Governor Kathy Hochul has announced a series of changes to both attract more applications and accelerate payments within New York State’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
The state’s rollout of the program, which originated from a federal COVID-19 relief package earlier this year, has been criticized by tenants and lawmakers for being sluggish, with a backlog of 160,000 applications six weeks after the launch of the online application portal in June.
The program would provide up to a year of back-rent payments and up to three months of future rent payments to eligible New Yorkers, as well as up to a year of utility payments.
Hochul said, if a tenant is eligible, they would be protected from eviction for up to one year.
Hochul announced she would dedicate $1 million in funding toward targeted marketing and outreach efforts to get the word out to New Yorkers about the relief program. OTDA will analyze application data to target areas of the state with relatively low numbers of applications.
Tenants qualify based on a variety of factors, including income benchmarks and whether they suffered financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, Hochul plans to form a partnership between legislators, cities and counties across the state to expedite the distribution of funding. New data showing a breakdown of rent relief payments by county will be posted on OTDA’s website later this week to increase transparency.
The state also will reassign 100 contracted workers to work solely with landlords to clarify and obtain missing information and process more applications, and conduct a rapid review of the rent relief program’s workflow.
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