In the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, the risk of mass evictions prompted the federal government to appropriate a historic amount of funding to help state and local governments keep low-income renters housed. In two installments, Texas cities and counties received nearly $1 billion for rental assistance, an unprecedented sum.
But much of that money had a deadline by which it needed to be spent. A report released Tuesday by Texas Housers, a housing policy and advocacy group, found that Emergency Rental Assistance programs around the state varied widely in their success at distributing those funds — resulting in more than $30 million of aid lost when the federal government took it back.
The report, which looked at 10 of 37 local rent relief programs that emerged in cities and counties across Texas, found that staffing shortages, political opposition from local officials, a lack of experience running emergency assistance programs and immigrant communities’ general distrust in government outreach impacted how successful some programs were at getting the aid money to renters and landlords during the pandemic.
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