Allegheny County and the city of Pittsburgh jointly announced that the Emergency Rental Assistance Program would be coming to an end in May, even as evictions in the county continue.
New applications will be accepted until March 31. However, for people who have already submitted an application, additional payments can be requested on March 15 — but will not extend past May.
For people who are already receiving rent or utility assistance, they can only request the additional three months of payments if that doesn’t exceed the 15-month maximum for the program.
Since the program’s implementation on March 15, 2021, over 12,000 households have received rental assistance, the county’s Department of Human Services said.
The ERAP funds were “meant to prevent evictions due to the hardships of the pandemic,” the Department of Human Services said in a news release.
However, since Nov. 1 — when an order issued by Judge Kim Berkeley Clark expired — 2,821 evictions have been filed in Allegheny County, according to Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE lab, which has been tracking the eviction data.
The order issued by Judge Clark was implemented after the federal ban on evictions expired, to allow some protections for people receiving rental assistance.
When that order expired, that program had given out over $44 million in rental relief. As of Monday afternoon, that number had jumped to $83 million, according to data collected by the Department of Human Services.
In November, the county had roughly $30 million left in the program, but an additional $6 million was recently awarded to the program, the Department of Human Services said.
On average, each household received about $6,780 for rent.
Since its implementation, the county has paid over $6 million in utility assistance.
A total of 29,679 households submitted an application for rental assistance and about 42% of them ended up receiving funds.
“I think that this program has been very successful,” said Kyle Webster, the general counsel for Action Housing Inc, the nonprofit organization that handles the city’s and county’s rental assistance programs. “It has gone incredibly well … and achieved many of its goals to help people.”
Despite the end of this program, team members will be connecting applicants to programs created for long-term utility assistance like the Dollar Energy Fund and Low-Income Household Water Assistance.
The EARP was “never intended to be a long-term program and funding is running out,” Mr. Webster said.
Despite that, county and city officials “continue to advocate for additional funds,” which includes reallocating federal funds that other communities are not using to Allegheny County, the department’s news release said.
Mr. Webster said the county and various assistance organizations have been meeting for the past couple of months to discuss the “anticipated winddown.”
He said they wanted to create a “thoughtful and equitable” way to end the program and give people early notice.
Hallie Lauer: hlauer@post-gazette.com
First Published: March 1, 2022, 1:26 a.m.
