The Back@Home program is a collaboration between the state Department of Health and Human Services and local service providers, aimed at getting those with severe needs into housing, especially those in the state's more rural areas. The program relied on Covid relief funding, which ran out sooner than expected, leaving the program — and those it served — scrambling.
When the Back@Home program cancelled rental assistance for tenants with just a month’s notice to pay by themselves, Chrystal Joy Gainey-Kively, a mother of two, had nowhere to turn.
She’d been with the program for over a year after being referred to it by a domestic violence shelter. She stayed in one rental for a year before the landlord turned her away (wary, she says, about the program inspecting the property and finding black mold).
In December, she managed to rent a trailer in her home of Edenton, NC, through the program. The relatively small 3-bedroom trailer rents for more than it’s worth, she says, but that’s because Chowan County has very few rentals available.
“There's no rentals around here, and there may be five in this county, at this current moment and they’re over $2,000,” she said.
Her rent for the trailer is $1670, but she works part-time and earns only around $250-$300 per paycheck. When the Back@Home program told her that her assistance would run out by March, she found a second job substituting, but even then she said, “I have two kids. I'm taking that into consideration, but there's nothing around here I could afford at all.”
Back in late January, Chrystal found out she’d lose funding. She didn’t realize her landlord was informed the very same day: January 29. Less than a week later, her landlord showed up at her work, a notice to vacate in hand. Chrystal was told she and her kids had to be out by March 5.
“I was so stressed. I didn't know what to tell my kids," she said.
Chrystal filed a grievance with the state about it: she sent it to everyone she had an email for related to the program. She requested to be given a 90-day notice period or to be transferred to another similar program. That request was denied. In an email obtained by WHQR, Back@Home administrator Kim Crawford drafted this email, referring to Chrystal by her client number:
“We understand your request for an emergency extension or continuation of assistance pending this grievance. At this time, Back@Home is unable to extend financial assistance beyond February 28, 2026, due to program funding limitations and the required implementation of program time limits.”
Chrystal says she was devastated. She didn’t know what to tell her kids. But a few weeks later, the funding came back, though she had no idea why.
The extension was thanks to the intervention of the North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness (NCCEH). They notified the governor’s office, which stepped in with bridge funding for tenants through Back@Home.
Chrystal is now housed through June, though she has to pay $180 per month to Trillium, which oversees her participation in the program. According to texts reviewed by WHQR, Trillium caseworker Latoya Smith suggested in February that Chrystal apply for Section 8 housing. She did.
“Ever since I applied, I have been number 43 on the list,” Chrystal said.
Section 8 notoriously takes years to get through its waiting lists: an average of 2-3 years for a family, according to the Center for Budget Priorities, a left-leaning research and policy organization. Back when Chrystal started in Back@Home, she did have that time. But Trillium didn’t suggest she apply at the start of her participation, and it is now likely too late if she hopes to get a new place by the end of June.
Now she’s looking down the barrel of a few months of housing with a big question mark on July 1: she knows her landlord will kick her out as soon as she’s off the program. “She knows I can’t pay,” Chrystal said, adding that Trillium hasn’t offered any other services.
Asked about the timing of presenting clients like Chrystal with alternative housing options, DHHS said they could not comment on specific cases.
But spokesperson Summer Tonizzo said that, in general, "From the time households enter RRH [rapid rehousing], services are designed to be client directed and client centered, meaning providers work in partnership with households each month to document income stabilization, housing goals, and connections to longer-term resources. As the program began implementing a planned scale-down tied to the expiration of COVID-ERA funding, those transition efforts were intentionally intensified and more formally structured to support households as financial assistance phases down. This includes connections to Housing Choice Vouchers programs [a.k.a. Section 8], public housing, shared housing options, and other local resources."
It's worth noting that while there was always a plan to sunset Back@Home in 2026, an unexpected financial shortfall led to considerable confusion for service providers and clients. It also seems like the "intensified" transition efforts were fairly limited, at least in Chrystal's case. She says the caseworker has done little other than help her apply for Section 8. That left her with just a few months to figure things out.
And, in the midst of that stress, on Monday, March 30, Chrystal’s power was shut off.
Utility payments
Under the Back@Home program, a number of indigent clients received utility payment assistance. In emails obtained by WHQR via a public records request, the process appears to be that tenants send a bill to their service provider. It’s then passed to DHHS, and DHHS provides the funding to pay the bill directly, without tenants ever touching the money themselves.
To Chrystal, it was a black box. She said that at her previous residence of nearly a year, she’d always emailed her bills to A’Keisha Wells at the Housing Collaborative, the Charlotte-based non-profit that handled the financial components of her Back@Home support. Chrystal said at her last place, Wells generally didn’t respond to her emails, but it didn't seem necessary — the power had simply stayed on.
“I’ve always sent my utility bill to her, and I normally would never hear anything back,” she said. She sent her first bill for the new place to Wells on February 24, with a few months of utilities due on it.
But this time, Wells didn’t pay for it. In an email to Chrystal on March 31, after power had been disconnected to the trailer, Wells wrote that utility assistance “began in February not December.”
