For the past 18 months, renters and landlords have felt the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. As of last month, the National Equity Atlas estimated that more than 6 million American households owed more than $20 billion in back rent.
Congress has done its job in trying to address the calamity, approving $46.5 billion for rental assistance through two COVID-19 relief packages. But state and local governments have fallen behind in the duty to get that assistance from the federal government to landlords. With the U.S. Supreme Court likely to rule on a national eviction moratorium, those governments must work quickly to keep a crisis from turning into a disaster.
In Clark County, the federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program has doled out $21.4 million in assistance over the past year. According to program manager Michael Torres, more than 100 new households are served each week, and more than $800,000 is disbursed each week.
That is a significant amount of money, but it does not cover the scope of the issue. Treasury Department officials on Wednesday said that, nationally, roughly 11 percent of available funds have been delivered.
“About a million payments have now gone out to families — it is starting to help a meaningful number of families,” Gene Sperling, who oversees the operation for the Biden administration, told the New York Times. “It’s just not close to enough in an emergency like this to protect all the families who need and deserve to be protected. So there is still way more to do and to do fast.”
The program is designed to be spread over three years. But White House officials are pressuring local governments to speed the process. According to The Seattle Times, King County — the state’s most populous — had distributed 4.5 percent of available funds as of last week.
State and federal eviction moratoriums have helped protect renters. They have prevented residents impacted by business shutdowns or job loss from being evicted for a lack of payment. In Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee has extended the moratorium through Sept. 30.
Moratoriums, however, must someday come to an end, with the bills coming due. And those moratoriums do little to protect landlords.
Most landlords are small-business owners, not conglomerates with rental units throughout the state. And those landlords have their own bills to pay for property taxes and maintenance. As Bob Pinnegar, CEO of the National Apartment Association, said, “Flawed eviction moratoriums leave renters with insurmountable debt and housing providers holding the bag as our nation’s housing affordability crisis spirals into a housing affordability disaster.”
The odds of a such a disaster are enhanced by the lack of funds from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 1.2 million households are very likely to face eviction over the next two months if moratoriums are rescinded. Of nearly 2.8 million households that have applied for aid, 500,000 report receiving assistance while 1.5 million are awaiting approval and 700,000 have been rejected.
In addition, more than 60 percent of vulnerable renters have not applied for assistance. In Clark County, officials are working to open additional slots, with the next round of availability beginning at 9 a.m. Sept. 13.
The Emergency Rental Assistance Program is merely a stopgap for what will be long-term stress on the housing market. But is an important stopgap that calls on local leaders to work quickly.
