| State, Local Officials Disbursed Less Than 4 Percent of Rental Aid Through May |
| Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=60000"><span class="small">Katy O'Donnell, Politico</span></a> |
| Sunday, 04 July 2021 08:20 |
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O'Donnell writes: "State and local officials responsible for doling out more than $46 billion in federal rental assistance had distributed just $1.5 billion as of the end of May, according to new Treasury Department data that illustrated a severe bottleneck in the aid."
State, Local Officials Disbursed Less Than 4 Percent of Rental Aid Through May04 July 21
Even as officials picked up the pace of disbursal — they served 160,000 households in May, a 60 percent increase from April — the delivery of the funds remained well behind demand, with fewer than 350,000 households served so far by programs intended to help millions. “State and local governments must do more to accelerate aid to struggling renters and expand programs to meet the scale of assistance needed,” Treasury said in a blog post Friday. “While some state and local programs are increasingly reaching households in need, others lag far behind, and many programs have just launched in recent weeks.” Congress passed two tranches of rental relief in December and March, allocating $46.5 billion to help keep tenants in their homes during the Covid-19 crisis. Last week, President Joe Biden extended a federal eviction moratorium to July 31 amid lingering concerns about how much of the aid had reached landlords and renters. Treasury on Friday said numerous state and local governments receiving the relief funds — including some with larger allocations — failed to open their programs “until May or even early June” and reported little or no household assistance disbursed through May 31. Some 6 million tenant households are behind on their rent, with 1.2 million households reporting they were “very likely” to face eviction in the next two months, according to a Census Bureau survey . State and local officials point out they have had to stand up new programs to distribute an unprecedented sum of taxpayer money. In some cases that entailed hiring new employees and contractors to review applications. |
tate and local officials responsible for doling out more than $46 billion in federal rental assistance had distributed just $1.5 billion as of the end of May, according to new Treasury Department data that illustrated a severe bottleneck in the aid.