Advocates: Rent relief too late for many who moved out
Sneakers squeaking on the tile floor, Matthew Losak pushed down a quiet hallway in one of the three towering high-rises of the Enclave, a massive apartment complex with more than 1,000 units in White Oak, Md. He checked a clipboard covered with half a dozen names and addresses. He then knocked on a door, listened and knocked again.
“I’m from the Montgomery County Renters Alliance,” Losak announced to the man who appeared at the threshold. “I’m here to see if you need any help applying for the rent relief?”
The tenant, shaking off the shock of having a visitor at his door at dinner time on Labor Day, nodded. “They said I make too much money for that,” the tenant, who asked not to be identified, said.
“Who said?” Losak said, pouncing on the opportunity to help in a situation that appeared to be speeding toward a crisis point.
From the county government, Losak’s group and other housing advocates had received a list of renters facing imminent eviction. Now that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national eviction moratorium has ended, those renters could be forced from their homes at any moment.
In response, Losak’s group was mounting a door-knock campaign to directly contact renters facing eviction to see if they have applied for their share of Maryland’s $401 million rent relief funding — a last-minute dash to prevent displacement.
As Losak explained to the Enclave renter, he should still qualify for the assistance despite what he had been previously told. Losak handed the renter — who paid $1,300 in monthly rent — information on how to apply for up to $12,000 in relief, and he urged the man to act fast.
“You already have a judgment against you,” Losak said. “That’s what the red and white paper meant,” referring to a previous notice the renter had seen on his door.
The renter uttered an expletive. Losak began moving back down the hallway, checking the clipboard for the next unit. At least the last tenant was there, he thought. “We’re finding many people are just gone,” he explained. “They’ve already self-evicted.”
The $46 billion rent relief package from the federal government was supposed to help both renters and landlords. Renters could fend off eviction after falling behind due to the economic turmoil of the pandemic; landlords could recoup the financial losses to their businesses.
But in practice, state and local governments have struggled to get that money to renters. According to a recent analysis by the Washington Post, only 12 percent of the first round of the $25 billion of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program was spent in the first six months of 2021. Even less of the program’s second $21.5 billion round had made it to renters as of June 30.
In the months since, rent relief programs have ramped up just as their importance has increased. In late August, the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a revised version of the eviction ban implemented by the Biden administration. As most state eviction protections had already expired in the aftermath of the federal moratorium’s end, rent relief has in many cases become renters’ last hope for keeping their homes.