What Austin and Travis County learned about rental assistance during the pandemic

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Austin and Travis County had no overarching infrastructure in place for distributing rental assistance or otherwise supporting low-income families at risk of eviction.

Then, millions of people across industries lost their sources of income overnight. In an effort to stem a tide of evictions, the city and county enacted eviction moratoriums to keep people in their homes.

Over the next three years, the city and county worked to distribute once-in-a-generation federal funding and to create on-the-spot programs, policies and community partnerships needed to accomplish the task.

The work created an infrastructure that, while scaled back from its pandemic peak, will benefit from continued investment. It also can act as a blueprint for future crisis response.

Lessons learned, quickly

Austin was one of the jurisdictions nationwide that responded before the federal government. In April 2020, the city partnered with the Housing Authority of the City of Austin to create the Relief of Emergency Needs for Tenants program, known as RENT.

Many pandemic-era programs started ad hoc, Nefertitti Jackmon, community displacement prevention officer with the Housing and Planning Department, told the Austin Monitor. For instance, the city of San Antonio disbursed its federal funding through existing city and library staff.

“People pivoted, and it was very creative how they responded,” Jackmon said. “There was always a new scenario that we had never seen before.”

The first round of RENT funding distributed $1.2 million in rental assistance to more than 1,600 low-income families. The pilot program covered a single month of assistance to each household.

“It soon became clear that a more robust solution was needed to protect renters from the impact of the pandemic,” according to the program’s June 2022 close-out report. Then-President Donald Trump had signed the CARES Act into law in March. The city combined those funds with money from Community Development Block Grant-Coronavirus and local general funds to create RENT 2.0.

The housing authority didn’t have the capacity to distribute these funds. To meet the strict federal timelines for distribution, the city hired a third-party vendor to provide technology, accept and screen applications, make eligibility determinations, maintain eligibility documents, manage a call center, and provide data and ongoing reports back to the city.

The second round provided $15 million in rental assistance to more than 4,800 families.

But the program, the first of its kind in the city’s history, still drew criticism from some tenants and nonprofits. Even people whom the program helped complained the required documentation proved burdensome, the lack of communication throughout the process caused stress and uncertainty, and the lengthy wait time for payments caused the accrual of additional late fees.

The city used that feedback to further streamline its processes.

“(RENT 3.0) was based on the prior successful efforts for RENT 1.0 and 2.0, and was further enhanced and improved based on feedback from the community, lessons learned, efficiencies realized, and flexibilities allowed by the treasury,” according to the program’s report. Those efficiencies included prioritizing applicants based on median family income, recent unemployment benefits and history of experiencing homelessness.

RENT 3.0, which drew on funding from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Emergency Rental Assistance program, provided $25 million in rental assistance to another 4,000 families. Finally, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provided $29.7 million in funds. The city used those dollars to create RENT 4.0, serving another 6,300 families, and it also used $5.6 million from its own General Fund to serve another 1,900 families.

The program’s efforts also included marketing, website development and community engagement. It also required constant coordination between the city, vendor, partners and other stakeholders. “It was a well-oiled machine,” Jackmon said of the process by its completion. Still, she added, “It was a heavy lift. We met every week for a couple of years.”

The city also coordinated with Travis County and its rental assistance program to avoid sending the same households funds to cover rent for the same periods of time.

At the onset of the pandemic, Travis County was in a similar predicament to the city in needing to expand its abilities to distribute rental assistance. In June 2020, Travis County Commissioners Court approved $10 million in direct rent, mortgage and utility assistance for county residents, a budget transfer that represented a 355 percent increase in funding for the program.

The money went toward an existing program, but the commissioners expanded both the eligibility requirements and the amount of assistance each family could receive. And that was significant, Travis County Commissioner Ann Howard told the Monitor.

Before becoming a commissioner, Howard had worked with the city’s Ending Community Homelessness Coalition. In the past, she said, the county’s rental assistance didn’t reach many residents or go very far for those it did help.

“It was helpful, but it really kept the person needing the help in a very needy situation,” Howard said. “If you had a month where you couldn’t pay rent, you had to really scramble from all over the place to piece that together. We were just doling out small amounts of cash and hoping it would pay rent.”

In March 2021, the court voted to create the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, committing $10.7 million in federal relief funds to rental assistance.

The county also tied funding to legal representation for those facing evictions, and it worked with Justice of the Peace Court, as well as organizations such as Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and the Austin Tenants Council, to connect those individuals to the resources that could get them caught up.

“At some point, we realized nonprofits that screen tenants for other federal programs have clients who are already known to be eligible,” Howard said. “And so we were able to work (with) people who have housing and who have tenants who are eligible.”

Moving forward

Although the federal pandemic funds are exhausted, the court voted to continue funding the pandemic-era work of Austin Tenants Council and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. Austin Tenants Council will continue helping tenants apply for assistance and relocation funding, reaching out to landlords with tenants who qualify for assistance and mediating evictions between parties. Texas RioGrande Legal Aid will administer attorney representation, provide case evaluations and help tenants negotiate with landlords.

“If we’re getting the return on investment we need, maybe that’s the work that we continue funding,” Howard said. “We don’t have ongoing federal dollars, but we do have General Fund money that we invest every year in the community. I always want to be looking at the outcomes that we’re getting for this public investment.”

Jackmon acknowledged the city’s current efforts are not as robust as those using federal funds during the pandemic. “But this is what we have, and the city recognizes the need for emergency rental assistance in Austin,” she said. “We’re definitely in a better position. Now we do have a framework with how to address emergency needs like this.”

That was displayed during Winter Storm Uri in 2021. The city used the pandemic infrastructure to create a similar framework for distributing disaster assistance.

“The infrastructure was there,” Jackmon said. “The relationship was there. And so, there was some institutional knowledge of how to get this done and who are the partners we can look to to establish that.”

U.S. Rep. Greg Casar represents the 35th Congressional District, which includes a large swath of Travis County. He was a member of City Council at the onset of the pandemic. He told the Monitor the RENT program is “one of the best” initiatives he worked on while at the city and that he’s been asked by leaders across the country how the city achieved it.

“We didn’t have the rental assistance infrastructure ready at the start of the pandemic,” Casar said. “But housing staff, (the housing authority) and the Council members were very committed to making it happen – no matter what. Too many things take far too long at the city, and this was an example of putting something together with the urgency it deserved.”

Casar credited Austin’s low eviction rates during the pandemic to former Mayor Steve Adler for his work getting apartment owners to the table in the eviction moratorium discussion, Council for its eviction ordinance and public employees working in tandem.

But he pointed to recent numbers that indicate eviction rates are skyrocketing since the moratoriums expired and the federal funds have run out. Local governments can’t carry that burden alone, and the same collective effort seen during the pandemic is needed again, he said.

“Even with Covid numbers down, evictions remain a serious emergency for working-class families losing their homes,” Casar said. “We can have extremely low eviction rates again. We just need the public policy that we learned we can have during the pandemic, and that urgency that we had.”

He continued, “We learned during the pandemic we can have a child tax credit, lower evictions, food benefits and expanded free health care. We shouldn’t ditch all that – we could be doing it now, too.”

Lead photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

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