Rental assistance paid by the state to pandemic-strapped, low-income tenants doubled in July, with more than 20,000 renter households getting $242.7 million in rent relief this year so far, state officials said Wednesday, Aug. 4, during a live-streamed press briefing on Zoom.
The state still has a long way to go. The amount approved so far represents less than 5% of the total amount Congress allocated to the state for tenant relief under stimulus bills passed in December and March.
“Just last week, I received an email from a property owner who wrote to me saying the rent relief program has been a blessing,” said Lourdes Castro Ramirez, secretary of the state’s Business, Consumer Services & Housing Agency. The email said, “Our tenants can breathe a sigh of relief.”
But many more are still waiting. As of Tuesday, the state had received more than 132,000 rental assistance applications from nearly 91,000 households, new state data show. Nearly 80% of those who applied are waiting to have their back rent paid off.
Applications received so far requested just over $1 billion in rent relief. The amount paid represents 23% of the amount requested, state figures show. By comparison, the average paid by 26 states reviewed by NBC News was less than 10%, said Gustavo Velasquez, director of the state Housing and Community Development Department.
“California is leading the nation in fund disbursement,” Velasquez said during the briefing. “We are really getting to the level of speed that we need to ensure that all the people out there that are still struggling with rent and utilities can get the assistance they are entitled to.”
California lawmakers authorized $5.2 billion in funds to pay off 100% of rent debt owed to landlords by low-income renters. An additional $2 billion has been approved to help tenants cover unpaid water, electricity and other utility bills.
The money comes from about $46 billion in rental assistance allocated by Congress.
Until now, the nation’s emergency rental assistance program has been plagued by a slow rollout, raising fears of a wave of evictions after federal eviction protections expire. As of June 30, for example, just over $1.5 billion in rent relief had been paid out nationwide, U.S. Treasury Department figures showed.
A Centers for Disease Control eviction moratorium that expired Saturday, July 31, was reinstated through Oct. 3 on Tuesday but only for portions of the country facing the most severe COVID-19 outbreaks.
In California, there’s less urgency to pay out rental assistance. The state’s own eviction moratorium remains in effect through Sept. 30. And tenants who have paid at least 25% of their rent during the pandemic cannot be evicted for that back rent even after the moratorium expires.
“California has the strongest eviction protections in the nation,” Castro Ramirez said. “California’s eviction protections extend beyond Sept. 30 for eligible renters.”
The state figures don’t include payments made by 38 local jurisdictions administering all or part of their own federal rental assistance allocation.
A month ago, the state had paid $73 million in rent assistance – less than half the amount paid out in July alone. Just 7,600 households had received payments.
Applications are up, too, jumping to an average of 7,500 applications a week, up from an average of 4,500 in June.
“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the applications coming in and the payments going out,” Velasquez said.
State officials cited a number of improvements to the state’s online portal used to apply for assistance. Those include fixing errors in language translation caused by relying on translation software, Velasquez said. The application process also has been streamlined, cutting the average time needed to complete the application to around 30 minutes. The amount of documentation needed to support an application also has been reduced, officials said.
Eighty-five percent of the applications received so far have been from households earning less than 50% of their area’s median income – a group designated as “very low income” households. Federal legislation limited rental assistance to “low-income” households that earn 80% or less of their area’s median income, although some jurisdictions are prioritizing the poorest tenants first.
Some low-income tenants responding to an online Southern California News Group survey complained they were deemed ineligible to get assistance because their incomes are too high. One renter said his annual income of $40,000 a year was $500 over San Bernardino County’s limit of $39,500 for a family of four.
Other tenants complained they have yet to get a response to applications filed in March.
In some of the locally administered programs, as in the cities of Los Angeles and Anaheim, application periods ended in March or April.
But at least one tenant who responded to the SCNG survey said after going through “a horrible three months” of waiting, her state rental assistance came through “big time.”
Once a tenant is deemed eligible for assistance, a dedicated team reaches out to his or her landlord to complete the application, clearing the way for payments to go directly to the property owner. If the landlord doesn’t respond or declines to participate, the payment goes to the tenant, who then has 15 days to pay off the rent.
Applications for state rental and utility assistance can be filed at HousingIsKey.com or by calling the state contact center’s toll-free line at 833-430-2122 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week.
