(C) Ohio Capital Journal
This unaltered story was originally published by Ohio Capital Journal
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Evictions rise to pre-pandemic levels [1]
['Kristian Hernández', 'More From Author', '- February']
Date: 2022-02-11 00:00:00
Lab data shows eviction filings in Columbus were 21% higher in December than the average eviction filings for the same month in 2012, 2013 and 2015. The Columbus Urban League, an advocacy group administering the Emergency Rental Assistance Program there, stopped taking applications in November.
“Due to the enormous response, we are at the maximum number of applications for the funding we have available,” reads the league’s website.
Eviction filings in Milwaukee were 2% above average in December, compared with the average eviction filings for the same month between 2012-2016. The latest U.S. Treasury Department report from November shows the city had spent all its rental assistance.
In contrast, eviction filings in Tampa were down 24% compared with December filings between 2016-2019, but their Emergency Rental Assistance Program did not stop taking applications until Jan. 19.
Requests for comment from rental relief program administrators in Columbus and Milwaukee went unanswered. Tampa officials were not available before publication.
Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group that’s been tracking federal rental relief spending, warned that Houston and these cities are just the beginning of what’s to come. Low-income people across the United States have started to lose their homes at pre-pandemic levels and it’s only going to get worse, she predicted.
“All of these resources and protections worked to keep people stably housed as they were intended to do,” Yentel said. “Now, these resources are being depleted, those protections are expiring, and we are, sure enough, seeing increased evictions in the communities where that’s true.”
As of last week, according to the group, 53 emergency rental relief programs were on hold in 23 states and the District of Columbia and 18 such programs had been closed in Arkansas, California, Florida, Michigan and Texas. Some programs, such as those in California, have closed in order to centralize relief with a state-run program. But others, such as in Texas, have run out of money.
In August 2020, Yentel and other housing advocates predicted an eviction “tsunami” that threatened to leave up to 30 million people without a home.
But nationally, evictions have remained below average in most places. The tsunami never happened, Yentel said, because the federal government put in place a year-long eviction moratorium, provided stimulus checks, expanded monthly child tax credit payments and allocated $46 billion in emergency rental assistance.
Yentel’s group estimates about $19 billion had been spent nationwide as of Jan. 24.
In Houston and Harris County, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program is administered by Catholic Charities, BakerRipley and The Alliance, three nonprofits that have long helped homeless and low-income people in the area.
This past week the nonprofits stopped accepting applications from anyone without an active eviction case and case number, Partain said, because they’re about to run out of funding. She suspects evictions in the area will continue to climb unless a significant amount of money is reallocated to the Houston and Harris County programs.
As of last week, the three nonprofits had spent more than $275 million of the $301 million total award allocated by the U.S. Treasury Department and helped some 69,000 families. They expect the rest of the money to be depleted in a few weeks.
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