Hearing — Protecting Renters During the Pandemic: Reviewing Reforms to Expedite Emergency Rental Assistance

Summary

A virtual hearing before the Committee on Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Seventeenth Congress, First Session, dated September 10, 2021 (Serial No. 117–45) and titled Protecting Renters During the Pandemic: Reviewing Reforms to Expedite Emergency Rental Assistance. The witness list names Morris, Kadeem of Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, Salazar, Margaret of Oregon Housing and Community Services, Schwartz, David of Waterton, Winn, Gilbert of WinnCompanies and Yentel, Diane of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In her opening statement, Chairwoman Maxine Waters says State and local governments have used only 11 percent of the $46.6 billion in emergency rental assistance funds available. She describes her Expediting Assistance to Renters and Landlords Act of 2021, which would allow landlords to apply directly for back rent.

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Issuer: Congressional materials
Document type: Protecting Renters During The Pandemic Reviewing Reforms To Expedite E 500813A0Bb
Case: Protecting Renters During The Pandemic Reviewing Reforms To Expedite E 500813A0Bb

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“Hearing — Protecting Renters During the Pandemic: Reviewing Reforms to Expedite Emergency Rental Assistance.” Original at www.govinfo.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/protecting-renters-during-the-pandemic-reviewing-reforms-to-expedite-e-500813a0bb/, SHA-256 cec74376f0bc99ad01d872a4e373761323b20f8ef50371413d5536dd6fb958d9.

Full text

PROTECTING RENTERS DURING THE
PANDEMIC: REVIEWING REFORMS TO
EXPEDITE EMERGENCY RENTAL ASSISTANCE

VIRTUAL HEARING
BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services

Serial No. 117–45

(

U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
45–862 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021

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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
MAXINE WATERS, California, Chairwoman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York PATRICK MCHENRY, North Carolina,
NYDIA M. VELÁZQUEZ, New York Ranking Member
BRAD SHERMAN, California FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York BILL POSEY, Florida
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri
AL GREEN, Texas BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan
EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri ANN WAGNER, Missouri
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado ANDY BARR, Kentucky
JIM A. HIMES, Connecticut ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas
BILL FOSTER, Illinois FRENCH HILL, Arkansas
JOYCE BEATTY, Ohio TOM EMMER, Minnesota
JUAN VARGAS, California LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
JOSH GOTTHEIMER, New Jersey BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas ALEXANDER X. MOONEY, West Virginia
AL LAWSON, Florida WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio
MICHAEL SAN NICOLAS, Guam TED BUDD, North Carolina
CINDY AXNE, Iowa DAVID KUSTOFF, Tennessee
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois TREY HOLLINGSWORTH, Indiana
AYANNA PRESSLEY, Massachusetts ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
RITCHIE TORRES, New York JOHN ROSE, Tennessee
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts BRYAN STEIL, Wisconsin
ALMA ADAMS, North Carolina LANCE GOODEN, Texas
RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania VAN TAYLOR, Texas
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, New York PETE SESSIONS, Texas
JESÚS ‘‘CHUY’’ GARCIA, Illinois
SYLVIA GARCIA, Texas
NIKEMA WILLIAMS, Georgia
JAKE AUCHINCLOSS, Massachusetts

CHARLA OUERTATANI, Staff Director

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CONTENTS

Page
Hearing held on:
September 10, 2021 .......................................................................................... 1
Appendix:
September 10, 2021 .......................................................................................... 67

WITNESSES

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2021
Morris, Kadeem, Supervising Attorney, Community Legal Services of Phila-
delphia ................................................................................................................... 5
Salazar, Margaret, Executive Director, Oregon Housing and Community Serv-
ices (OHCS); and Vice Chair, National Council of State Housing Agencies
(NCSHA) ............................................................................................................... 7
Schwartz, David, CEO, Chairman & Co-Founder, Waterton; and Chair, Na-
tional Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) .................................................... 9
Winn, Gilbert, Chief Executive Officer, WinnCompanies ..................................... 12
Yentel, Diane, President and CEO, National Low Income Housing Coalition
(NLIHC) ................................................................................................................ 11

