County officially ends rental aid program
The Yuma County Board of Supervisors on Monday agreed to turn over the Emergency Rental Assistance Program to the Arizona Department of Economic Security, without any discussion or fanfare.
“We know enough about the situation,” Chairman Tony Reyes said while immediately calling for a vote.
The county is ending the program as local funds dry up. The program stopped taking applications on Oct. 27 to ensure the total number of applications submitted does not exceed the number of funds available in the program.
Any applications received by Oct. 27 will continue to be processed until funds run out. The program has a backlog of about 485 applications. The available funding is not enough to cover all pending applications. Consequently, the county reached out to the state to request help.
DES agreed to allow any applications that are in the system that have not received funding to be manually input into the state’s portal.
The state agency still has funding for emergency rental assistance, and the state agency agreed to open its portal to Yuma County residents. DES will start accepting applications as early as Nov. 15.
The county will share program data to DES, where the program will continue until funds run out. Details of how and where to apply through DES will be available within the next two weeks, officials said.
The county received a federal allocation of $11.7 million as part of the COVID-19 relief package to help individuals and families suffering from the financial impacts of the pandemic.
In February 2021, the supervisors voted to keep the funding in the county and run a local Emergency Rental Assistance Program instead of sending the funds to DES for implementation, as other jurisdictions had done.
“We decided to keep it local via Western Arizona Council of Governments. DES normally does it statewide, but we felt that the residents in Yuma County needed a little bit of hand-holding through the process. We’re getting to the end of the funding. We need to make a move and join the rest of the state,” Reyes explained on Monday.
In March 2021, the county partnered with WACOG to launch the program to help residents pay for pastdue rent and utility bills and other housing expenses caused by the pandemic. Renters could apply for up to $3,500 in rental and utility assistance per month for up to 15 months. Payments were issued directly to landlords and/or utility companies on the renter’s behalf.
WACOG took in applications and determined eligibility. The applications were then sent to the county, which contacted the landlords, processed payments and issued checks to landlords and utility companies.
Since the start of the program, the county has helped more than 1,300 households from being evicted or having their utilities disconnected. More than $9 million has been paid to landlords and utility providers on behalf of approved tenants, “ensuring housing stability for many county residents,” the county stated in a press release.