Dallas County Family Resource Center uses BBCF disaster relief grant to help three times more residents in need

After an EF-2 tornado ripped through Selma on Jan. 12, the Dallas County Family Resource Center has helped more residents in need than ever thanks to a $150,000 disaster relief grant from the Black Belt Community Foundation.

The center had residents in need showing up on their doorstep at 403 Church Street starting the day after the storm. Many had lost their homes and had no clothing except what was on their backs. Some had not eaten.

After 12 years of providing emergency shelter, clothing, food and other assistance in Dallas County, the resource center was ready to help. But they had never needed to help this many people in need at once, said DCFRC Executive Director Thomas Frazer.

“We were flooded with people needing emergency shelter, which is what we have done for years,” Frazer said. “But we didn’t have enough funds to put all those people in our emergency solutions grant program.”

Dallas County Family Resource Center got $30,000 from United Way of Selma for immediate needs, and those funds went quickly. With a growing list of needy families, his team went searching for more funds and found the disaster relief grant through the Black Belt Community Foundation. They applied for and received one of the biggest gifts the organization has ever received.

“When we got the $150,000 from Black Belt Community Foundation, it was truly a blessing because we still had people showing up at the door every day looking for emergency shelter,” Frazer said.

Frazer said he had never seen the level of need that was caused by the tornado – and that continues four-plus months later.

“You don’t realize how many people are still living in hotels or staying with friends and family just trying to get by any way they can,” Frazer said. “We have people still living in their cars in front of or behind their houses right now that are coming in for assistance. So, it is very much still a disaster recovery. A lot of the cleanup is done, but there’s still a lot of placement left to be done.”

In a typical month, Dallas County Family Resource Center works with about 10 families, helping them pay their utility bills, get homeless assistance and enter their workforce development program. But since the storm, the resource center has helped 300 people find shelter, pay utility bills, replace clothing and gain access to food. 

Meanwhile, Frazer’s team was working every day, even though every one of them had been impacted by the storm in some way.

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But thanks to the BBCF funding, the team was energized to keep going.

“Donor response to the tornado disaster of Jan. 12 has created a wastershed moment for BBCF to fund several substantial grants out into the community,” said Felecia L. Lucky, BBCF President. “So far, BBCF has raised over $1 million, all of which has been awarded to five different organizations in Dallas County and three others in Hale, Greene and Sumter counties. While this is a significant initial effort, we are committed to aggressively continuing our fundraising. We will be able to help more organizations out there in their work of storm recovery and rebuilding for the foreseeable future.”

The program in most demand has been the Emergency Solutions Grant that helps find housing and pays the security deposit and first month’s rent. Frazer said low-income housing was hard to find in Dallas County before the storm. The storm damaged or destroyed about 70% of rental housing, and many of those landlords are not making repairs. Frazer had one client whose family had been living on one side of a house because the other side was so badly damaged, and their landlord wasn’t going to fix it. They were evicted, but she found housing thanks to the BBCF grant.

Frazer points to some silver linings that have been realized through the storm and made possible by funding from BBCF. One silver lining has been the increased awareness of what services Dallas County Family Resource Center offers, which has led to a record number of residents signing up to participate in their programs.

And, thanks to a matching program through the state Family Resource organization, the Dallas County center has been able to multiply its BBCF assistance by getting 50% back in undesignated matching funds that they have distributed to more families in need, Frazer said.

The matching funds are available for the resource center’s three main programs, the Emergency Solutions Grant program that prevents homelessness by covering a variety of expenses; the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF, program that gives utility assistance, food water and shelter to families in need; and A-Reset, the workforce development program that covers costs for residents to receive training and certifications.

“Anytime we spend dollars in those programs, we're getting those dollars back from the state match,” Frazer said. “Now we’ve had this big group of people come in through the tornado because they know we're doing disaster relief, and they spread the word about the Black Belt Community Foundation dollars so we're just trying to get everybody we can signed up for a program out of that.”

Their A-Reset program has paid for seven residents to attend and graduate from a Certified Nursing Assistant program since the tornado – and more are going through the classes now, Frazer said. They have others taking classes for their CDL, welding and other certificate-based courses. As families increase their income, they will need services like those offered by Dallas County Family Resource Center less over time, Frazer said.

Along with BBCF, the resource center has gotten donations from 15 to 20 organizations and seen a big increase in the number of volunteers coming in to help, Frazer said.

Frazer sees this time as an opportunity for his agency to grow. They are getting a lot of word-of-mouth recommendations now that they’re helping three times more people in need, and he sees their outreach growing from here.