The nonprofit Housing Resource Center helps alleviate the housing crisis, and aims to expand services to teens.

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In an office building on John Street in Salinas, the Housing Resource Center of Monterey County is quietly, and profoundly, changing lives.

The nonprofit is at the local forefront of a problem that ails the entire Central California coast: the lack of affordable housing.

HRC’s work includes helping clients with rent payments for a few months, cultivating relationships with landlords, and case management with the everyday challenges facing so many of those struggling to find a home they can afford.

“What it comes down to is, there isn’t enough affordable housing,” HRC Program Manager Alexa Johnson says. “It doesn’t matter if you have a full-time job if you can’t afford a room to rent.”

The nonprofit works with clients who might otherwise go without help. Juanita Ruvalcaba, a case manager with HRC, describes her typical day like this: “It’s either a crisis in the morning, or a crisis in the afternoon.”

Those crises can be a domestic violence situation, a loss of employment, a loss of transportation, or worse. HRC helps people navigate those crises, but also everyday challenges like financial planning.

Among those HRC has recently helped is Athena Reyes, who just moved into her two-bedroom apartment in Salinas on Dec. 8. A Seaside native, Reyes is currently out of work and caring for her 6-month-old son, and was staying in a shelter in Marina before HRC found a place she could afford.

“It would have taken me a lot longer to get where I’m at,” Reyes says of HRC’s help. Two people – her case manager and her housing specialist – “are the only ones who know how hard I worked to get where I’m at right now,” she says.

Part of how HRC was able to help Reyes was in building a relationship with a landlord, and selling them on the idea of accepting housing vouchers, while inspiring confidence that HRC’s clients are good people who make good tenants.

“The landlords that step up to help these people are angels in the community as far I’m concerned,” says HRC board chair Kelley Ann Foy.

Going forward, HRC is seeking to expand its mission – its Big Idea in this year’s Monterey County Gives! campaign is to better serve homeless teenagers, which the agency sees as underserved part of the population.

“This is our way to see where in the community transition-aged youth aren’t being served, and how we could give to that,” Johnson says.