Jewel Burgess, 40, first applied for emergency rental assistance in Washington, DC last year after quitting her job delivering meals to the city’s office for aging. She never heard if she was approved or refused to receive rent, as some of her friends did, she said, and could not afford an amount of $ 1002 rent, utilities and other basic necessities. . dollars she receives in unemployment benefits.
‘At this point I stand still; I feel like I’m between a rock and a difficult place, ‘Burgess said. ‘I do not know how, going forward, what they are going to do to help me if they have already helped me or received money on my behalf – I know nothing. I just sit here hoping and praying to God that I do not get an eviction report at my door, or that someone comes knocking on my door and tells me that I have to leave my apartment because I am evicted. ‘
As the coronavirus pandemic continues into the second year, millions of people like Burgess are struggling to pay their rents and bills, and many are hoping for the federal aid money sent to state and local governments for short-term rent payments. These emergency rental programs, created and expanded in March with the funding of the CARES Act, were intended to provide much-needed financial support to households and tenants who have suddenly lost their income.
In the first round of rental assistance, money was used from a $ 150 billion stream of Treasury, known as the Coronavirus Aid Fund, which provided local and state governments with money that could be spent on a wide range of emergency programs. An extra $ 25 billion was approved in December, though the treasury contains guidelines that make it harder for tenants to access the money. Some of these guidelines have now been revised, and President Joe Biden has also called on lawmakers to spend an additional $ 30 billion on rental and utilities as part of the broader $ 1.9 billion stimulus package currently in place. be negotiated.
But many rental assistance programs have been poorly utilized, in part because of bureaucratic hurdles and the reality of fund administration. The implementation of utilities depends on individual states and cities, and many local governments have experienced difficulties in reaching those in need. Some jurisdictions even had to redistribute millions intended to pay people’s rent. In Arizona, rental assistance has expanded, but the state has received only about 330 applications, Fox 10 Phoenix report.
Burgess said she was disappointed with the government’s failure to hand out aid to many people who lost jobs during the pandemic. ‘They come across the news and say,’ We have programs available, we have money and funding available, ‘and then you try to reach out to these people to get the money and help, and then you have to qualify, you have to meet the requirements, you have to have documentation, ”she said. ‘All kinds of things you ask for before you can get help. It’s all a process, and what should I do in the process to make sure I have the necessities? ‘
Some rental assistance programs, in cities like Chicago, pay the allowances directly to tenants who can prove that they lost their job or hours at work and as a result were unable to pay rent – and actually did. But many other jurisdictions have struggled to spend the millions set aside for rental assistance before the initial deadline of December 30, and were forced to forfeit it to other programs.
As the deadline in Atlanta approached, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms proposed that the $ 22 million leased to the city’s pandemic rental program be cut in half. In Pennsylvania, about $ 108 million of the $ 175 million intended for rent and mortgage relief never reached the people who pleaded for it, and was instead distributed to the Department of Coronavirus-Related Wage Expenditure Corrections.
Photo: Paul Frangipane / Bloomberg via Getty Images
According to December 2020, almost one in five tenants nationwide was behind rents, according to recent figures from the Census Bureau. Biden’s administration announced in February that it would extend the moratorium on negative and long-term mortgages. The federal eviction moratorium, which was extended until the end of March, and a tangle of state and local protections protected tens of thousands of millions from losing their homes.
However, housing advocates are concerned about those falling through the cracks, saying the current moratorium and dispersed assistance programs are not strong enough to protect tenants from displacement.
“There has never been a comprehensive set of solutions to protect and keep tenants stable during the pandemic,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “There is a patchwork of resources and protection at the federal, state and local levels that has kept most tenants stable, but there is an alarming number of evictions that have continued despite the protection.”
Although the federal eviction ban has helped keep many tenants in their homes over the past year, Yentel noted that eviction moratoriums on their own ‘have never been the end solution’. These orders only postpone evictions as the amount of the unpaid rent accrues. According to a January report by Moody’s Analytics, Americans owe about $ 57 billion in rent.
One of the biggest obstacles in the distribution of the money so far has been the refusal of participants.
Some first aid programs that struggled to distribute assistance did not have the staff or ability to review all the applications that were in hand, while some programs were delayed by additional low bureaucracy. Heavy documentation requirements and complicated application processes – which vary from place to place – are also barriers to assistance, with the exception of some households that were most in need.
But one of the biggest obstacles in spreading the money so far has been the refusal of owners to participate. To receive the money, landlords had to agree to certain conditions and protection of tenants to participate in the program, including the promise not to increase rent for a certain period of time and not to evict it. Some landlords have declined and declined payments to pay their tenants’ rent, while others have not responded at all.
Burgess said homeowners and landlords say they need to raise rent so they can continue to keep a roof over their heads, but “what makes it different from the people who live in the properties they rent?”
Paul Williams, a former policy administrator at the Chicago Department of Housing, said Chicago policymakers have already drawn up an emergency rental program that pays out about $ 2 million directly into tenants’ bank accounts. When federal funds showed up, it was easy to just pump more money into their existing program.
“I think a lot of these other cities and states that did it just had inertia within their program and policy design. Every time they provided rental assistance, they did it this way,” Williams said. “And if they give money directly to tenants, they are afraid to do it for all the reasons why people are afraid to give money to poor people.”
“We also heard the arguments in Chicago. There were some mayors who were skeptical about the program because they were like, ‘What if a tenant does not need 100 percent of the money for their rent and he buys a flat screen?’ ‘, He continued. “Now, what if we give the money directly to the landlord, and they do not use all the money for maintenance and mortgage, and buy a flat screen for them?”
The latest pot of money, which was approved by a $ 25 billion rental aid fund in December, has been given new guidelines that prohibit the approach of distributing aid directly to tenants.
A tenant could still apply for rental assistance and get the money, but only after the city was contacted by their landlord and the city confirmed that the landlord either refused or did not respond. Many of these agencies have complicated application processes and therefore need to direct questions from landlords by telephone. “Cities don’t have the staff to do it properly,” Williams said. “Many cities only hire contractor firms from about ten staff members to carry out the entire application process.”
At the end of February, the Treasury Department reviewed the guidance given by Steven Mnuchin’s Treasury Department on the last day of the Trump administration. The revised rules allow tenants to self-certify on most suitability requirements and give the landlord 14 days to respond before the money is sent to the tenant. Williams said the updated rules are an improvement, but it remains to be seen whether programs in different states can do direct tenants well.
“Congress has already provided $ 25 billion, which is a very significant, historic amount of rental assistance that will go a long way,” Yentel said. “But that’s not enough, and we need more.”