Idaho loses $22 million in COVID-19 emergency rental aid meant to prevent evictions
Lower-income tenants in Idaho in danger of losing their housing from lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic have lost access to more than $22 million in rental assistance to prevent evictions, after the state didn’t meet federal conditions to keep the emergency aid.
State officials, including Gov. Brad Little’s office, said they continue to offer enough of the funds to at-risk renters throughout Idaho, despite the recent drawback of coronavirus relief aid for federal redistribution. The statewide rental assistance program managed by the Idaho Housing and Finance Association was overfunded from the start, and state law precluded transfer of the money elsewhere, they said.
“More than $100 million will be available to Idahoans for emergency rental assistance if the Legislature approves Gov. Little’s budget request for additional resources to assist Idahoans in need,” Little’s spokesperson Marissa Morrison Hyer told the Idaho Statesman in an email. “Given the current rate of use of these funds at IHFA, this amount appears more than sufficient to meet the demand, likely in part due to Idaho’s low unemployment rate and strong economy relative to other states.”
The Republican governor is also pushing lawmakers to approve spending up to $50 million in other pandemic federal aid to build more housing, she said. Little aims to subsidize hundreds of new housing units across the state that would be affordable to the local workforce.
But the Boise metro area, by far Idaho’s most populous region, encompassing Ada County for a total of nearly 500,000 residents, clamored for those redistributed rental assistance funds. Idaho, including its capital city, hasn’t been immune to the nationwide housing crisis, as Boise tenants struggle with a limited housing supply, escalating rents and a spike in evictions.
As the state received about $176 million in federal emergency rental aid in February of last year, the city of Boise and Ada County accepted a separate $24 million reserved for their residents. All told, Idaho was granted $200 million from the Donald Trump-era COVID-19 economic relief package to keep vulnerable tenants in their homes.
Over the past 11 months, the city and county disbursed all of their money, helping more than 4,600 households that earn less than 80% of the area’s median income. In Ada and Canyon counties, that’s about $42,000 in annual salary for an individual and $60,000 for a family of four.
The separate statewide program, meanwhile, spent $19.5 million to help nearly 5,000 households at the same income levels through mid-December. That left more than $156 million in the state account, according to the IHFA, with a looming disbursement deadline of the end of September. The IHFA and governor’s office operated under the belief, officials said, that the bill passed to accept the federal aid precluded them from seeking transfer of the funds to the city and county’s program.
After the public housing agency depleted its assistance funds paid directly to landlords, the city and county asked that the U.S. Treasury Department transfer Idaho’s unused statewide aid up for redistribution to their emergency assistance program. IHFA’s program, which can cover several months of rent and utilities, serves the state’s other 1.4 million residents, making Ada County renters ineligible for the funds.
The housing authorities’ program focused on “meeting needs as they presented themselves, but also to try to ensure that we don’t run out of money while the need is still increasing,” Deanna Watson, executive director of the housing authorities, said in a phone interview. “Do I think there are more people that need help than have gotten it? Yes, across the state, including Boise and Ada County.”
Together, the city and county sought nearly $43 million more in rental assistance for their combined program as the U.S. Treasury began nationwide reallocations and pulled back more than $33 million from Idaho’s program run by the IHFA. But the federal agency is returning less than $11 million of those funds in response to the city and county’s request, at least in part because the state did not pursue a direct transfer as laid out last fall in the Treasury’s guidelines.
Thousands of lower-income households in Boise and Ada County, hit directly in their wallets by the pandemic, may now be left without emergency rental assistance to prevent future evictions. Rent in Boise is up more than 20% from this same time last year, with the median cost of a one-bedroom apartment now at more than $1,000 per month, and more than $1,200 for a two-bedroom, according to Apartment List, which tracks the metric.
“I know many Boise residents desperately need more help with their rent as we move through this pandemic,” Boise Mayor Lauren McLean said in an emailed statement to the Statesman. “While we got a lot less than we asked for, we will use every single dollar to ensure no Boise resident has to risk losing the place they call home.”
Idaho opts against voluntary transfer
In October, the Treasury Department issued guidance to all states and local governments that received the emergency rental assistance on how money determined “excess funds” would be reallocated. The COVID-19 relief dollars still must be disbursed by the end of September 2022, or be returned to the federal government. A possible extension through the end of the year has been floated.
