Episode 6: Stable Homes, Brighter Futures: A Conversation with Samantha Stewart

On this episode of So, Let’s Talk Columbus with Michael Wilkos, Michael explores how housing stability shapes a child’s ability to learn, grow and thrive, through a powerful conversation with Samantha Stewart of the YMCA of Central Ohio. It’s a human-centered look at the families doing everything they can to stay afloat, and the community partnership that is helping stabilize families, and keeping kids in school and hope within reach.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

How's your mouth?

SPEAKER_00 0:01

My mouth is numb because I just returned from the dentist. And while I thought I was going to the dentist to get a cavity replaced, I actually had two cavities. So I have a temporary in right now, and I'm tasting the remnants of uh cement in my mouth. Not concrete cement at the cement. Nothing can stop, so let's talk Columbus. Even if I have a little bit of a lisp today. Welcome back to So Let's Talk Columbus. I'm Michael Wokos, Vice President of Community Engagement at United Way of Central Ohio. In our last episode, we talked about housing, the growth happening in Columbus, and the pressure it's putting on affordability. Understanding the challenge is important, but the real question is, what do we do about it and who we're building solutions for? That's what we're going to focus on today. I'm joined by Samantha Stewart, Vice President of Community Impact at YMCA of Central Ohio. Samantha has spent her career working closely with families, especially those navigating instability, helping them connect with housing, resources, and support so kids and families can thrive. Samantha, welcome to So Let's Talk Columbus.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Great. How long have you been doing this work, Samantha?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

So I've been with the YMCA of Central Ohio in my 25th year. But so a long time tenured with the Y and in Central Ohio. But before that, I did very similar work in West Virginia.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

So that's where things started for me probably 33 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

That's great. What has driven you to be so passionate about this work?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

You know, it's interesting. I remember having a conversation with one of my brothers when I was in high school, telling him that it was really important for me when I went to college that I wanted to do something really focused on serving families. And he still remembers that conversation, and I still remember that conversation. So for some reason it was ingrained in me from a very early age. And not because I have a history of family who are in the social services field, but just for me, it was something that resonated and spoke to me from a very early age.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

And where in West Virginia were you?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Parkersburg.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Okay. Yeah. Parkersburg and Columbus are very different places.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Very different. I'm a child of Appalachia. So I I can speak to what a lot of our families here in Central Ohio walk through every day, just given my experience and how I grew up.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

So I've heard uh that years ago the three R's in West Virginia were reading, writing, and the road to Columbus. Is there truth in that folklore?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yes. The route up 23. That's a lot of, you know, take that trip up 23 to make your way to Columbus. Now it's not 23, but yeah, that's definitely one of the roads.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

So despite the growth and prosperity of Columbus, uh, what have you found that's different between the instability of families in Parkersburg versus Columbus?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

I don't really think there's a difference. There's instability everywhere. It doesn't it doesn't matter if you're in uh a large metropolitan area like Columbus in central Ohio, um, or if you're in a small rural Appalachian town, it's still there. The instability is still there. It just it may look different. Rural poverty looks different than city poverty, but it's still poverty.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

So when you think about the families that you work with, what does housing instability actually look like in their day-to-day lives?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

It has many forms. It can look like couch surfing, it can look like um being afraid that you're gonna come home to a note on your door because you haven't paid your rent, or maybe you have paid your rent, but your landlord decided to sell all of a sudden. It can look like uh living in a car, or it can look like multiple families huddled together in the same space and not not having the ability to separate out a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

And over your career, have you seen those patterns change? Is there more couch surfing going on now than there used to be?

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Or that's a good question. I think that it that's a dependent upon the families that we're meeting. Some of them, yes, there's more couch surfing. I think in other aspects, there is um unfortunately, there's some shame and we don't always know what situation families are are dealing with. And they may say to us, yes, I live with my sister and brother-in-law. Um, and to them, that doesn't necessarily mean they have a room that they're in. They may be, they may be couch surfing. Um, or it could be um something as larger scale as they're in their car, that's where they stay, they go and they try and find the best uh resources that they can in order to um take a shower every day or make sure their kids get to school and have the things that they need.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

