Only three payments made in rent relief
The Texas rent relief program has made only three payments despite being online for over a month, according to a video shared with the Houston Chronicle.
“We’ve paid three payments, which is better than none but is way too few,” Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs director Brooke Boston said on a Zoom call Friday. “We had some major system issues happen and so it’s really only been maybe, like, 14 days that we’ve been fully in our new system.”
Boston’s remarks came as part of a Zoom webinar run by the Department of the Treasury for agencies administering the Emergency Rental Assistance Program to share best practices and find resources.
“This is a $1 billion rental assistance program that the State of Texas is standing up completely from scratch,” Texas Department of
Housing and Community Affairs spokesperson Kristina Tirloni said in an email. “While the funding will be extremely helpful to many thousands of Texans, it did not come with program guidelines or mechanisms for delivery.”
The Texas rent relief program opened Feb. 15. Tenants and landlords quickly complained about the program’s accessibility. Among the top issues: The website would not allow applicants to enter their phone numbers, no one answered the phone number provided and people could not check their application status.
After a slew of complaints, the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs took down the website and put a new one back up in the hopes of smoothing the process.
“While the website was also improved, the system upgrade referenced on the webinar was the back-end application software system,” Tirloni wrote in an email. “Upgrades to the system were unsuccessful, so a new system was procured by the vendor to provide the necessary program functions.
Boston referenced the new system in the Friday call.
“We actually had to switch out systems partway through,” Boston said on the Friday call. “On average from time of receipt to time we get somebody through and approved in the queue for payment right now might be, let’s say, a month, but a week from now that may be 2 ½ weeks. I don’t want to paint my average as a trend yet.”
After the state switched programs, Tirloni said, the vendor upped their staff to 400 people and is “temporarily redeploying about 75 percent of its staff to focus specifically on assisting applicants.”
“Most applications are currently missing information or documentation necessary to qualify applicants for federal funds,” she said. “We are reviewing all applications and helping applicants provide the documentation necessary to qualify for federal assistance.”
The Houston-Harris rental assistance program, which is separate from the state program, has so far paid or pledged $10.8 million to 3,190 applicants. The city-county program launched the week of Feb. 22.
“It is important to note that this is not an issue limited to Texas,” Tirloni said. “Because there are not previous programs from which to model this new rental assistance program, many states are similarly creating systems.”