APPENDIX
Prepared statements:
Morris, Kadeem ................................................................................................ 68
Salazar, Margaret ............................................................................................. 73
Schwartz, David ................................................................................................ 83
Winn, Gilbert .................................................................................................... 99
Yentel, Diane .................................................................................................... 107

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PROTECTING RENTERS DURING
THE PANDEMIC: REVIEWING
REFORMS TO EXPEDITE
EMERGENCY RENTAL ASSISTANCE

Friday, September 10, 2021

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 12:09 p.m., via Webex,
Hon. Maxine Waters [chairwoman of the committee] presiding.
Members present: Representatives Waters, Sherman, Green,
Cleaver, Perlmutter, Foster, Gottheimer, San Nicolas, Axne,
Adams, Dean, Ocasio-Cortez, Garcia of Illinois, Garcia of Texas,
Williams of Georgia, Auchincloss; McHenry, Posey, Huizenga, Wag-
ner, Barr, Williams of Texas, Hill, Emmer, Zeldin, Loudermilk, Da-
vidson, Kustoff, Gonzalez of Ohio, Rose, Steil, Timmons, Taylor,
and Sessions.
Chairwoman WATERS. The Financial Services Committee will
come to order. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare
a recess of the committee at any time.
As a reminder, I ask all Members to keep themselves muted
when they are not being recognized by the Chair. The staff has
been instructed not to mute Members, except when a Member is
not being recognized by the Chair, and there is inadvertent back-
ground noise.
Members are also reminded that they may only participate in
one remote proceeding at a time. If you are participating today,
please keep your camera on, and if you choose to attend a different
remote proceeding, please turn your camera off.
Today’s hearing is entitled, ‘‘Protecting Renters During the Pan-
demic: Reviewing Reforms to Expedite Emergency Rental Assist-
ance.’’
I now recognize myself for 4 minutes to give an opening state-
ment.
From the very beginning of this pandemic, I have sounded the
alarm about the urgent need for congressional action to avert a
massive spike in our national eviction crisis. As Chair of this com-
mittee, I understand the devastating impacts that evictions have
on families, and I also understand how much landlords, particu-
larly small, mom-and-pop landlords, are struggling because of un-
paid rent.
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I also recognize that evictions increase the spread of COVID, and
have the potential to seriously set back our national economic re-
covery. That is why I have worked around the clock on this issue.
I am reminded, as I have worked on this issue, that we have ex-
tended the moratorium between the Congress of the United States
and the CDC 6 times. Thankfully, due to the hard work of this
committee, in 2020 Congress passed $25 billion in emergency rent-
al assistance and provided an extension of the Federal eviction
moratorium.
Several months later, under the leadership of President Biden,
Democrats passed an additional $21.6 billion in emergency rental
assistance as part of the American Rescue Plan Act.
But our work is not done. I am very concerned about data show-
ing that State and local governments have only used 11 percent of
the $46.6 billion in emergency rental assistance funds that are
available. There is no question that the funds are not reaching
landlords and renters quickly or widely enough.
In addition, the Supreme Court’s action along partisan lines to
lift the CDC’s eviction moratorium puts millions at risk of eviction,
even as the Delta variant causes a deadly resurgence of the virus.
That is why I have introduced new legislation, the Expediting
Assistance to Renters and Landlords Act of 2021, which is designed
to make sure that individuals and families are not put out of their
homes while this virus continues to harm communities across the
country.
This bill would allow landlords to apply directly for back rent
they are owed, even if a renter is unresponsive, as long as the land-
lord provides notice and meets other conditions, including a re-
quirement that tenants may not be evicted for at least 120 days,
and that the landlords would be paid for those 120 days following
the first request for assistance.
The legislation would also require grantees receiving emergency
rental assistance funds to accept attestations from tenants, and to
provide funds directly to tenants when the landlord is unresponsive
or refuses to participate.
The legislation also gears up outreach. Working very closely with
the Treasury, we have come up with many ways to modify these
applications. So the legislation, again, also gears up outreach to in-
crease public awareness of the availability of emergency rental as-
sistance funds, providing funding for mailings, radio, TV, and inter-
net ads, and ensures that grantees have the resources and help to
get the funds out the door.
These steps and others in the bill will cut down barriers pre-
venting the robust rental assistance funding that Congress has pro-
vided from reaching renters.
Today, we will also discuss legislation that Ranking Member
McHenry has introduced regarding rental assistance.
While I have some serious concerns with the ranking member’s
bill, I believe that we are aligned in our goal to expedite assistance
to those in need, so I want to work with him, and I am hopeful that
we can work together and that this could be a bipartisan bill. I look
forward to discussing both bills with our panel of experts today.
I now recognize the ranking member of the committee, the gen-
tleman from North Carolina, Mr. McHenry, for 5 minutes.