So, speaking of kids, let's talk about how housing instability shows up for children in our community, especially in the summer months when school isn't there as a safety net.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Yeah. When I think about housing instability for kids, it really um it can be heartbreaking because those kiddos are oftentimes ingrained in their communities. And that community may be their school, that could be their whole community. And if they are unfortunately uh displaced, they leave that whole system. They leave friends, they leave social uh networks that they have set up in terms of uh the teachers themselves. They lose so many things aside from just a home when that happens. And in the summer months, it can be even more challenging, especially if you have, which we frequently do in our uh stable families program, single parents who are trying to figure out that balance between where are my kids going to be during the summer, where can they be safe, where can they be cared for while I'm still trying to put food on the table, have a roof over our heads.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

The families that you serve, are there uh informal networks of friends and family members that can help out? Or are you often dealing with people that lack those uh relationships?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

There's a mix. There's definitely a mix. I'm thinking of uh a particular family who uh moved here from Pennsylvania, and it was uh a mom and a dad, and they came here to get out of Philadelphia because their kids couldn't play outside and they were worried about their children's safety. So they came here, had no social support set up, so they had no one to help them. But then on the other hand, um, there's another mom that um who is a single parent with two kids, she has a 10 and an eight-year-old. And she has a really strong um family support system, but they're not in a position themselves to help outside of um, yeah, I can give you $20 for groceries for the month, but they're still trying to do everything that they need to do for their own stability.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

In the example of someone coming from Philadelphia, do you know how they picked Columbus or why they picked Columbus?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

They said they picked Columbus because it looked like a really good place to be, and that a place that they would feel comfortable with their kids being outside, having uh a future. And that was that was why.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Samantha, you know that at United Way, our success by third grade movement focuses on removing barriers outside the classroom because when housing is unstable, school often becomes unstable too, and that often leads to disrupted learning. The SeMer Institute, which was founded in 2011 and headquartered here in Columbus, the first two programs uh were in Sarasota, and the stable families here in Columbus. There are now similar programs in 70 cities across the United States, and United Way affiliates across the country oversee programs locally. Since its inception, the SeMer Institute has supported over 150,000 families and nearly 385,000 children through a network of program partners and providers. Tell us a little bit about the local success of stable families and how many families and students that you support annually.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Sure well. So the YMCA became a partner in 2018. And since then, we've served, of course, thousands of families. In 2025 alone, we served uh 1,037 families. So our goal every year, excuse me, our goal every year is to serve a thousand families within Franklin County. And year after year we we hit that mark. Um, it's been really interesting to watch the evolution of this program when we first picked up and started the work at the end of 2018, how um it's strengthened internally and then externally, because when we built it, we built it basically from the ground up, trying to figure out what's the best way to serve families. And for us, it was really evident that the best way to serve families was to go to them, not to ask them to come to us. So we we made it a home visiting model. And through that home visiting model, we're able to take uh our team members who we call service coordinators, they go out and they work one-on-one with families who are on their caseloads and they support them through so many different things. It's, you know, as we know, this the Seymour Institute has three pillars and we focus on all three of those pillars. It's not just about housing stability, that's a huge part of it. It's also about ensuring academic success for the kids in the home and increasing uh household income. So that economic mobility piece plays into housing stability in a very big way.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Stable families is in 70 cities. Uh how do the success measures in Columbus look relative to the national model?

SPEAKER_01 10:03

That's a great question. There are three metrics that are really important to the Seymour Institute that we measure. One is increasing household income, and the national average is 46%. So 46% of families increase their household income. Um the other metric is 75% of families are stably housed. And then the last one is that 98% of families do not have a disruptive move. So as we look at uh our work, comparatively speaking, the first one, increasing household income, national average 46%. For us for 2025, we were at 82%. Wow. So 82% of our families were able to increase their household income. Um when we look at housing stability in itself, which is a big piece of the work that we're doing in stable families, again, that national average is 75%. That's the metric that the institute wants us to hit. And in 2025, we were at 87%. So 87% of our families had housing stability. When it comes to the work that we're doing to prevent disruptive moves, and don't get me wrong, some families move, but our goal is to help them move in a very planned and intentional manner. Um, the institute would like to make sure that 98% of families who are in the program are not having a disruptive move. And for us, for our average, 99% of our families in 2025 did not have a disruptive move.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Well, congratulations. You've exceeded the national average in all three categories. What do you attribute that to?

