Only a Tiny Fraction of Covid-19 Rental Assistance Has Been Distributed

Distribution of the federal government’s renter relief program funds continues to move at a staggeringly slow pace in nearly every state and jurisdiction, according to data released by the Treasury Department.

Just $4.7 billion of almost $47 billion appropriated by Congress had reached tenants and landlords through July.

The data show that rental aid has begun to move faster in some states, though July’s $1.7 billion reflected only a modest overall increase from the $1.5 billion distributed in June.

While the program is overseen by the Treasury, it relies on a patchwork of more than 450 state, county and municipal governments and charitable organizations to distribute aid, writes The Wall Street Journal. The result: months of delays as local governments built new programs from scratch, hired staff and crafted rules for how the money should be distributed, then struggled to process a deluge of applications.

“Administering government programs, especially from startup, all the way through, is challenging,” Kent Syler, a professor of political science at Middle Tennessee State University and a former 26-year chief of staff for a congressional representative from Tennessee, told GlobeSt.com in an earlier interview. 

The Biden Administration is now telling state and local authorities they can rely on self-attestation to declare an applicant eligible for assistance.

At least one County (Prince George’s, Md.) is beginning to distribute assistance directly to tenants in cases where landlords aren’t willing to participate in the application process. All eviction notices also now include information about applying to the rental-assistance program. Maryland received $27 million in aid.

Administration officials acknowledge the program has moved too slowly relative to the need. Still, they say it has provided nearly one million payments to households, including about 341,000 in July alone—an indication that it has provided meaningful relief to struggling tenants.

To allow for more time to distribute the money, the Biden Administration this month extended a federal eviction moratorium until at least Oct. 3. It had expired at the end of July and had previously been extended several times.

While 70 jurisdictions had distributed more than half of their initial allotment of rental assistance by the end of July, “too many grantees have yet to demonstrate sufficient progress in getting assistance to struggling tenants and landlords,” the Treasury said in a blog post accompanying the release of the data. Hundreds of thousands of aid applications are in the pipeline beyond those that have already been paid, Treasury said, citing public dashboards.

One of the reasons why the CDC extended its latest ban, despite an adverse Supreme Court ruling, was in the hopes that more rental aid would be distributed.

The moratorium has protected millions of tenants but created financial hardships for some landlords unable to collect rental income they rely upon for their own livelihoods. Several states, including California and New York, have imposed their own eviction bans. 

It was only in February 2021 that the funds began to be distributed.