The federal government's pandemic-based eviction moratorium will expire tomorrow, but only a fraction of landlords and renters have received any of the relief meant to keep tenants from being evicted and unpaid landlords from going broke, according to an NBC investigation.
"NBC News contacted all 50 states and the District of Columbia about their emergency rental assistance programs. An analysis of responses from 41 states found that 26 of them had distributed less than 10 percent of their first allocations, although several programs had just begun distributing money in June," Bracey Harris and Adiel Kaplan report. "The reasons the aid hasn't reached frustrated landlords and nervous tenants are complex, from the inevitable stumbles that come with setting up new programs to software woes to varied degrees of hesitancy among states to sign off on payments without extensive documentation of need."
The December stimulus-and-relief package had $25 billion to help pay up to a year of back-rent, and the $1.9 trillion package approved in March gave the Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to help people pay one month's utilities and mortgage or rent to help prevent evictions and service cut-offs.
"An NBC News analysis of Census Household Pulse Survey data shows an overlap in some states that have the country's highest percentages of tenants behind on rent and programs that have gotten off to slower starts," Harris and Kaplan report. "In South Carolina, less than 1 percent of funds had been spent by July 15. Of renters in the state taking the survey, 29% said they were behind on payments, the highest percentage in the country. By mid-July, the state's emergency rental assistance program had processed 226 applications."
To see how your area is faring, click here for the Rent Debt Dashboard, an interactive data visualization tool with regularly updated data on rent debt for 40 states and 15 metro areas. The tool is a product of the National Equity Atlas and the Right to City Alliance.
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