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Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for holding to-
day’s hearing, and thank you for those encouraging words of out-
reach now that we are 5 months past when committee Republicans
filed our bill, the Renter Protection Act. And I want to thank you
for attaching that bill, which is supported by every Republican on
the committee, to this hearing.
The bill makes common-sense reforms to Treasury’s rental assist-
ance programs to get help to renters and landlords now. It is a bill
we should have considered months ago, before the eviction morato-
rium expired, and before renters and landlords had the rug pulled
out from underneath them.
Committee Republicans have been raising the alarm since it be-
came clear that the Treasury Department was failing to get renter
relief out the door. To state the obvious, the Emergency Rental As-
sistance Program isn’t working.
Congress gave the Treasury Department more than $46 billion to
help renters and property owners survive the pandemic. Back in
May, I asked Treasury to provide basic data that would help us un-
derstand where all that money is and why it hasn’t reached rent-
ers. They couldn’t answer those questions. And they still can’t.
We had a hearing late in July with the HUD Secretary, who was
profoundly unprepared to answer basic questions about this impor-
tant program. We asked, ‘‘Is rental assistance money being used to
help COVID-impacted families?’’ and she told us, ‘‘I have no idea.’’
Let me repeat that. The HUD Secretary said, ‘‘I have no idea.’’
That is unacceptable.
The whole process has been unacceptable. It has been 2 months
since the Federal eviction moratorium expired, and several weeks
since the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s last-
minute extension, and here we are, again, asking, why isn’t the
program working and how can we fix it?
Is Secretary Yellen here? No. Did the Majority invite her? No.
And she is in charge of deploying these moneys. Committee Repub-
licans did invite her, and to no one’s surprise, she didn’t agree to
come. And, again, she didn’t come to answer these basic questions
that we all have, on both sides of the aisle.
Three days ago, Democrats finally put forward their alternative.
You may have not heard or read about it, so I will summarize it
for you: more red tape; more bureaucracy; and more delays. Simply
put, the Democrats’ bill will not fix the Biden Administration’s ab-
ject failure.
Here is what we should be doing. First, we should consolidate all
of the rental assistance programs into one easy-to-manage program
for localities to administer.
Second, we need to reform the program so that money goes to
property owners to settle back debts, so that families can stay in
their homes.
Third, we need to make it easier for property owners to partici-
pate on behalf of residents.
And finally, we have to require grantees to move faster, for ex-
ample, by accepting bulk applications.
It seems like Democrats in Washington forgot that the purpose
of the program is to pay back rent. This isn’t difficult. To get the
program back on track, it simply requires that our solutions be tar-

