Palm Beach County has $45M for rental help

Emergency rental assistance available in Palm Beach County

Tenants in Palm Beach County who have past-due rent or utility bills and are in danger of losing their homes because of a COVID-19-related hardship can now apply for financial assistance.

Qualified applicants can receive up to 12 months of past-due rent, as well as up to six months of future rent.

The county has $45 million to give to renters who meet qualifications established by Congress and the president in late December, as part of a $25 billion Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

Palm Beach County residents can get more information and begin the application process by going to rentalassistancepbc.org.

To be eligible, residents must be in a renter household in which one or more individuals meets the following criteria:

„ ■ Qualifies for unemployment or has experienced a reduction in household income, incurred significant costs or experienced a financial hardship due to COVID-19.

„ ■ Demonstrates a risk of experiencing homelessness or housing instability.

„ ■ Has a household income at or below 80% of the area median for their household size. For a single-person household, 80% of the area’s median income is $49,200. For a two-person household, it’s $56,200. The threshold increases as household sizes increase, up to $104,000 for a 10-member household.

Priority status will be given to households earning 50% or less of the area’s median income, as well as those with pending eviction cases or who have been unemployed for 90 days.

Applicants can apply for rent or utility assistance or both. Landlords can apply on behalf of their tenants as long as they have required documents from the tenant and a letter from the tenant giving permission to apply on the tenant’s behalf.

Over the first eight hours after the county opened its online portal on Wednesday, 475 renters submitted applications seeking a total $2.6 million and another 673 started applications, said Taruna Malhotra, assistant director of the county’s Community Services Department.

Tenants will have numerous ways to apply, including through community services organizations and county library branches.

Five nonprofit organizations will provide assistance with applications and documentation requirements. They are the Farmworker Coordinating Council, Palm Beach County Housing Authority, The Lord’s Place, Pathways to Prosperity and Adopt a Family.

Beginning on March 22, staff members from the county’s Community Services Department will be dispatched to 10 libraries to help residents who cannot or choose not to apply from home.

The first five libraries that will have helpers on hand from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday are:

Palm Beach County (Main) Library, 3650 Summit Blvd., West Palm Beach.

Hagen Ranch Road Branch Library, 14350 Hagen Ranch Road, Delray Beach.

Gardens Branch Library, 11303 Campus Drive, Palm Beach Gardens.

Royal Palm Beach Branch Library, 500 Civic Center Way,

Royal Palm Beach.

Okeechobee Boulevard Branch Library, 5689 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach.

The five additional library branches that will have applications assistants available have not yet been identified.

Required documentation will include a driver’s license or U.S. passport, a Social Security card, pay stubs, bank statements or unemployment qualification letters, eviction notices or pastdue rent statements, lease agreements or utility bills.

Documentation requirements vary depending on how applicants will be qualified for aid. More information is available at the county’s website or from assistants who will help applicants navigate through the process.

Miami-Dade County has been accepting applications through its website since March 1 and will close its portal on March 15 to review applications and decide who qualifies for a share of $60 million secured from the federal government. The county plans to use a lottery-type approach to randomly determine the order of review.

Broward County, with $59 million, is currently offering applications to tenants facing eviction suits who agree with their landlords to attend mediation sessions scheduled by the circuit court. The county plans to open applications to tenants not yet facing eviction proceedings at some point after hiring an outside vendor to manage the process. That could take several weeks to more than a month.

The state of Florida, which received $871 million, has announced scant details about how it plans to reach renters in counties that were too small to qualify for funding to run their own programs. On Feb. 11, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Children and Families confirmed that DCF will be administering the funding and was preparing to “engage the appropriate vendor community” to manage the program.

A month later, on March 10, the same spokeswoman responded to a series of questions about the state’s plans with a brief email saying that DCF “continues to work quickly” to open the program and “will soon engage the vendor community” to administer it.

Past-due renters who miss out on this round of assistance should get another chance later. The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress this week includes another $21.6 billion for rental assistance.