Millions in COVID-19 rent aid isn’t getting to the Kansas City tenants who need it
Sara Jones, who has a bachelor’s degree in finance and a minor in international business, has nonetheless lost her $7-an-hour job — and stands on the doorstep of homelessness due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Where’s the help that Congress intended for people just like her? She can’t find it.
Neither can many others in the Kansas City metropolitan area — if they know about it at all.
Among a $25 billion nationwide rental assistance allocation earlier this year, Kansas City received $14.8 million and Jackson County got another $11.5 million.
But while some has reached tenants who need it — Kansas City passed along $1.6 million in aid in the first month of the program — much more is stuck in bureaucratic hell. It can take a month or more just to hear back after applying for the assistance, if you even know where to do that. And both tenants and landlords are suffering unnecessarily.
To be fair, local governments were hardly set up to disburse millions in new rental assistance, or even to field the many calls about it. Still, Kansas City could meet troubled renters where they are, such as at mass vaccinations, food and job fairs.
And after requiring landlords to register with the city as part of its Healthy Homes rental inspection program a few years ago, it could have had an invaluable database through which to contact the landlords for an emergency such as this. But the landlord registrations were largely made on paper, and didn’t include contact information for renters.
Jones is still scheduled to be kicked to her apartment’s curb June 30 absent some help. “You leave message after message after message, and nobody returns your phone call.”
The KC Regional Housing Alliance of landlords, real estate investors and others has had several virtual events to let Kansas Citians know about the aid, and has referred panicked renters to the right resources. KC Tenants has done the same.
Someone has to do it: A survey in March showed fewer than half of landlords and one-third of renters even knew federal aid was available.
Kim Tucker, executive director of the Mid-America Association of Real Estate Investors, said she had to tell her own landlord sister about the assistance. “The average renter or housing provider is not going to know about it.”
Either the landlord or tenant can initiate an application for the aid, notes KC Regional Housing Alliance President Stacey Johnson-Cosby, but the other has to join in.
One obstacle to tenants getting rental assistance — perhaps the threshold barrier — is even knowing they need it: “I think that some of the tenants are under the impression that, due to the eviction moratorium, they do not have to pay rent at all — and that they will not be liable for any (past due rent) that they may owe,” says Diego Gandolfo, an attorney and co-owner of several real estate companies. “I have to inform them of that.”
Evictions have been a particularly cruel practice during the COVID-19 pandemic, so much so that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its moratorium on evictions that ends June 30. The Biden administration wants to extend it through September.
Of course, it would be even better to avoid the need for evictions altogether by getting people like Sara Jones the rental assistance they need to stay in their homes.
In Kansas City, emergency rental and utility assistance can be found at www.kcmo.gov/city-hall/departments/neighborhoods-housing-services/renthelp.
In Jackson County, go to www.jacksoncountyerap.org. Other resources can be found at www.kcregionalhousingalliance.org/rental-assistance. Or call 2-1-1.