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geted, timely, and tied to COVID. But the bill put forward by
Democrats would only make things worse, not better.
So, instead of actually solving problems today, there will be more
finger-pointing at the previous Administration by my Democrat
friends, and more proposals to empower liberal activists by my
Democrat friends, and zero plans to hold the Biden Administration
accountable for their failures, which is very typical of my Democrat
friends right now. This is a shame.
Since it appears our bill won’t get a fair shake in this committee
this morning, I filed a discharge petition for the Renter Protection
Act. I would encourage every Member to sign onto it.
And with that, I look forward to the panel, and I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. Much of what the
ranking member is saying needs to be done, is in this bill.
The gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver, is recognized for one
minute.
Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you. The legislation being discussed at this
hearing, the Expediting Assistance to Renters and Landlords Act
of 2021, proposes several changes to Emergency Rental Assistance
(ERA) 1 and ERA 2 which will ensure that the Federal emergency
rental assistance funding that we fought so hard for on this com-
mittee is continuing to reach those who are in need.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge, far too many
American families have been, and will be subject to the horrors of
an eviction. Many small landlords who have invested their retire-
ment incomes now have to worry about whether or not their prop-
erty will go into foreclosure.
Like many of you, I have been frustrated at the slow pace at
which State and local governments have been implementing the
Emergency Rental Assistance Program, and there is no time to
waste in making the reforms necessary to get funds out the door
as quickly and efficiently as possible.
I look forward to hearing from today’s witnesses, and I want to
thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for your leadership, and for con-
vening this hearing. Thank you very much. I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. You are so welcome.
I now recognize the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Hill, for one
minute.
Mr. HILL. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Where is Secretary Yellen? It has been 5 months since the Treas-
ury Secretary testified before our committee. Yet, the Biden Admin-
istration seems to feel no sense of urgency to help renters and
mom-and-pop landlords who need it most, no sense of responsibility
to answer to Congress, and no sense of shame over a complete mis-
handling of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
Instead, we have the distinguished chairman from South Caro-
lina, Mr. Clyburn, browbeating governors and trying to shift blame
to them from the Treasury Secretary. It is a mistake, and we are
hurting over a million families who are estimated to be evicted in
the next couple of months.
Republicans have a better solution, the Renter Protection Act,
which would simplify the needlessly-complicated Rental Assistance
Program, get the money out faster, and actually help the people

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that Congress intended to help: those who lost their jobs and got
behind on their rent due to COVID-19.
If my friends across the aisle are serious about a solution, I urge
my friends to include the Renter Protection Act in Monday’s com-
mittee action.
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much.
I want to welcome today’s distinguished witnesses to the com-
mittee. First, we have Mr. Kadeem Morris, a supervising attorney
with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia.
Second, we have Ms. Margaret Salazar, the executive director of
the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department.
Third, we have Mr. David Schwartz, the CEO, chairman, and co-
founder of Waterton, and the chair of the National Multifamily
Housing Council.
Fourth, we have Ms. Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the
National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Now, I will recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr.
Lynch, to introduce our last witness.
Mr. Lynch?
Is Mr. Lynch on the platform?
Okay. Well, while we are waiting for Mr. Lynch, who wanted
very much to introduce this witness, I will move on, and I will in-
troduce Mr. Gilbert Winn, the CEO of WinnCompanies.
Each of you will have 5 minutes to summarize your testimony.
You should be able to see a timer on your screen that will indicate
how much time you have left, and a chime will go off at the end
of your time. I would ask you to be mindful of the timer, and quick-
ly wrap up your testimony if you hear the chime. And without ob-
jection, your written statements will be made a part of the record.
Mr. Morris, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to present your
oral testimony.
STATEMENT OF KADEEM MORRIS, SUPERVISING ATTORNEY,
COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES OF PHILADELPHIA
Mr. MORRIS. Good afternoon. My name is Kadeem Morris, and I
am a supervising attorney in the housing unit of Community Legal
Services of Philadelphia. Community Legal Services helps more
than 10,000 people per year with legal problems that threaten their
home, health, and income, and more than 2,300 households per
year who are facing evictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
I would like to thank Chairwoman Maxine Waters and the mem-
bers of the House Committee on Financial Services for inviting me
to speak today.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the pre-existing hous-
ing crisis in the United States, causing more people to join the
ranks of the housing insecure. The ability to access safe and afford-
able housing is not guaranteed in the United States. However, the
collateral consequences when a family is evicted are clear and im-
mediate.
The faces of the evicted are the faces of the vulnerable members
of society. Studies have found that single mothers, most commonly
Black and Brown, make up the majority of those affected by evic-
tions and forced moves, the grim reality in Philadelphia, where 71