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Uh strong relationships. Our service coordinators really are focused on building strong and meaningful relationships with families. Again, that's the reason that it's a home visiting model for us. We believe that you are intentional and you make uh those relationships work however the families need them to work. And I think that that is one of the biggest assets that we have.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Right. You serve a thousand, uh, just over a thousand families a year.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yep, 2025, 1,037.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

And what do you think the potential could be of how many families that you'd like to serve?

SPEAKER_01 12:14

We could serve double that very easily, but if you want to serve double, you have to build infrastructure, right? And there also has to be um the infrastructure in terms of housing within our community, which we're getting there, but we have a ways to go.

unknown 12:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Well, congratulations on your outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

What neighborhoods do you uh see most of your uh participants live in?

SPEAKER_01 12:38

We are throughout every zip code in Franklin County. But I think that it's probably fair to say we have a higher prevalence in the Linden community. Definitely uh 43 uh 229, so Northland, and then uh Southwest and the hilltop area. So those are really three big areas, but we are we're everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

In the eight years uh you've been managing the program, have you seen that geography shift at all as the eviction epidemic has kind of moved around the community a little bit and housing prices are rising faster in some neighborhoods than others?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

I think that we continue to see a pretty um pretty stable amount of land referrals coming from the same areas. I'm not seeing a huge uh change in that. But what we are seeing, I think, are some changing dynamics, uh, especially if I think about the Northland community. We have a very, very rich, diverse community in Northland. And so we're seeing a lot of families who are from different countries who are coming together in one unit, and we're serving multiple families in one unit, for example.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Are there other differences that you see between immigrant families and American-born families?

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Fear. I think there's definitely some fear, and it takes a little time for our new Americans to understand what our role is and how we want to help them, and that our goal is to provide support so they can not only can they make communities stronger, but so the communities can help lift them up as well. So I think that's one distinct difference. Um, not to say that there isn't a little bit of apprehension with other communities. Um, as I mentioned earlier, I'm a child of Appalachia, and I know that in Appalachian communities, and that is here in Central Ohio too, there's reservations about letting people come into your home. And so it's building those relationships and having that rapport with families, regardless of if they're new Americans or if they've been here in the community for a while.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

So programs like staple families are focused on prevention, keeping families housed before a crisis happens. Why is that approach so important to school-aged children?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

It's all about being upstream because if you take a child who is, and I think I I would like to reiterate that it's a social network for them when they're in school. And it's really important to find ways to help them not just um lose all of those components of friends, um, school guidance counselors, um, the social network when it comes to assisting the parents who are there. And the parents know that they have a trusted person to go to if they need help as well. So finding families upstream so they don't have to leave or they don't have to have a disruptive move is critical in ensuring academic success for kids. And Barbara Seymour teacher, and she saw this play out, and that's one of the reasons that she built this program is because it was so meaningful to her that she saw what would happen when kids had housing instability.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

What are some extreme examples of families that have been unstable in a family and how many times they've moved in a certain period of time? Just put that into perspective for Lisbon.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

I think that you're gonna see um the whole gamut. There are some families who may have um shifted and moved ten times within um a year and a half for their child, and then there are other families who um they're in one place, but it's a day-to-day struggle. I mean, I think the a recent statistic I heard was that right now everyone or a vast majority of the population in the United States is three months away from uh a critical economic issue. For our families, they don't have three months. They have maybe a week from, you know, one week's paycheck to the next week. So it can be as much as a move ten times within a year and a half, or sometimes they're in the same place, but they're just struggling.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

I haven't moved in 20 years, and so the thought of a move is just disruptive, even when you can do it once every two decades. So that's hard to process. Um when you're working with families who in many cases are doing everything right, they're working, they're trying to stay afloat. So, where does the system start to break down for them?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