Under that guidance, the Treasury said it would prioritize keeping the rental assistance dollars in the states where they were first sent, as long as the funds were volunteered for transfer to a “high-performing grantee.” The Treasury ultimately reallocated funds in 14 states, including Arizona, Utah and Wyoming, as part of more than $875 million in intrastate reallocations.
Idaho did not follow the Treasury’s guidance on voluntary transfers of funds because the state did not think it was an option, IHFA spokesperson Ben Cushman told the Statesman by email. The governor’s office made the legal interpretation that state law prohibited Idaho from keeping all the money through the city and county’s program, Morrison Hyer said.
Transferring the state’s funds to the city and county’s program fell “outside the uses and restrictions” of the law passed to accept the money, said Paul Headlee, deputy director of the Legislative Services Office. The office oversees budget requests of government agencies. The governor’s office did not seek to modify the language of the law to try to meet the Treasury’s guidance for keeping the money in state, he said.
As a result, states like Idaho, which did not meet the federal guidance, had little to no control over where their unused funds ended up. Of the $91 million reallocated through an alternate “involuntary recapture” process, Idaho’s $33.1 million was the largest drawback and also represented more than a third of the Treasury’s total take. Only two of the other 13 states that gave up money this way gave back more than $10 million.
Local rental assistance programs in 34 states, plus Washington, D.C., were recipients of the recaptured funds.
Watson, the executive director of the Boise City/Ada County Housing Authorities, called the situation a missed opportunity for Idaho — especially with such pronounced housing needs throughout the Treasure Valley. Given the city and county program’s track record getting the money where it was intended, she was confident it could disburse the extra funds before the federal deadline.
“I see it as maybe a lack of understanding of what the Treasury intended to do in the reallocation process,” Watson said. “We’re hearing heartbreak stories all around the state, and we’re seeing impacts of rising rent rates in the time of pandemic. It’s almost like a perfect storm. So I think that calls for doubling down on trying to ensure we keep money in Idaho, and figuring out how to get the word out to everyone who needs it.”
Debbie, 62, a longtime renter in northwest Boise, said she recently relied upon the assistance funds from the city and county’s program to avoid being evicted. Four months earlier, she said her landlord threatened to throw her out after more than four years of maintaining her rental home and never missing a payment. Then she came up short for the first time last October. (The Statesman agreed to withhold Debbie’s last name based on her concerns of possible retaliation.)
Debbie’s husband died in March 2020 from complications related to COVID-19, and their combined middle-class income — enough to afford $1,200 in monthly rent — was cut in half. Five months later, she was living paycheck to paycheck, when said said her landlord upped her rent to $1,550. Debbie is medically disabled, and after stretching her monthly Social Security check for more than a year, she finally fell behind on payments.
“I was struggling before, and I could barely make the $1,200, but I did it,” Debbie told the Statesman by phone. “I wasn’t expecting my life to be at this point at this age. At 62, I should clearly be set up for retirement, ready to retire and have a nice nest egg. But when you don’t have medical insurance, and can’t have it, you can’t have a savings account, and can’t have little things set aside.”
By that point, the $30 per day late fee was also adding up, and she had few places where she could turn. Debbie ended up calling Jesse Tree of Idaho, which focuses on homelessness prevention in Ada and Canyon counties. She qualified for the nonprofit’s own rental assistance program, including to pay the late fees, to get back on her feet.
Jesse Tree was also part of a group of legal aid groups across Idaho, Utah and Montana that recently won a $1.8 million competitive grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide legal services to low-income tenants facing eviction.
Now with her rent covered for the next few months through the city and county’s emergency rental assistance program, Debbie is plotting a longer-term path forward. She was one of the hundreds of people who applied for a Section 8 government voucher the day the list recently reopened, but if that doesn’t pan out, she doesn’t know what she’ll do next to stay in her rental.
“I feel very defeated. It’s totally unfair, but what can you do?” Debbie said. “It costs a lot of money to move, then trying to find a place. … I love it here. I’ve got the best neighbors ever. My support system is here. It’s the best place ever, so it breaks my heart, too.”
