“Nearly 1 million people are evicted in the US each year, mostly for nonpayment of rent. Between 2000 and 2016, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, one in 40 American renter households was evicted, and more than twice that share were threatened with it. The experience of losing one’s home to eviction has been linked to all sorts of adverse consequences, including higher job loss, debt, suicide, and reduced credit access.
Many evicted families are forced to relocate to lower-quality homes in neighborhoods with more crime. Evicted children experience higher food insecurity and lower academic achievement than other low-income kids living in rental housing, partly as a result of having to shuffle between schools and their parents’ declining mental health.”
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“Claudia Aiken, a policy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has already found clear results from Philadelphia. Receiving emergency rental assistance was associated with a lower likelihood of incurring debt, a lower share of tenants reporting that they worried frequently, and a significant decrease in the amount of rent owed among those behind on payments. Other studies on preliminary impacts in Atlanta and Baltimore have found receiving rental aidisassociated with reduced risk of homelessness and lower debt.”
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“As states and cities cobbled together their rental assistance programs, policymakers quickly ran into several issues. Landlords weren’t always eager to participate because accepting the money sometimes came with requirements to forgive past penalties, interest, and court costs; or because participating barred landlords from chasing payments for anything outstanding in the months they received aid. Some states capped available rental assistance so low that many landlords saw accepting it as consenting to de factorent cancellation while they were dealing with their own cash flow problems.
Some programs triedto grease the wheels to induce more participation. APennsylvaniarental assistance program in place before ERAP launched had a monthly cap of $750, regardless of what rent wasowed. Butonly 44 percent of landlords participated, soPhiladelphia policymakers decided to pair state aid with CARES money to offer landlords up to $1,500 per month. This boosted Philadelphia participation to 63 percent.
Still, many landlords just wouldn’t bite. In a national survey of rental assistance programs conducted in spring 2021, 44 percent of program administrators said landlord responsiveness was a challenge. That number rose to 67 percent in summer 2021, and 74 percent in late 2021. As one ERAP administrator explained, “many landlords are not looking to keep unreliable tenants; some refuse to work with us; [and] others are not willing to renew leases.”
Landlord resistance is nothing new in federal housing policy. But to address the issue, Treasury took an unprecedented step. It said thatprograms mustsend money directly to tenants when their landlords don’t cooperate, and clarified that programs can even provide direct assistance to tenants before trying to engage the landlord. Not all programs embraced the idea, but many did.”
https://www.vox.com/23140987/evictions-housing-rent-assistance-erap-tenant