Help on way for rental assistance
Lake County foresees receiving $14.5M to aid residents in need
Lake County officials anticipate receiving approximately $14.5 million from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Once the funds come in, officials said a Lake County program would be announced by the end of February.
But, with the spending guidelines and the millions of dollars likely to come in, county officials said they are working to form a partnership with an organization that helps residents with rent assistance to make sure all Lake County residents that need help receive it.
“We want to make sure everybody that lives in Lake County can get access to these funds,” Tim Brown, director of the Lake County Community Economic Development Department, said.
The second CARES Act package included $25 billion “to assist households that are unable to pay rent and utilities due to the COVID-19 pandemic” through the U.S. Department of the Treasury,
and the money has to be spent by December, according to the department’s website.
The money will be distributed to states and local governments with more than 200,000 residents, according to the website.
To receive assistance, renters need to meet three criteria elements: qualifying for unemployment or experiencing a reduction in household income and “experienced a financial hardship due to COVID-19”; demonstrates a risk of experiencing homelessness or housing instability; and has a household income at or below 80% of the area median, according to the website.
State and local officials had until the end-of-day Tuesday to apply for the money, and Lake
County was able to get an application in, Brown said.
On Tuesday, the Lake County Council created a fund for the money received, Brown said.
Of the $25 billion available for rental assistance, Indiana received approximately $448 million, Brown said.
Indiana has to allocate 45% of the $448 million to the seven jurisdictions that have 200,000 residents or more, one of which is Lake County, Brown said.
Ultimately, those seven jurisdictions have access to $201 million of the funds available to the state, Brown said. That money will be divided by population size, he said.
Lake County residents make up 7.2% of the state’s population, which means the county could receive approximately $14.5 million, Brown said.
“That’s a lot of money. That’s seven times the amount we get annually to operate our current grant operations we do here in the department,” Brown said.
In a typical year, the economic development department budgets $75,000 for its rental assistance program, Brown said. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the department has been spending $40,000 a month to help residents with rental assistance through CARES Act funds, he said.
One staff member has been handling the rental assistance requests, so “we don’t have the capacity to try to distribute $14.5 million,” Brown said.
“We can hire folks to do it, or hire an agency that already knows how to do it, or partnership with an agency that already knows how to do it,” Brown said, adding that 10% of the money the county receives can go toward administrative costs, such as forming a partnership with an organization to distribute the money. The funds will be available to the county at the end of the month, Brown said, adding he has written a request for proposals to start the process of finding an organization to work with on distributing the funds.
Once a partnership is formed, Brown said that he hopes to establish the program quickly and by the end of February “announce here’s who you call to get rental and utility help,” Brown said.
As the pandemic continues, it is important to help residents who need it, said Lake County Council President Ted Bilski, D-Hobart.
“We have folks of all different backgrounds and walks of life, so we wanted to tap into each resource available,” Bilski said.