It breaks down in a lot of places. Um, we had the opportunity to um run a simulation as a cost of poverty experience. And that often gives people a different perspective because it shows that breakdown. It's a simple thing. You could have a single parent who can't get off of work, but if she can't get off of work, she can't make it to job and family services to talk to her caseworker to renew something. And then she loses her child care. So it's it's cyclical. So that's definitely one of the breakdowns is our lack of ability to meet families where they are. And that's why for us, the uh stable families program that we're operating, that we go to families when they need us. So we can be uh going to a home on an evening visit at five o'clock after somebody gets home from work. So that's one of the breakdowns. The others just plain bad luck. Like sometimes it seems like people just cannot get ahead. They have the best of intentions and they are working really hard, and something happens and everything just goes. They could have uh breaks go out on their car and they can't get to work. They can't get their kids to their appointments to the doctor, they can't get to speech therapy if they have, you know, outside services.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Share some examples of um how many families one of your colleagues might actually be working with and how often maybe they may be interacting with those families.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Most most of them are caring caseloads of roughly 50 families. Okay. Um, within a year's time, it's usually they're seeing maybe 75 per staff member. And they have two touch points a month. One is face-to-face, and the other is either uh talking to them on the phone, sending a text message, an email, some other way just to have a touch point to check in.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Uh, put that into comparison for our listeners of what that typically would look like for a county uh job and family services social worker compared to the interactions that you have. Much more intense, I'm assuming.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Much more intense. And I think that um, well, I would say much more intense, but you know what? I haven't walked in the shoes of a one of the caseworkers from job and family services. So, but the benefit that the folks from the job and family services um opportunity centers have is that they're stationed there and they can push through, right? More families can come in and see them on a regular basis. But when you have a service coordinator who's doing home visits, not only are they um serving 50 families, but they're driving in between those homes uh every day. And then they're going back and they're doing case notes, and then they're finding the resources the families need, or they're doing interview prep with the families. Like it's a little bit of a different mindset.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Right. So you've given us some examples about uh the family from Philadelphia, but is there another example that uh sticks out for you that really illustrates the work of the program?

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Absolutely. Uh, I'm gonna talk a little bit about Molly. Molly is uh her name has been changed, but she's a single mom, 31 years old. She has a five-year-old and a two-year-old. And for her, she really felt like self-sufficiency was out of reach. Like there was just no, there was no next step for her, that she was always gonna be stuck in this same place of um living paycheck to paycheck, trying to figure out how to buy groceries, how to do all the things that she needed to do as a single mom to ensure her girls had um had a bright future. And it started uh at intake with her having a very honest and direct conversation with her service coordinator. So this individual who was going to be her person and walk through all the steps of everything that she needed to do in order to have safe and secure housing, increasing her household income, and ensuring academic success for the kids in the home. And so after their uh initial intake, the service coordinator started building a relationship with Molly. That relationship consisted of, again, that very direct and candid conversation. And it it really was let's break down your budget. Let's look at where you're spending your money and how do we take a step uh forward and help you spend smartly. And that's a huge challenge because money is a touchy subject for anyone. I mean, we all sometimes have a little bit of shame, if you will, about well, I spent a little too much. At the coffee shop this week. And for someone to be willing to open up their little checkbook, if you will, or their bank account and show you what they're spending their money on week after week, it really takes a lot of trust for them to do that. And that's one of the really important measures that our staff take is building those relationships. They don't start right off and come into the home and say, you need to make these changes. They listen to the family, they build off their strengths, opportunities that they can move forward with. And on top of that, they really uh let families know that they care and that they're in the position uh to walk side by side with them. Sometimes the service coordinator has to be directive and they have to lead the way. But eventually the goal is that they're walking together with the family. And then eventually the family is on their own and they're walking out front and doing the work that they need to do. So for Molly, what that looked like was breaking down the budget, determining if there were expenses that she really needed to look at cutting and cutting those expenses. And when you develop a budget with someone like our service coordinators do, there's an accountability piece. And if you haven't built that strong relationship with a family, they're not going to be honest with you when it comes to looking at that accountability piece. But in Molly's case, um, it worked. And she went through a financial wellness program that we linked her up with, where she's able to not only learn tools, tricks, and tips, but it's also a savings match program. So once she saves $500 after she goes through the full financial wellness program, we're able to match that $500. And that's $1,000 in a savings account because it has to be in a savings account that she has to build on and to work towards future goals. And that's one of the other things that our service coordinators do is they build goals with the family. They do short-term goals, and that could be something as simple as I need to get to job and family services to renew my SNAP benefits. And it could be long-term, which in Molly's case, her long-term goal is she wants to buy a house. She wants to have housing stability that includes her own home and not being uh an individual who rents for the remainder of her uh her life or with her girls. And I think that that's um a good a good step forward for Molly, and that's where she is. She's ready to start saving for that house. And in her case, that's important to her.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

How long would someone like Molly be involved with the program?