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percent of the annual eviction cases are filed against communities
of color.
The pandemic has exacerbated difficulties for these communities,
mainly Black, Brown, seniors, and people living with disabilities.
These communities are most likely to have lost income during the
pandemic, putting them at greater risk of an eviction filing and
subsequent homelessness and housing instability beyond the pan-
demic.
The health consequences combined with the financial hardship of
having your job disappear has shattered the already shaky founda-
tion upon which vulnerable families stood. People who were strug-
gling to make ends meet before the pandemic were forced to make
the bitter choice of risking their health and the health of the fami-
lies that they live with by working during the pandemic and poten-
tially contracting the virus, or facing the long-term consequences of
unemployment and increased household expenses.
In Philadelphia, the effects of delivery of rental assistance to vul-
nerable households has prevented displacement and, as a result,
prevented the community spread of COVID-19.
The Philadelphia Eviction Diversion Program partners with the
City’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program to ensure that people
are able to access assistance for the benefit of both landlords and
tenants. Through targeted outreach and supportive services, Phila-
delphia was able to build a rental assistance program that could
preserve the landlord/tenant ecosystem.
The demographic data provided by the City of Philadelphia dem-
onstrates that rental assistance dollars are reaching vulnerable
communities: 65 percent of the families assisted were Black or Afri-
can American; 60 percent of the applicants were female; and over
70 percent of the households served had a household income below
30 percent of the area median income.
Landlords who were struggling with their mortgages were paid,
and tenants who were behind on their rent were not displaced.
The Eviction Diversion Program provides a forum by which land-
lords and tenants can meet and discuss issues without the pressure
of a court filing. The program also uses highly-skilled, impartial
mediators to create a forum where landlords and tenants can re-
solve issues, and tenants are automatically assigned a housing
counselor who works with them throughout the process, assisting
them with the rental assistance application, and coordinating any
other supportive services.
For rental assistance programs to operate effectively, administra-
tors cannot create additional hoops for tenants and landlords to
have to jump through. If the stated goal of the program is to pre-
vent evictions of vulnerable households, the municipalities and
other administrators should limit the amount of paperwork and
forms of verification that tenants and landlords need to submit.
Under the American Rescue Plan, households who have not expe-
rienced a change in income, but have experienced an increase of ex-
penses, are eligible to apply. This opens the door for a significant
portion of the population, including the elderly and disabled, to
participate in the program.
Increased expenses during the pandemic are reflected in the cost
of food, cost of transportation, and often, the cost of burying family

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members who have suffered from COVID. These vulnerable house-
holds are bearing the increased costs without an increase in in-
come, and most are unable to afford market-rate rent based on
their income.
Sadly, H.R. 3913, the Renter Protection Act, proposes to limit the
usage of the unspent funds under the American Rescue Plan. If
getting the money out to landlords and tenants is a top priority,
the Federal Government should not take any steps to limit the
flexibility that is currently given to program administrators, and
set up both programs and supportive services that gets the money
paid out.
The proposed changes outlined in the Emergency Rental Assist-
ance Program in H.R. 5196, the Expediting Assistance to Renters
and Landlords Act, are vital to the survival of the landlord/tenant
ecosystem.
Providing flexibility for landlords to apply without tenants who
are unresponsive, requiring grantees to inform those tenants that
their arrearage has been paid, and that they are covered by the
120-day eviction prohibition places landlords and tenants on even
footing by allowing tenants to self-advocate with the information.
The satisfaction of outstanding money judgments and the sealing
of cases are vital, as evictions have long-term consequences.
In closing, I would like to encourage the Federal Government to
take steps to adopt the proposed changes outlined in H.R. 5196,
and make it easier and create additional flexibility for agencies to
administer their rental assistance programs. Thank you for your
time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Morris can be found on page 68
of the appendix.]
Chairwoman WATERS. Next, we will go to Ms. Salazar. You are
now recognized for 5 minutes to present your oral testimony.

