Letter to Hon. Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary - Gillibrand, Colleagues Urge Biden Administration To Quickly Distribute Additional Rent Relief To Low-Income Renters

Letter

Dear Secretary Yellen,

As Senators representing over a quarter of the U.S. population, we appreciate how the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) Program has been a crucial lifeline for millions of our constituents during the COVID-19 pandemic. We write to ask that unused emergency funding that is eligible for reallocation be deployed in an accelerated manner to keep families stabilized as we continue to address the current COVID-19 surge.

Amid the current surge of COVID-19, our states continue to deploy these resources as quickly as possible. However, it is clear that a significant amount of ERA2 funds remains unused across the country, while some grantees, including our states and communities, face demand for rental assistance that exceeds available resources. Based on information provided to us from our states, it is our understanding that they have obligated all funding available.

As you develop guidance for the upcoming reallocation, we echo the requests made in the attached letter sent by the governors of our states on January 13, 2022, urging the Department to:

(1) Release new guidelines for the distribution of reallocated ERA2 funds as expeditiously as possible;

(2) Use its statutory authority to quickly recapture and reallocate unspent ERA2 funds beginning March 31, 2022;

(3) Prioritize reallocating funding to communities with the greatest need over simply keeping funding within states by applying a similar prioritization strategy as that demonstrated in the high needs allocation methodology established in ERA2, which factors in a grantee's share of very low-income renter households paying more than 50 percent of income on rent, overcrowding, rental market costs, and change in employment since the beginning of the pandemic; an

(4) Modify grantee pay-out metrics in the reallocation to better capture grantee demand.

Thank you for your consideration, and we look forward to continuing to work with you to ensure our most vulnerable communities receive these critical resources.

Sincerely,