a commonplace concern for families who have a relative with few resources, a disability or a serious mental health problem.

"It's a common issue," said Criss Grant, director of the Southeast Area Agency on Aging and Disability. "If you don't have funds to pay for a group home, what do you do? And if there's no family that's willing to assist, that's a challenge, too. Without somebody there helping to navigate, it's a difficult situation."

'She doesn't meet the criteria'

For most of her life, Rhodes, a Chattanooga native, was fine.

She worked at Pilgrim's Pride, never married or had children and avoided trouble with the law. But in her early 50s, a series of concerning episodes, including nearly being hit by a forklift at work, led to a doctor diagnosing her with paranoid schizophrenia.

Rhodes kept the disease in check with specific medication. Since 2003, she had lived in Boynton Terrace, a 250-unit public housing tower for residents ages 55 and up, without issue, her family said.

But in March 2018, she began to withdraw and stopped going to the grocery store, church and speaking with family on a regular basis. Gloria Jones, 67, reasoned that her sister wasn't feeling well simply because of old age.

"That's what she was always telling me," Jones said in a recent interview.

Her seclusion turned out to be far more serious: Rhodes had stopped taking her medication, terrified that it was going to kill her after seeing a commercial about it on TV. Rhodes' delusion grew so severe that when her toilet handle broke, she started using the restroom on the floor, barricading her door and duct-taping her blinds shut.

After she refused to open her door two times for housing authority employees, Rhodes emerged on Nov. 16, 2018, speaking in third person. Her family immediately sought care at crisis walk-in centers, Erlanger hospital, Helen Ross McNabb and other mental health co-ops, group and nursing homes.

They were able to get her into Parkridge Valley, an adult behavioral health facility, from Dec. 17 to mid-February to stabilize. But what Rhodes' advocates found everywhere else was a mish-mash of red tape and qualifications that Rhodes didn't meet.

"We applied for a nursing home, but she doesn't meet the criteria because she's not physically diminished enough," said Malarie Marsh, a paralegal who worked on the case. "So we applied for group home, but she didn't meet the income requirements because any private group home is $1,000 a month and she gets $653 a month in disability. To qualify for Helen Ross McNabb or a mental health co-op group home, you need to have TennCare, which Shirley doesn't have because she never recertified it, and her family didn't know she did that."

Housing complications

Then there was the court case. After CHA filed for eviction on Nov. 28, attorneys representing Rhodes made multiple offers.

Rhodes could pay extra rent each month to offset the $3,000 of damages, they said. They also filed documents to make Jones her sister's legal guardian and promised she would visit Rhodes once a day.

None of it took.

Housing authority attorneys were adamant that Rhodes leave the property by March 1, according to a proposed order from late January.

That order, though, would've also made Rhodes ineligible to live in any other public housing and participate in the Section 8 voucher program for five years. Rhodes would also have to pay any outstanding maintenance fees, utility charges, damage charges and other charges before she could become eligible again.

They had other concerns, too: CHA employees were telling Boynton residents they would be relocated starting in late March while the complex underwent renovations. But during conversations outside the courtroom, housing authority attorneys suggested that Rhodes was already evicted, even though the case was pending and no judgment had been entered against her, her attorneys said.

Starting in January, Rhodes and her family said they also noticed another strange detail. Records showed the housing authority had begun putting Rhodes' $187 in rent toward "legal charges," as though Rhodes had already lost and needed to pay the housing authority for attorney's fees.

"It's a stretch to say, 'you have to pay us before we win,'" said Chattanooga attorney Chad Wilson, who helped represent Rhodes. "If that were the case in her contract, I'd call that unconscionable."

They asked for a hearing and went before Hamilton County General Sessions Court Judge Lila Statom, who ultimately ruled in their favor on March 27 after they argued that Rhodes never intentionally damaged the room and that her behavior was instead the result of a mental health break.

Ijeoma Ike, CHA's attorney, could not be reached for comment. Her voicemail said she will be out of town until Tuesday and directed callers to an assistant, who did not return a call for comment.

Housing Authority Executive Director Betsy McCright said she could not comment on Rhodes' individual case. The authority has to balance resident safety and mental health and elder care with a tight budget. In recent years, McCright said, the housing authority has provided on-site caseworkers five days a week at Boynton Terrace and has set up an on-site clinic in partnership with CHI Memorial Hospital specifically for older tenants at Boynton, Gateway and Dogwood apartments.

Homeless plan

Rhodes' family and advocates worry that if she hadn't won the case, she would've ended up chronically homeless. That's a population the city is hoping to help with a new plan.

At the moment, Chattanooga City Council members are considering which parts of Mayor Andy Berke's $10 million homeless plan they want to fund in the 2019-2020 budget.

Among other things, the money would go toward constructing and operating a shelter that has few barriers for entry. From there, people would be paired up with one of 10-15 "navigators" who will work directly with a person on finding housing and then a social worker who will follow up regularly to ensure a person's needs are being met.

The primary issue, said Tyler Yount, director of special projects in Berke's office, is there's not enough beds. About 2,000 people use homeless-related services a year, and going off 2017 data, there's roughly 217 people who are going unsheltered any given night, Yount said.

Currently, the homeless can sleep on a mat at The Community Kitchen during cold-weather months. There's also Chattanooga Rescue Mission on Holtzclaw Avenue, which is mission focused and is not handicap accessible.

But at the mission, "people are required to go to a church service," Yount said. "They can get banned if they don't meet the requirements and aren't able to come back. Because of the barriers to entry, a lot of people don't end up going."

Rhodes' team say she was lucky. But they look at her case and wonder how many others in similar situations slip entirely through the cracks.

"How many people are getting set out like Rhodes almost was?" Marsh asked.

Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at zpeterson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow him on Twitter @zackpeterson918.

Upcoming Events