SPEAKER_01 24:43

We traditionally uh see average length of stay for families about six months. But in Molly's case, for someone who has really um strong long-term goals, uh, she could potentially be with us for up to a year.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Okay. Uh what's something you wish people understood about how quickly a family can fall into a housing crisis?

SPEAKER_01 25:06

I wish that people um would understand that we really need to reserve judgment. There's no reason for any of us to judge others because we don't know what they're going through. We don't know what kind of day they're having. Um, and I think that's the biggest thing is just to take a beat, take a minute. And in this field, you can't be judgmental and be effective at your job. It's very easy to say, well, I never would have let myself get into that position in the first place. Well, have you lived with generational poverty? Have you been a person who had to flee a domestic violence situation? Those are all things that people need to take into consideration.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

And if one thing could change tomorrow that would make a real difference for families, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Well, the the grand idea for me would be that we wouldn't have jobs because there would be no need for um supporting folks and helping them stay out of the homelessness system. But we know that's not a reality. Um, but there are so many different things that would be key. And in Columbus and Central Ohio itself, if we could find more affordable housing, I think there are so many opportunities to support families just with that simple fix.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

The city voters recently approved a half a billion dollar affordable housing bond package. Does that give you hope that in the future things might ease a bit for the families you serve?

SPEAKER_01 26:40

It gives me hope. Uh, I also still have concern because, as we know, we're gonna hit that 3 million population mark in a few years, a little more than a few years, but where where's everyone gonna go? And so that's a great start, but it's a start from my perspective.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

I'll close with this. When you think about everything we've talked about, what gives you the most confidence in Columbus's ability to meet this moment?

SPEAKER_01 27:09

We are a resource-rich community, and we are a community full of people who genuinely care um and want to support others. And that gives me a lot of hope for the future.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

I've heard people describe it that we're um resource-rich but systems poor. Do you agree with that statement?

SPEAKER_01 27:30

I think that is a really interesting um fallback in terms of how do we make sure that the resources get in the right hands. But we all have a responsibility to take a part of that and to figure out how we can make us resource rich and making sure that those services get to the people they need to be. And I think one of those things, the steps that we're taking in Central Ohio is through our community information exchange network that we're working on developing and building. And that's gonna be, I think that's gonna be a critical component that helps.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Tell our listeners what the community information exchange would be when it's up and running.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

It's gonna be a phenomenal system. It's this fabulous ability for residents uh in Franklin County, for caseworkers, community health workers, service coordinators to go into a real live system to link families with the resources that they need. And families aren't gonna have to tell their story over and over again. They're caseworkers. So I'll use an example for our stable families program. If we have a service coordinator who knows that this family is in need of finding a new publicly funded child care spot because the center closed where their child was, they'll be able to go into a real-time system, find openings in that um family's zip code and help get them moving in the right direction to get that spot. And it's gonna be in real time and it's gonna be fast. It's gonna be two-on-one on steroids. I'm really excited about this system. And families will be able to do it on their own. They won't have to go through a case worker. They can choose to give as little or as much information as they want when they enter the system. Um, they can simply say, I need child care and this zip code, and no, I don't want to give you any other information, and they'll still get the same results.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

When do you hope this amazing information exchange will be operational?

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Um, I'm gonna say 2028.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

But not too far off. It's not too far off. We are we're one of the uh early adopters in some of our work, and so we're really excited to when there's a soft launch of those early adopters starting this summer.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

So well, Samantha, thank you. What stands out in this conversation is that housing isn't just about buildings, it's about families, it's about kids, and it's about doing everything we can as a community to help students show up for school every day, ready and able to learn. And the work you're doing makes that real in a way that data alone never could. So thank you for being with us today.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Thanks for listening to So Let's Talk Columbus. If this conversation made you think, share it, if it challenged you, good. If it made you proud, even better. Until next time, remember there's not a problem, Columbus can't fix. Fantastic.