New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
State vows to get aid to renters
U.S. Supreme Court overturns eviction ban, raising the stakes
Despite sluggish progress so far, Connecticut officials say they’re on track to meet a looming deadline to dole out tens of millions of dollars in federal aid to help renters struggling financially from the pandemic make payments.
Tens of thousands of Connecticut renters are behind on payments. A
U.S. Supreme Court ruling Thursday night ended a moratorium on many evictions for nonpayment of rent. The court said evictions can resume.
“We aren’t worried about meeting that number,” Dawn Parker, director of Connecticut’s emergency rental assistance program, said of a September deadline. “As long as we meet our obligations, I’m happy. We want to work as efficiently and quickly as we can while preventing fraud and abuse.”
Only about 29 percent, or $68.8 million, of the state’s $235.9 million in federal rental assistance had
been spent as of Friday, even though the federal government distributed the money months ago. But officials say recent adjustments to the distribution mean they’re on track to meet a deadline to obligate 65 percent of the funds by the end of September. States that don’t meet that deadline may risk losing the money.
The aid can be a lifeline for renters like Roxane Balderacchi.
After working for more than 20 years as a server in the restaurant business, the 67-year-old Middletown resident lost her job when the restaurant she was working at opted for deliveryonly service during the first months of the pandemic. She was able to make ends meet for several months, but in August 2020, she started to fall behind.
But Balderacchi was able to catch up thanks to money she received through a government rental aid program. She first received $4,000 through a different program, called the State of Connecticut Temporary Rental Housing Assistance Program last fall.
And about two weeks ago, she got another $9,317 to pay rent owed as well as $3,339 to cover the next three months.
“It makes me feel a lot better. I don’t like to owe anybody,” she said.
Over the next few months, instead of worrying about rent, Balderacchi plans to keep applying for jobs.
“Applications are flowing, and I take a lot of tests every week, that’s for sure,” she said. “I will get back in the workforce and be myself again.”
Balderacchi is one of 8,828 renters in Connecticut to get emergency rental assistance through UniteCT, the state program providing rent assistance to tenants affected by COVID-19.
It covers up to $15,000 in rent and up to $1,500 in electricity payments for households that earn up to 80 percent of area median income and were financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the program has reached only a small share of those struggling to pay rent.
In Connecticut, 63,450 were behind on rent as of early August, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Pulse Household Survey. They were among nearly 8 million people behind on rent nationwide.
The money has been slow to get out across the country. Nationally, about 89 percent of the $46.5 billion set aside for the federal program remains unspent.
Housing experts have blamed the slow rollout on understaffed programs, burdensome documentation requirements, and landlords who don’t want to participate, among other problems.
While aid has started to go out quicker recently, there are still problems that need to be addressed in many states and municipalities, including Connecticut, advocates said.
“We’ve seen over the past few months that states really are beginning to ramp up, but there’s definitely still work to be done on the programs,” said Sarah Gallagher, project director for the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions initiative.
Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that ended a temporary ban on many evictions has heightened the urgency around getting the money to renters.
The ban was set to expire in October. It had been in place since September 2020 when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instituted it to slow the spread of COVID-19 by preventing people from having to enter homeless shelters or move in with friends and family.
Landlord and real estate groups challenged the moratorium
in court, and in a 6-3 ruling, the nation’s top court said Thursday evictions can begin again unless Congress authorizes another eviction ban.
‘Creating the machine’
Housing attorneys said the early rendition of the application process was challenging for many tenants.
“One of the initial issues, for example, was once you uploaded documents, you couldn’t go back and redo them or re-submit,” said Pamela Heller, a staff attorney with the Connecticut Fair Housing Center. “If something was wrong, you were stuck with it. … The actual online platform has improved.”
The federal dollars went out at the start of the year, but Connecticut’s program didn’t launch until March. The first couple of months were spent reviewing software programs, and immediately after the start, officials had to troubleshoot problems and eliminate barriers, Parker said.
“We were building the plane while we were flying it,” Parker said. “The first three months really were creating the machine. It wasn’t expected that you could really get too much out the door at that time.”
The past few months, however, have seen “consistent, steady growth,” Parker said.
Federal and state data show that spending has grown from less than 10 percent of total funds by the end of July to about 29 percent toward the end of August.
“It has gotten better, there’s no question,” Heller said. “I’ve been seeing people actually get money, which I hadn’t seen for months.”
Since the program’s launch, UniteCT has also allowed tenants to self-attest to facts such as income, and tenants in qualified census tracts can use their addresses as their income attestations, Parker said. That’s helped speed up the process.
Initially, landlords were asked
to reduce debt by 15 percent, but that policy was reversed during the summer, Parker added.
‘Still barriers’
Heller said some tenants are still encountering delays in accessing the money, often caused by an online-only application system and landlords who don’t want to participate.
“There are still barriers, pretty significant ones,” she said.
Heller recounted one instance in which she talked a client through how to upload a document, but he didn’t understand what that meant.
“We have found that programs that have online-only applications are creating a barrier for some of the lowest income and marginalized populations who might not have internet access or access to a computer,” Gallagher said.
UniteCT only offers online applications because it makes the review process more efficient and is more secure, Parker said.
The program has resource centers across the state where residents can go to fill out their application. Staff are also available to answer questions over the phone at 1-844-864-8328, and the UniteCT Mobile Bus travels around Connecticut so people can use computers its to fill out applications.
For Balderacchi, the online application wasn’t a problem, even back in March, but she did encounter other issues.
Despite keeping in communication with the company she rents from about the process, Balderacchi said when it came time for the company to fulfill its part of the application process, there was a hitch. The company didn’t want to participate in the program, she said.
The company couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.
Eventually, she was given an eviction notice and was told she had just a few days to leave her apartment in late June or early July 2021. The federal ban on
many evictions for nonpayment of rent didn’t prevent them from being filed, and in some cases, judges would rule that the order didn’t apply.
Heller helped her handle the notice, and she was able to stay in her apartment. Balderacchi has since gotten the money paid against her owed rent and has three extra months of rent paid.
In Connecticut, landlords must have a case number with UniteCT in order to deliver an eviction notice, called a notice to quit, according to a June 30 executive order from Gov. Ned Lamont.
While this helps most of the time because it forces landlords and tenants to interact with the rental assistance program before an eviction can occur, some landlords are still reluctant to participate, Heller said.
In those instances, UniteCT employees will typically call the landlords to see if they can resolve any concerns, Parker said.
While some programs across the country have allowed money to go directly to tenants if the landlords don’t want to participate, in
Connecticut landlords have to agree to participate for tenants to receive money.
However, if landlords refuse and efforts to convince them to participate don’t work, UniteCT will pay for the deposit and three months rent at a new apartment for the tenant, Parker said.
The money is only meant to pay for rent and electricity, not late fees, pet fees or other costs. But in Balderacchi’s case, her landlord applied some of the money to fees.
So attorneys again had to work it out so that she got her rent fully covered. Heller said she and the other attorneys involved have agreed that the application of money to the fees was in error, but it hadn’t yet been corrected as of Friday.
“I just hope they get the rest of it straightened out,” she said.