Tarrant County to close its rental assistance applications. Here’s what that means.
Tarrant County will close its emergency rental assistance program at the end of April, following other local and statewide program closures in recent months.
The county’s program, like others across the nation, has been funded with federal dollars to assist renters who might otherwise face eviction during the pandemic. In two funding periods, the county’s emergency rental assistance program received about $50 million.
The county program will close to new applicants on April 30, but applicants who are in the system by then will still be considered for rental assistance. Existing applicants who have already been approved will not be affected by the program’s closure, because the county has set aside enough funding to provide those families with the maximum of 18 months of assistance.
According to numbers submitted to the county commissioners court, the program has paid out about $12 million in rental assistance and has an additional “obligation” of about $17 million. That additional obligation is the money set aside to continue assisting families that are already receiving assistance.
“If they’ve already qualified for the program and are already receiving assistance, they don’t need to do anything,” said Kristen Camareno, assistant county administrator. “It doesn’t mean that their funding ends. The reason that we’re closing it is to ensure that those who have already been accepted in the program, continue receiving assistance, as well as to allow those who still need to apply to have time to apply.”
Tarrant County’s rental assistance program was slower than others to distribute its funds. The Texas Rent Relief program, which served residents statewide including in Tarrant County, closed its portal in November. The city of Arlington’s program closed in December, and the city of Fort Worth’s program closed its portal at the end of March.
The local programs have served different sets of residents. The city programs were open only to residents of those cities, which left the Tarrant County program open to residents of the county who live outside of Arlington and Fort Worth. The city programs spent their funds quicker than the county program, in part because of the different service areas, Camareno said.
As it became clear that the county’s funds were not moving out the door as quickly, the county opted to send some of its funds to the other local programs. The county sent $10 million of its emergency rental assistance to the city of Fort Worth’s program, and $5 million to Arlington’s program.
“They were spending at a higher rate, obviously they’ve got the larger, pretty concentrated urban populations,” Camereno said. “They went through their funding a little bit faster.”
Also in an effort to spend the funds more creatively, the county allocated $750,000 in rental assistance for a new program to help county residents pay for security deposits, rental application fees and “hard to house” fees. That program, called the Lease Incentive Program, began accepting applications on April 1 and had received more than 40 applications as of Tuesday, according to county staff. The program’s application is on the Tarrant Conty Housing Assistance Office’s website.
There are still other resources available for county residents in need of rental assistance. While the federally funded emergency rental assistance program had broad latitude to assist residents, the county also had similar programs in place before the pandemic. Camareno said those programs, including the county’s Emergency Solutions Grant Program, typically have stricter requirements.
Camareno said the county is putting together a resource list for other local programs that can help residents after the emergency rental assistance program closes.
Data from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University indicates that the Fort Worth area has continued to see a significant number of eviction filings. In February, the area saw more than 3,000 eviction filings — the highest single-month number since the pandemic began. That number fell slightly to just under 3,000 in March, although Eviction Lab’s data indicates that eviction filings were still happening at a higher than average rate that month.
This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 3:58 PM.
