Posted April 23, 20249:57 pm
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The scenario was predictable: Whenever Step Forward would offer pandemic rental assistance, the nonprofit agency would make online applications available. Often within hours, the nonprofit would reach the limit for the number it could accept.
Demand, though highest early in the pandemic when unemployment escalated, remained steady after that. Step Forward distributed its last dollars in the federally funded program at the end of March. But people continue to contact the agency, looking for pandemic rental assistance. Other nonprofits that distributed pandemic rental assistance, such as CHN Housing Partners (CHN), offer similar stories. More than $170 million in such funding came to this area. Most of it has been given out, and Congress has not renewed the program.
Now that the funding is nearly gone, it is exposing a troubling post-pandemic housing market in Greater Cleveland, government and nonprofit officials responsible for distributing the rental assistance told Signal Cleveland.
Rents have spiked, often ranking increases in Greater Cleveland near the top in national reports. Data from a national report suggests that eviction filings in Cleveland may be creeping up, though they still remain below pre-pandemic levels. Could this be an early sign of the fallout from the troubling combination of rising rents and vanishing rental assistance?
The waning rental assistance has brought attention to the lack of affordable housing in Greater Cleveland, the officials say. It also may be spurring efforts to find solutions. Issues of affordability aren’t limited to low-income residents. Moderate- and working-class residents are having difficulty paying for rent, and even middle-class people are struggling. A family of four, annually earning a little more than $72,000 is eligible for the assistance, according to the county. Increasingly, those with incomes higher than this have been asking for help in paying the rent, but there are usually no programs for them.
Limiting applications for rental assistance to 250 at a time
Travena Golliday, director of Step Forward’s Neighborhood Opportunity Centers, said even as unemployment dropped, demand for rental assistance didn’t diminish. Deluged with applications when it began accepting them in 2021, the agency decided to only take 250 applications at a time in order to expeditiously process them. A few days was the longest it ever took to reach this limit. She said more funding is needed.
“A lot of people are still living paycheck to paycheck,” she said. “Their income has been impacted by inflation and the pandemic. It’s kind of hard for them to get back to the same level they were at before the pandemic or ahead of it. They’re still struggling.”
Kalika Pascol of Garfield Heights said pandemic rental assistance from Step Forward was the major reason she and her family did not become homeless when she lost her job as a property manager. She said higher rents and stubbornly high inflation during the pandemic have eroded the savings of many working- and middle-class families such as hers. They now have no wiggle room when they encounter big expenses such as a major car repair, lose a job or face a huge rent increase.
“We were once part of the working class,” she said. “Because of these high rents and inflation, the working class is now the working poor!”
Local nonprofits distribute pandemic rental assistance
The federal government sent pandemic rental assistance funding to state and local governments, which often contracted with nonprofits to distribute the money. Locally, Cleveland and Cuyahoga County received most of the money. Both primarily contracted with CHN, which distributed $100 million in rental assistance to more than 30,000 households, according to Laura Boustani, the vice president of external affairs.
Step Forward received about $35 million from the state for rental and mortgage assistance, which has served more than 8,000 households, according to Golliday.
Both Cleveland and the county still have pandemic rental assistance dollars to distribute. Cleveland has $16.5 million, said city spokeswoman Marie Zickefoose. Legislation is pending before City Council to have Cleveland contract with the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority to distribute rental assistance.
The county has nonprofits distributing $20 million, but that funding is earmarked for specific populations, such as the homeless, said Sara Parks Jackson, the director of the Cuyahoga County’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
As a property manager, Pascol had a good vantage point from which to view the changing rental market during the pandemic. She saw how rents on two-bedroom apartments often would rise by $300 or more a month. Tenants increasingly came to her for help with the rent. She would direct them to resources.
Then she was laid off. Even though inflation had eaten away at the family’s savings, Pascol believed she would find a job before it ran out. She had to. Pascol’s husband is disabled, leaving her the primary provider for the family of four. It took several months, instead of a few, for her to find a job. The family’s savings were depleted and they were behind two months on the rent. The family was on the verge of eviction when they got rental assistance from Step Forward. The program paid for four months’ rent before Pascol was settled in at a new job.
She said she shares her story to let others know that most using the pandemic housing assistance aren’t looking for a handout. Pascol believes Congress should refund the program.
“It’s not that we have become lackadaisical in paying our bills,” she said. “Life happens.”
Will evictions increase now most pandemic assistance is gone?
Eviction is the worst-case scenario when people can’t pay the rent. A rise in eviction filings could indicate a crushing post-pandemic housing market for many renters, one that could be brought on by the daunting combination of spiking rents, waning pandemic rental assistance and the end of pandemic eviction moratoriums. (In 2020, Cleveland began a Right to Counsel program, which provides free legal help to low-income residents who meet certain guidelines as they fight evictions in Cleveland Housing Court.)
Cleveland’s eviction filings in the last year were 78% of what they had been before the start of the pandemic in 2020, according to Eviction Lab’s analysis of Cleveland Housing Court filings as of March 1. Based at Princeton University, Eviction Lab includes Cleveland among the cities nationally in which it routinely tracks evictions.
The trend in monthly eviction filings since late last year suggests that they are inching back up. During much of 2023, filings were down 20% to 30% from what they had been before the pandemic. But the past several months show filings are down just 14% from pre-pandemic averages.
Also, Census tracts in some neighborhoods did see an increase in filings, according to Eviction Lab data. (Census tracts generally have between 2,500 and 8,000 residents.) They include a Census tract in each of these East Side neighborhoods: one in University Circle, where filings were up 344% from pre-pandemic levels; one in Collinwood, where filings increased 170%; and one in AsiaTown, where filings increased 145%.
Eviction filings also increased in a Census tract in each of these West Side neighborhoods: one in Old Brooklyn, where filings were up 100%; one in South Hills, where filings were also up 100%; and one in Kamm’s Corners, where they were up 54%.
Step Forward had a program with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland in which the agency provided pandemic rental assistance to people “who were in court and were on the verge of being evicted,” Golliday said.
Melanie Shakarian, Legal Aid’s director of development and communications, said the pandemic rental assistance was helpful.
“Having access to rent assistance gives Legal Aid attorneys another tool in our toolkit to help prevent an eviction,” Shakarian said.
Getting evicted increases the chances of a person’s life unraveling, she said. For example, Shakarian said eviction often forces families into a “cheaper living environment that is often less healthy and less safe.” Or, even worse, into homelessness.
Shakarian said the knowledge gained through the pandemic program could serve as an entry point for locally devising a “sustainable” rental assistance program.
“Our team at Legal Aid is hopeful that we as a community in Northeast Ohio can come together with creative options for using, perhaps federal resources at the city and county level, to create rent assistance 2.0,” she said.
Source: Signal Cleveland - Clevelanders are getting squeezed by high rent prices