Majority of COVID-19 rental assistance used to keep lowest-income families in their homes, says Treasury

Billions of dollars in rental assistance distributed to help keep people in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic is largely going to low-income families, according to new data from the Treasury Department. Many of those recipients were people of color and women. 

Since last year, the Treasury Department has been regularly releasing information on how much money has been going out as programs struggled to get off the ground — after Congress approved more than $46 billion in Emergency Rental Assistance. But this is the first time the government has released this kind of snapshot of the Americans benefiting from the pandemic-related aid.  

More than 3.8 million rental assistance payments were made to eligible households last year, with more than $25 billion in assistance spent to help those in need.

The data show more than 80% of the rental assistance was delivered to very low-income households last year including those earning 50% of area median income and below. And more than 60% of that went to households making just 30% or below the area median income. 

At the same time, the Treasury found the money is helping a diverse group of recipients. More than 40% of primary applicants receiving assistance in the final three months of 2021 identified themselves as Black, similar to numbers seen in earlier quarters of 2021. About 20% identified as Latino. At the same time, more than two-thirds of the households receiving rental assistance were headed by women. 

"When we began implementing the Emergency Rental Assistance program, one of the goals was to use the resources to prevent an eviction crisis from hitting our country's most vulnerable families. A year later, Treasury is pleased to report that the vast majority of rental assistance has gone to keeping the lowest-income families in their homes during the pandemic," said Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo. "This wasn't by accident."

To help raise awarenes about the funds available to help renters who are having financial problems, the Biden administration has been teaming up with state, local and tribal governments, as well as housing and low-income advocacy groups, court systems and legal groups. But there have also been more targeted efforts over the past year aimed at contacting hard-to-reach and vulnerable communities, including through faith organizations. 

The new rental assistance data comes six months after the Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration's eviction ban – raising alarms that millions of families could be forced from their homes. 

But even thoughmore landlords have filed cases since the CDC moratorium ended, there have still been far fewer evictions in the past six months than there were in a typical pre-pandemic year, according to tracking by The Eviction Lab at Princeton University. They suggest there could be several factors helping keep eviction levels down – but one of them could be the emergency rental assistance. 

While more than half of the rental assistance has now been spent or obligated, and the data shows it is helping low-income families, the Treasury Department acknowledges there is more work still to be done, as billions of dollars to help Americans in need is still available to be spent.

"Much of the need that's still out there is concentrated among very low-income people and people of color and people in rural communities," said Noel Poyo, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Community Economic Development. "This is an inflection point for us. It's a validation that what we've been doing is making progress, but we've still got money to move, we've still got people to get to."

Last fall, the Treasury Department began the process of reallocating unused funds from the first tranche of rental assistance to other rental programs that still have high demand. Some of the funds were moved from state programs to city programs, including $90 million to Indianapolis and more than $60 million to Milwaukee. But states with high numbers of renters, including California, New York, New Jersey and the District of Columbia, also received reallocated rental assistance ranging from $50 million to $17 million respectively.  

Some state and local officials are already asking for more money. But the reallocation of the second tranche of funds to those facing higher demand won't begin until the end of March. The Treasury Department is already warning officials not to expect the second round of emergency rental assistance to be as large.

Officials have been reminding states and local communities that they may also use the $350 billion in state and local funds included in the American Rescue Plan last March for efforts to help keep people in their homes. With that money, there's even more flexibility in how it can be used to provide rental assistance.