$15M in rental assistance runs out in 90 minutes
17,000 ‘WE NEED MORE MONEY’: renters crash city application website the second it opens
Jacquelyn Guyton walked into the gym of a north Houston church at 8:15 a.m., still over an hour early but well after other families had begun to gather at 6. She was afraid that if she didn’t fill out an application for rental assistance through the city of Houston at the exact second the portal opened, she wouldn’t be able to stay at her apartment.
She wasn’t wrong about the rush. On Wednesday, the city exhausted its entire $14.4 million stock of rental assistance funds within 90 minutes, underscoring the dire economic situation facing Houstonians who have lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We need more money,” said Joe Higgs, an organizer from The Metropolitan Organization of Houston, a consortium of churches and other groups. TMO helped two churches — including St. Charles Borromeo, where
Guyton waited — train staff to help residents apply for aid.
Tom McCasland, the city’s housing director, said more than 11,800 renters applied for the program and met the city’s eligibility requirements. Officials are aiming to send funds to landlords by the end of the month, he said.
“We know that the need far exceeds the $15 million, which is all the more reason to push for additional federal resources,” McCasland said.
BakerRipley, the Houston nonprofit administering the program, and the Houston Housing Department were flooded with more than 17,000 applications on the signup website. City officials said the program would help at least 6,800 households cover rent.
Many people struggled to get through to the website, which crashed due to the “high volume of visitors,” city officials said.
At St. Charles Borromeo, where renters waited in chairs carefully spaced 6 feet apart, no one got through in
the first hour. Guyton, 52, tried to do the application on her phone. She needed the money: She’s a single mom on disability, she said, the only one who cares for her 11-yearold son. She left him home alone.
As 10 a.m., the promised opening time for the portal, came, Guyton clicked begin. She entered her address. Then — a blank screen.
“I don’t wanna lose out because of their stupid website,” she said, jabbing the phone with her finger. It was 10:53 a.m. She still couldn’t get through. “They should’ve had somebody on standby. People are relying on this stuff.”
She slipped her phone into the pocket of her pink-and-green windbreaker to wait. If she doesn’t get assistance, she said, she’ll be in a shelter.
At 11 a.m., volunteers started clapping: The portal had opened. Guyton sprinted to Mesias Pedroza, a TMO representative, as she pulled out the application on her smartphone.
She clicked submit.
It didn’t go through.
“It’s not doing nothing right now.”
“Wait,” Pedroza said. “Just wait, just wait.”
She went outside to get a better signal. TMO staff on other tables moved through as fast as they could, calling out numbers in Spanish and bellowing “NEXT.”
At 11:08, Guyton came back inside, arms raised: Her application had gone through.
Two tables over, 19-year-old Genesis Reyes helped her father, Alan, through the application. She was one of several children waiting to help translate for their Spanishspeaking parents.
Her father had lost his job because of the virus. Her mother’s hours as a housekeeper had been cut. Reyes had been living in Dallas, working as a waitress, but came home when the restaurants closed. She has two little brothers, 13 and 11.
“It’s hard — my dad and my mom, they don’t have a lot of work and I have two little brothers, and the last week my mom’s been sick,” Reyes said, fiddling with a pink earring.
The Reyeses successfully submitted their application. Their confirmation number came with a warning: “Please note this confirmation is not a guarantee of rental assistance.”
The site crashed again at 11:27, this time with a reason: The funds were gone.
Mayor Sylvester Turner had acknowledged the program would fall short of addressing the full need for rental assistance.
In a letter sent last Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Turner urged the lawmakers to adopt a proposal that would dedicate $100 billion to rent relief and $75 billion in mortgage aid to homeowners facing foreclosure. House Democrats unveiled a $3 trillion relief package Tuesday that includes the housing funds, though the bill appears to face slim odds of passing the Republicancontrolled Senate.
To fund the existing rent relief program, which includes $600,000 in administrative costs, city officials dipped into the $404 million in federal aid they received through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, a roughly $2 trillion stimulus package.
Turner has said the funds would fail to cover the city’s COVID-19 needs, which include hundreds of millions of dollars in costs related to testing, contact tracing and protective equipment.
The mayor did not say whether the city plans to devote additional funding to rental assistance, though he suggested such a move would require more aid from Congress.
“Specifically as it relates to the rental assistance program, hopefully there will be a stimulus package for renters,” Turner said. “We used $15 million from the federal CARES Act. We could easily have used $100 to $200 million. Easily.”
Under the city’s rent relief program, landlords are required to waive all late fees and interest for rental payments.
They also must allow tenants to enter a payment plan for any rent above the maximum $1,056 allotment and rescind any prior notices to vacate.
Tenants, meanwhile, were eligible if they earn less than 80 percent of the area median income or qualify for certain other governmental assistance programs, such as Medicaid or SNAP.
As volunteers packed up St. Charles Borromeo, an organizer leafed through her notebook. They’d helped about 50 families get through.
There were 13 names written in red pen of people who had come too late.
“We used $15 million from the federal CARES Act. We could easily have used $100 to $200 million. Easily.”
Mayor Sylvester Turner