Rental Assistance Program Is Still Failing

The U.S. Treasury announced seven additional policies to encourage state and local governments to expedite emergency rental assistance…(UST)

• (1) Self-attestation can be used in documenting each aspect of a household’s eligibility for ERA.

• (2) State and local ERA programs may also rely on self-attestation ALONE to document household income eligibility during the public health emergency.

• (3) State and local grantees may advance assistance to landlords and utility providers based on estimated eligible arears.

• (4) State and local grantees may also enter into partnership with nonprofits to deliver advance assistance to households at risk of eviction while their applications are still being processed.

• (5) Grantees may also make additional rent payments to landlords that take on tenants facing major barriers to securing a lease, including those who have been evicted or experienced homelessness in the past year.

• (6) Past arrears at previous addresses may be covered and

• (7) A tenant’s costs associated with obtaining a hearing or appealing an order of eviction may be covered with ERA funds as an eligible “other expense.”

If you are asking yourself why are they making these changes now the answer is simple. They have to. However, even though the answer is simple it is still a two parter…

One: The rental assistance program still, for lack of a better term, sucks. The treasury tried to brag that the program distributed “nearly $1.7 billion in rental and utilities assistance, a roughly 15% increase in households served compared to June…” Yes spending 1.7 billion helped a lot of families. But when you realize that 89% of the $46.5 billion allocated rental assistance money didn’t get spent. All of sudden that 1.7 billion looks a lot less impressive

TWO: SCOTUS. President Bided has made it very clear that his administration is well aware that the Supreme court is not going to rule in the favor when it comes to the eviction moratorium. Thanks to Kavanaugh’s opinion it didn’t really take a constitutional scholar to figure it out.

• Since the ruling is inevitable, the New York Times reports that the administration is  turning to state courts — which adjudicate tenant-landlord disputes — to help deliver aid, by pressuring landlords to accept federal payments instead of proceeding with evictions, and educating tenants, who often have no legal representation in court, on their right to apply for assistance. (NYT)