Rising evictions point to growing need
Debbie is exactly the type of person the emergency rental assistance funds were designed to help when the state accepted the federal money last February. The Idaho Legislature approved House Bill 176 to begin disbursing the dollars and tapped the Idaho Housing and Finance Association to run the program.
“I think all of us probably know somebody that’s been impacted by the pandemic in one way or the other,” state Rep. Paul Amador, a Coeur d’Alene Republican and the bill’s co-sponsor, said during debate on the floor. “The data is pretty clear that we do have Idahoans struggling to pay their rent, pay their utilities. Unfortunately this pandemic has particularly hit our lower-income citizens harder than other groups and they are facing a difficult path forward. I think this provides them stability to move forward.”
He eased fears of adding to the growing national debt, noting that if Idaho rejected the funds, the money would simply go to other states for the same purpose. A handful of lawmakers, including Amador, said that if the money would add to the federal deficit, it might as well be spent in Idaho to help its residents. The bill passed with overwhelming support.
At that time, Amador also referenced estimates of about 10% of Idaho renters having already fallen behind on monthly payments, with as many as 34,000 households statewide at risk of eviction. In addition, utility providers in the state already reported a 20% increase in past-due bills since the start of the pandemic, Amador told House colleagues.
The U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention also issued a temporary moratorium on evictions in September 2020 to help stop the spread of COVID-19. After taking office, President Joe Biden extended that through July 2021, before the U.S. Supreme Court eventually halted a follow-up eviction ban in August.
Regardless, evictions continued across Idaho, while the state chose not to install safeguards to support the federal protection. Without local enforcement, evictions around the Treasure Valley increased from 2020 to 2021, Jesse Tree reported. Eviction court hearings in Ada and Canyon counties grew from 824 in 2020 to 873 in 2021, despite the federal ban being in place for much of that period.
There were another 60 eviction hearings in January between the two counties, said Ali Rabe, Jesse Tree’s executive director.
Under Biden’s follow-up COVID-19 economic relief package, the statewide rental assistance program received another $133 million in emergency funds. Those dollars have looser eligibility requirements and can be spent through 2026. The Idaho Legislature has yet to approve any of these funds, though Little’s budget proposal includes a request for about $33 million of them. The remaining $100 million would be held for allocation in future state budgets.
The Boise City/Ada County Housing Authorities has about $15 million of the second round of federal aid as well. But the agency is trying to ration those funds, given the much longer timeline for which they can be disbursed, Watson said.
For the month of January, the IHFA estimates that it distributed another $2.7 million of its current rental assistance funds to eligible Idaho tenants outside of Ada County. The total lines up with the average monthly payout since the state began delivering such funds to prevent evictions, said Cushman, the IHFA spokesperson.
“We have a clear picture of the need. We’re confident we’ll have sufficient funding to meet the program demands through September,” Cushman said.
The amount of money the federal government initially awarded the state was “more than necessary given the Treasury’s timeline,” he added, and was always destined for a national reallocation. Keeping the funds in state, including with future redistributions, remains the Treasury’s priority, as well as the IHFA’s preference, Cushman said.
In the interim, at least 2,500 people in the Treasure Valley entered the homeless system of care as a result of widening evictions, Rabe said. Of that total, four out of every five families became homeless for the first time, she said.
“Although resources are available, for some reason it’s not getting to everyone who needed them,” Rabe, a former state senator, said of the statewide rental assistance funds. “The need’s not going to decrease anytime soon. We’re on a clear path like many other urban areas, experiencing really rapid growth and an inability to keep up with housing demand and need.”
Rabe was a member of the Idaho Senate when House Bill 176 came before the Legislature, and voted to support creating the statewide rental assistance program. She called the loss of more than $22 million in emergency aid for tenants that might otherwise have been transferred to the city and county’s program “disappointing.”
“We definitely would have liked to have access to that funding,” Rabe said. “People are getting 30-day notices, but the vacancy rate is so low, there’s nowhere for people to go. There’s really a bottleneck with rentals and housing for low-income families. There’s a huge need for support for them.”
To apply online for IHFA statewide rental assistance, visit: www.idahohousing.com/hpp
This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
