Bay Area sees little rental assistance aid
A housing association CEO says that ‘the system isn’t working’
San Jose property manager Jeff Zell submitted 70 applications in March to the state for pandemic-related rent relief.
More than two months later, all he’s heard is that his applications are being considered.
Tenants at the 2,000 Santa
Clara County properties Zell manages piled up $1.25 million in unpaid rent during the COVID-19 pandemic. The applications he filed to the state’s Housing Is Key website would cover about $850,000 in unpaid bills, he said.
The reimbursement would spare dozens of tenants from potential eviction and allow property owners to catch up on mortgage payments, expenses, taxes and maintenance costs they’ve carried for more than a year, Zell said. But the state program has stalled, he said, “and there’s no sign of relief.”
Across the Bay Area, frustration over a patchwork of local and state emergency rental assistance programs is mounting among debtburdened landlords and tenants. The widespread complaints about the federally funded, $2.6 billion relief effort include cumbersome applications, an unreliable website, slow case management, conflicting guidelines and relatively little money spent to stave off eviction. By the middle of May, the state had received requests totaling $473 million and distributed about $20 million.
The state says initial bottlenecks have been straightened out since the program’s March 15 launch, including better coordination between state and local efforts to ensure applicants receive payments from only one source. Relief efforts in San Jose and San Francisco, for example, launched only recently. The state this week streamlined its application process. The Bay Area has received nearly $500 million from the federal relief program.
Landlords already are con
cerned the rental assistance programs, in some cases set up hastily by local governments and nonprofit agencies with a complex system of federal, state and city rules and a deep pool of money, will become as ripe for fraud as the state’s unemployment program. Without proper oversight, landlords say tenants could file multiple applications or direct payments to themselves and skip rent.
“The system isn’t working,” said Derek Barnes, CEO of the East Bay Rental Housing Association. The group has set up a hotline and help stations at its Oakland headquarters and has assisted about 150 landlords and tenants with applying.
But at a recent association meeting, no members reported receiving payments. Small landlords in a similar group in Alameda County say less than 10 of their 650 members have gotten reimbursements, despite intense interest in the program.
“The metric is, have you been paid?” Barnes said. “And the answer is no, you haven’t been paid. It’s broken.”
The federal government rushed to bring rent relief to workers left unemployed and families teetering on homelessness because of income loses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tenants suffering wage losses during the pandemic and making less than 80% of their community’s median income are eligible for state relief.
Individual city and county programs, like those set up in Oakland, San Francisco, Fremont, and Santa Clara and Alameda counties, are largely reserved for renters making less than 30% of the community’s median wages.
But despite the influx of cash, landlords say the system isn’t working.
A typical tenant application runs 36 pages — far too burdensome for many renters, said Joshua Howard of the California Apartment Association. CAA members have complained about lack of transparency and updates. Some have received small checks but without documentation crediting a specific tenant or unit.
Many landlords have not been receiving rent for more than a year. “It’s important for the money to be distributed quickly,” Howard said.
Oakland opened its own program to renters in early April, using $12.8 million in federal funds. The city received more than 2,400 applications and shut its program May 17, despite expectations it could run through March 2022. The city had made more than 140 payments directly to landlords as of last week and expects to spend all of its funds, according to a city spokesperson. New applications will now be handled by the state.
The nonprofit Bay Area Community Services has helped establish and distribute funds allocated to Oakland. Jonathan Russell, director of housing strategy, said the group contacts all landlords and has directed almost all payments to them.
The complicated systems, however, have strained the small staffs at the community services group and many other nonprofits helping poor residents apply. “The application process has been so onerous for tenants,” said Debra Ballinger, executive director of Monument Impact in Concord.
Simon Chen, chief operating officer of Oaklandbased developer Madison Park, said his company started notifying tenants about relief funds in January, more than two months before Oakland opened its program.
Madison Park, one of Oakland’s largest landlords with about 1,400 units in the city, helped tenants submit 60 applications, seeking $696,000 to erase rental debts, Chen said.
The company has received just one small check for one unit, and Chen said it was unclear whether the money came from the relief program or private charity. “It begs the question, where is it? How is it being distributed?” Chen said. “You thought the unemployment fraud was bad last year.”
Concord landlord Bill Phelps also helped his tenants apply. The couple have been good renters but lost their jobs in the hospitality industry, he said. Phelps and the family applied for aid to cover part of their $32,000 COVID-19 debt to him. They’ve been approved, denied and now left in limbo to appeal their case.
Help with the application process has been spotty. One help desk operator, Phelps said, told him to reboot his computer, try the online system again and call 211 if the website still wasn’t working. “I feel bad,” Phelps said, “and I absolutely do not want to do an eviction.”