NLIHC released today Emergency Rental Assistance in Action, a collection of stories showing how the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s (Treasury) Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) Program has benefited the lowest-income renters around the country. Provided by members of NLIHC’s End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) 2021/2022 Cohort, the stories highlight tenant and landlord experiences with ERA that align with important takeaways from the ERASE project’s 2022 report Emergency Rental Assistance: A Blueprint for a Permanent Program.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact caused millions of people to fall behind on their rent, placing them at risk of eviction and increased exposure to a life-threatening virus. In response, the federal government created the ERA Program, a temporary initiative administered by Treasury and designed to help low-income renters address rent and utility arrears, and appropriated an unprecedented $46.55 billion in funding for the program.
NLIHC’s ERASE project seeks to ensure that this historic aid reaches the lowest-income and most marginalized renters and that pandemic-era emergency rental assistance programs and renter protections continue into the future. To this end, the ERASE project published Emergency Rental Assistance: A Blueprint for a Permanent Program in 2022. The report gathers together research, innovative tools, and shared experiences involving the implementation of ERA to provide a blueprint for establishing permanent ERA programs. In particular, the report recommends that future ERA programs be accessible, visible, and preventative.
The stories included in the new supplement illuminate the many ways ERA programs have succeeded in promoting accessibility and visibility and being preventative. Among other things, the supplement reveals how flexibilities, direct outreach, court partnerships, and housing navigation services were instrumental in ensuring that ERA benefited tenants and landlords.
Read the new supplement, Emergency Rental Assistance in Action, here.
Read Emergency Rental Assistance: A Blueprint for a Permanent Program, here.
