Washington allocated $46.6 billion to tenants who couldn't pay rent during the pandemic. This is almost twice the amount that Washington usually spends annually to help low-income renters through Section 8, or the Housing Choice Voucher Program. This was enough to cover payments that were not made by 43 million households of renters, many of which lost their jobs last year due to the economic downturn.AdvertisementA safety net works only if it is properly set up. And even after months of crisis, local authorities are still failing to do a good job. Annie Lowrey says that while the U.S. Treasury gave $25 billion in February to rent relief, only $3 billion was delivered by local partners as of June 30.AdvertisementAdvertisementThis is especially important as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's September eviction moratorium expires this Saturday. The public health order does not provide tenants with ironclad protection. However, it appears to have kept evictions under pre-pandemic levels in jurisdictions that do not have their own moratoriums. This includes cities like Cincinnati, Dallas, and states like Indiana, Missouri, according data from Princeton University's Eviction Laboratory.AdvertisementThis means that millions of families could be facing evictions next week.Some cities and states have done a particularly disgraceful job. Los Angeles spent $23 Million of $236 Million. More than 100,000 people applied for $530,000,000 in aid. Georgia has $552million to spend, and had only disbursed $7 million as of June 15. New York State set aside $2.7 Billion and had only released $117,000.This is because it's a repeat of last year's situation, where cities and states had to allocate $2.6 billion in CARES Act funds for rent assistance. Pennsylvania failed to distribute $108 million of $175 millions in federal rent relief money prior to the deadlines, so most of the cash was redistributed to the Department of Corrections. According to the Center for Public Integrity's investigation, $1 out of every $6 that was earmarked for rent aid last year went towards some other public expense.AdvertisementAdvertisementWhat is the secret to this? There are many explanations.Software problems. Nearly a decade after the healthcare.gov disaster, many government institutions are still unacceptably behind in computer technology. Social workers and tenants have reported difficulties in navigating complicated, glitchy online portals.Second, application design. Many tenants who are in dire need of rent assistance were discouraged by lengthy and complex applications, particularly immigrants without documentation. The National Low Income Housing Coalition identified this problem in a January survey of 2020 rental relief programs. Nearly half of the surveyed programs required Social Security numbers. * Eighty percent said that incomplete applications made it difficult to give cash.The third, landlords. In particular, the money is supposed go to landlordsoften in return for some assurance that they won't evict the tenants for being late for a certain amount of time. It has been difficult to get landlords and tenants together for any common purpose.AdvertisementFourth, outreach. The fourth is outreach. According to the Urban Institute's May survey, less than 6 percent and 11 percent of tenants applied for federal relief. This is a fraction of those who claim they are behind. *AdvertisementFifth, incompetence at the local level. What else can you explain why New York, which has one of the most severe renter-household crises the country, has waited so long for money to be sent to those who really need it?Sixth, existing disinvestment. Washington set up a firehose of cash. But just like the state unemployment system, local housing agencies, and nonprofits that assist low-income tenants in applying for assistance, Washington got overwhelmed. It takes time to build a high-functioning social assistance program. Many organizations are struggling to scale up even after 18 months.AdvertisementIt is worth noting that not all places have been as slow to respond. The Treasury Department cited a partnership between Harris County and Houston, Texas that has provided assistance to more than 36,000 households. Virginia has also been quick to respond. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Philadelphia has distributed more than $122million in utility and rent aid (although it still has thousands of applications). Chicago has delegated some of its citywide allocations to local nonprofits in order to ensure that vulnerable communities are not left behind.This situation is improving marginally. Moody's estimates that U.S. renters owed $52.6 million in January; this figure has dropped to $24 billion. The decline in rent may be due to more than just unemployment insurance or stimulus checks. The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies found that more than half of low income households used their stimulus checks to rent.AdvertisementAdvertisementUrban rental markets are heating back up, with Zillow reporting an increase of 5.1 percent since March's largest quarterly rent rise in record time. Although it is true that the pandemic-era shut downs provided some relief for big-city tenants, who saw their rents drop, not all cities saw this. Vacancy rates dropped in more cities than rose, particularly in Sun Belt areas where renters are proportionately less wealthy. The vacancy rates rose for the best-quality apartments, but they didn't change at the lower end.It is not enough to restore the renter-landlord relation to its pre-pandemic statusquoevictions and homelessness, as well as millions of rent-burdened families. President Joe Biden pledged to increase aid for low-income tenants throughout the country. This should serve as a warning to those who are not able to find help in times of crisis, despite the slow rollout federal rent relief.
