By Dennis Sadowski
Catholic News Service
CLEVELAND (CNS) – Affordable-housing advocates are working intently to help renters access billions of dollars in federal Emergency Rental Assistance funds to prevent a surge in evictions tied to the coronavirus pandemic.
They are frustrated, however, they told Catholic News Service, because the $46.5 billion for rental assistance allocated since December is trickling into communities too slowly to meet the existing need.
"We've been trying to work very aggressively with our (diocesan) agencies to try to access the local government sources of eviction-prevention money," said Dominican Sister Donna Markham, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA.
"When our folks are losing their homes, it just cascades into hunger, mental illness, physical illness, especially in the middle of a pandemic," she said.
In an Aug. 5 email to CNS, a U.S. Treasury Department official estimated that about $3 billion had been distributed to renters and landlords through early August.
The billions allocated for Emergency Rental Assistance were included in two legislative measures: $25 billion in a COVID-19 relief and omnibus spending bill passed in December and $21.5 billion in the American Rescue Plan passed in March.
The first allocation to states and localities was completed Feb. 10, the official said. About 40% of the funding in the second appropriation was sent to state and local governments by May 7 with the rest expected to be released in the future. The program runs through 2025.
"This program is intended to address the emergency at hand, but also to address an annual eviction crisis that predated the pandemic," the official said.
Data analyzed by the National Equity Atlas shows nearly 6.4 million households were behind on rent with rent debt estimated at $21.3 billion through July 7. It includes data gathered from the most recent Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey covering the period of June 23 through July 5.
The atlas is a partnership between Oakland, California-based PolicyLink and the University of Southern California's Equity Research Institute.
A new 60-day eviction moratorium issued Aug. 3 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will give more time for tenants and landlords to access funds for back rent, social service agency and advocates said. The moratorium pertains to U.S. counties with "substantial and high levels of community transmission" and covers about 90% of the U.S. population.
Still, the advocates are pushing for a longer-term solution from Congress so that as much of the emergency funding as possible can be distributed as quickly as possible and people are not struggling to find another place to live as winter approaches because an eviction threat looms.
The CDC announced the new moratorium after Democratic lawmakers, housing advocates and grassroots organizations pressed President Joe Biden's administration to reinstate tenant eviction protections that expired July 31.
Tenant groups and their advocates feared a sudden onrush of evictions would result at a time when most of the country was seeing a surge in coronavirus cases, largely because of wider transmission of the highly contagious delta variant.