That was the first time Chrystal had heard about any change to the program, which had previously paid her utility bills without apparent issue. She was completely in the dark. And she felt alone, she said — until she read the article about Back@Home from WHQR, she didn’t know anyone else experienced her problems with the program.
As for her kids, Chrystal says she tries to shelter them from the instability she’s facing.
“But they do know. I mean, right now the power is not on,” she said. “I’m sending them to their grandparents’ house, and they say ‘well, Mommy, why don't you come here? Are you okay?’ I'm like, ‘I'm fine.’”
But financially, it was not fine. Chrystal started frantically emailing Wells, asking for help. She pointed out that she’d emailed her bill February 24. It was $713 at the time. By March 30, it was up to $1060 — more than double a month’s pay at Chrystal’s job. Wells responded to her the next day after she laid out each month’s utility costs — none of them paid.
Wells wrote, “I received your email yesterday, thank you for the break down we are currently working on this, your UA [utility assistance] began in February not December. I will get clarity on the months covered because the pledge sent does not reflect the full balance.”
Chrystal was confused, and asked Smith, her Trillium caseworker, to explain it in a text. Smith responded, “they will now only pay a utility allowance of $282 on your utility bill.” That was news to Chrystal.
“It would have been nice to have a notice of that before the power got cut off,” she replied.
She was then told that any payment for utility assistance would be going forward, not retroactive, and got a new contract for $282 in monthly utility assistance. No one had paid her bills since she moved in, despite her expectations. Her power was still off. There was no offer to help her pay that bill to get her power back on.
She told WHQR, “When I signed the lease in December, I was definitely under the assumption that everything was going to be the same as the prior lease. They paid rent and utilities.”
Out of options, Chrystal reached out to WHQR on Thursday, April 2. WHQR put her in contact with NCCEH, the housing organization that oversees the region where this grant is disbursed.
NCCEH played a role in planning and monitoring the Back@Home program, but it doesn’t have the same level of access to client information as DHHS. But within a few hours of talking to WHQR, Chrystal was on the phone with Joanne Cain, who oversees the rural areas of the state for NCCEH.
Cain, in turn, started putting pressure on contacts at DHHS, Trillium, and The Housing Collaborative to get Chrystal’s bills paid. Chrystal was so relieved to have someone fighting for her. By the end of the day, Cain told her DHHS would pay a little more than $800 to cover the cost to reconnect to power. Chrystal heard the same from Smith. By Friday, April 3, her power was back on.
Not an isolated incident
According to emails acquired by WHQR, this was not the first time a client ran into problems getting utility assistance through the Housing Collaborative. But a tenant’s case manager can make all the difference in getting a bill paid.
On Feb. 17, in the midst of Back@Home’s budget crisis, caseworker Melissa Nance of Brick Capital CDC, a Sanford, NC-based service provider, wrote to DHHS. She laid out a case for the state to pay the utility allowance it had promised for a tenant who was facing a large and unexpected bill.
“Since setting up and issuing the UA is handled by Housing Collaborative, it’s difficult to understand why is now expected to cover a cost that resulted from a step [redacted] was unaware of and could not complete herself. The client should not be penalized for something that was not communicated to and was not within her control. The lack of a UA for January was not due to any action—or inaction—on her part,” she wrote.
Nance then provided evidence that the tenant had emailed her bill — on time — to The Housing Collaborative, and that The Housing Collaborative dropped the ball. Kim Crawford of DHHS responded with a payment: “The $252 is being processed now.”
From public records reviewed by WHQR, it seems that NCDHHS will sometimes quickly blame the tenants when something goes awry. It’s also clear that tenants are not getting good communication about the systems they are operating in or the shifting sands beneath their feet. And the clock is still counting down for when they run out of assistance through Back@Home at the end of June. Many of the tenants under Back@Home do not earn enough to cover their rent. Some earn less than the cost of their rent in a month, and others make no money at all.
NCCEH is now working with Chrystal directly to connect her to alternative opportunities for utility assistance and other avenues for continued support. That is the kind of support that is meant to be a part of Rapid Rehousing programs, but does not appear to be happening for the hundreds of households currently under Back@Home.
Any Back@Home tenants who aren’t sure of their next steps can reach out to bos@ncceh.org to get assistance, and can reach out to kkenoyer@whqr.org to share their stories.
Current status of Back@Home
WHQR asked DHHS to provide an update on the current status of Back@Home, and Summer Tonizzo provided the following information:
From Jan. 1, 2026, to April 13, 2026, there were 228 RRH exits, 48 exits to Supportive Services Only (SSO), 115 exits to PSH with 72% exits to a positive designation.
We are continuing to track exit outcomes, and early indicators show that many households are maintaining housing stability, either by remaining in their current units with adjusted arrangements or transitioning to other housing options without experiencing a gap in housing.
Because households exit for a variety of circumstances and timelines, final outcome categorizations are very fluid and ever changing. We are committed to ensuring that data is accurate and complete before reporting detailed breakdowns. The Back@Home program continues to focus on supporting households through a structured transition, with service providers working case by case to identify the best available options based on each household's situation.
WHQR is asking for clarification about the meaning of "positive designation" and to learn what happened to the other 28% of clients.
