Dear Emergency Rental Assistance Program Grantee — Reallocating Emergency Rental Assistance Funds (October 4, 2021)

Summary

This is a letter from the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury dated October 4, 2021 to Emergency Rental Assistance Program grantees. It says Treasury published new guidance that day outlining the process for reallocating Emergency Rental Assistance funds, designed to maximize the amount of assistance delivered and the number of households served. It says Treasury will carry out the statutory reallocation requirement in three ways, by making more resources available to high-performing grantees based on need, by incentivizing adoption of best practices, and by working to ensure funds do not go unused by programs unable to assist struggling renters and landlords. It states that some grantees have not demonstrated sufficient progress and some received more funding in their initial allocation than will realistically be needed.

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Issuer: Congressional materials
Document type: Department Of The Treasury Letter From Deputy Secretary Adeyemo Was Sent To Era Grantees A
Case: Department Of The Treasury Letter From Deputy Secretary Adeyemo Was Sent To Era Grantees About The Reallocatio

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“Dear Emergency Rental Assistance Program Grantee — Reallocating Emergency Rental Assistance Funds (October 4, 2021).” Original at home.treasury.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/department-of-the-treasury-letter-from-deputy-secretary-adeyemo-was-sent-to-era-grantees-about-the-reallocatio/, SHA-256 fa0e4e6e9d6f93549994c3dc8f29d8901b02764d8a6686300320b06ccd45ee7c.

Full text

                      THE DEPU TY SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
                                          WASHINGTON




                                         October 4, 2021


Dear Emergency Rental Assistance Program Grantee:

Today, the Treasury Department published new guidance outlining the process for reallocating
Emergency Rental Assistance funds. Treasury's reallocation approach is designed to maximize
the amount of assistance delivered and the number of households served with the funds Congress
has appropriated to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on renters and landlords.
Treasury will carry out the statutory requirement to reallocate funds to accomplish this goal in
three ways: (1) make more resources available to high-performing grantees based on need,
(2) incentivize adoption of best practices among grantees to help them streamline and improve
their processes, and (3) work to ensure funds do not go unused by programs unable to assist
struggling renters and landlords.

In December 2020, Congress passed the Emergency Rental Assistance Program under the
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (ERAI) to keep renters in their homes and to limit the
long-term economic scarring caused by evictions. Congress initially allocated funds based on
population. However, Congress also anticipated the need to respond to the pandemic's evolving
conditions through the reallocation of funds to jurisdictions with the greatest needs and capacity
to deploy funding.

From the beginning of this program, Treasury has provided technical assistance to grantees,
released new guidance to reduce barriers to access, published best practices, and spoken with
hundreds of program administrators to support their efforts to expedite assistance to tenants.
Many grantees have embraced Treasury's recommendations and were able to quickly disburse
funds; others that initially struggled to build the necessary program infrastructure are now seeing
increased progress after adopting Treasury's recommendations to speed up assistance. Still, some
grantees have not demonstrated sufficient progress or intent to make changes in their programs to
get resources into the hands of eligible tenants and landlords. There are even some grantees that
received more funding in their initial allocation than will realistically be needed in their
jurisdiction in the next year.

Treasury's approach to reallocation addresses each of these types of grantees by redirecting
resources to top-performing grantees serving high-needs areas, providing grantees an opportunity
to present a program improvement plan in order to keep their existing funds, and recapturing
dollars from the lowest performers that have been unable or unwilling to speed up assistance. In
addition, Treasury is working with grantees that may seek to voluntarily reallocate funds to other
jurisdictions-for example, states seeking to send money to cities or counties within their
jurisdiction-to maximize the program's impact.

Grantees that have not obligated at least 65 percent of their ERAl funding by September 30, will
be required to submit a program improvement plan. As part of this plan, the grantees will report
whether they have implemented the best practices described in Treasury's guidance, including

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