Improving Racial Equity via Emergency Rental Assistance

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Black, Latino, and Native American renters faced disproportionately high rent burdens and housing instability. The pandemic has magnified these disparities as workers of color disproportionately work in the industries and occupations that saw the greatest job losses, and communities of color experienced the highest COVID hospitalization rates. While the recently passed coronavirus relief packages promise to provide critical help to many struggling renters, program administrators will need to make explicit efforts to ensure that this assistance reaches communities of color with high levels of need. Without such efforts, some groups will fall through the cracks as some tenants never get any information about the program, have uncooperative landlords, are hesitant to start or unable to complete complicated applications, or cannot provide the full set of required documentation. Take-up of social programs often falls short of need, and this is especially true for vulnerable groups. Emergency rental assistance is no exception.

Yet as a field, we pay far less attention to take-up and its equity implications than we should.

Drawing on both a survey of 220 “first-generation” COVID emergency rental assistance programs (about one-third of the roughly 530 local programs and 90 state or regional programs funded via the CARES Act and other sources), and interviews with selected program administrators, the NYU Furman Center, the Housing Initiative at Penn, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition—where we work— recently released a report outlining steps that localities can take to advance racial equity in their programs. Here we highlight five of those key lessons.

Prioritize Vulnerable Groups in Program Guidelines

One key step that programs can take to advance racial equity is to set selection criteria to prioritize vulnerable populations for assistance. Such priorities can help ensure that ...