STATEMENT OF MARGARET SALAZAR, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
OREGON HOUSING AND COMMUNITY SERVICES (OHCS); AND
VICE CHAIR, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE HOUSING AGEN-
CIES (NCSHA)
Ms. SALAZAR. Thank you, Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member
McHenry, and members of the committee. Thank you for the oppor-
tunity to testify today. For the record, my name is Margaret Sala-
zar, and I am the executive director of the Oregon Housing and
Community Services Department, and I also serve as the vice chair
of the National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA).
My agency, like 27 other State housing finance agencies (HFAs),
serves as a Statewide administrator of the Emergency Rental As-
sistance Program. Every month, State ERA administrators have in-
creased the rate at which they have distributed assistance. States
delivered more than $1.6 billion in the month of August, the high-
est level of any month to date.
State programs, on average, have funded more than one-third of
the applications that they have received, with many funding 50
percent or more.
The ERA Program has provided a lifeline to more than 1 million
vulnerable renters, and made thousands of landlords whole. Since

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the beginning of this calendar year, my agency, OHCS, has obli-
gated more than $204 million in rental assistance.
This is the equivalent of our entire ERA 1 allocation, but it rep-
resents a combination of both State and Federal funds. Of this
total, nearly $35 million is Federal ERA assistance.
In the last month, our agency has taken bold action to speed up
application processing. We have hired more than 60 temporary
staff, and brought on an outside vendor to boost capacity for our
local partners on the ground. We have created self-attestation
forms, disseminated informational videos, and translated materials
into multiple languages. We have partnered with community-based
organizations to increase outreach and support, particularly in
communities of color.
But there are limits to what ERA can achieve as currently au-
thorized. We agree with Chairwoman Waters that legislation is
needed to further reform this program, to greatly strengthen its ef-
fectiveness.
NCSHA supports Chairwoman Waters’ Expediting Assistance to
Renters and Landlords Act. We also encourage you to make several
additional statutory improvements to further strengthen the pro-
gram, which are in my written statement.
Any ERA program reforms must reflect the fundamental bal-
ances that agencies at all levels of government must strike. The
first is balancing renter protection with landlord participation.
NCSHA has repeatedly acknowledged the extraordinary efforts of
landlords to keep tenants safely housed during this pandemic.
While some landlords have declined to participate in rental assist-
ance programs, others have been unable to do so, because a tenant
is not responsive or has vacated the unit, leaving the landlord with
unpaid arrears.
We support the provisions in Chairwoman Waters’ proposal, to
allow landlords to apply for ERA on behalf of tenants even if the
landlord is unable to gain the renters’ consent, or because the ten-
ant is not responsive or has vacated the property.
The second important balance is between equity, efficiency, and
accountability. ERA administrators have been accused of unneces-
sarily prioritizing documentation requirements to prevent fraud
over the urgent need to make rental assistance available. But even
with the new flexibilities in U.S. Treasury rules as of 2 weeks ago,
the ERA statute and Treasury requirements still impose significant
accountability on ERA administrators.
Our experience in the field tells us that verbal assurances from
U.S. Treasury will not guide Federal agency oversight, either
through Federal or State or local audits.
State and local officials are on the line for meeting this unprece-
dented emergency, and we are acting in good faith while we work
to balance urgency and accountability.
We support the provisions in Chairwoman Waters’ proposal that
would provide a safe harbor to grantees so that they would not be
subject to liability, to repay assistance provided in good faith, rely-
ing on the attestation of the tenant.
The third balance is between current and coming demand. My
team in Oregon and my colleagues around the country are com-
mitted to helping as many eligible renters, as quickly as possible.

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9

We understand the urgency. The unevenness of the economic recov-
ery and the clear demand for the program suggest that ERA will
become even more needed in the months ahead.
In addition, there are indications that utility arrearages remain
substantial. Estimates of unpaid utilities range from $10 billion to
$30 billion.
We also support the provision in Chairwoman Waters’ proposal
that would extend the time period during which an individual
household may receive ERA assistance to up to 24 months.
The Administration has accurately said that the launch of ERA
required building a new national infrastructure for rental assist-
ance and eviction prevention that did not previously exist.
Additional improvements to the ERA statute can help build out
that infrastructure for an even greater impact.
Thank you, and I will be glad to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Salazar can be found on page 73
of the appendix.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Ms. Salazar.
Mr. Schwartz, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to present
your oral testimony.
STATEMENT OF DAVID SCHWARTZ, CEO, CHAIRMAN & CO-
FOUNDER, WATERTON; AND CHAIR, NATIONAL MULTI-
FAMILY HOUSING COUNCIL (NMHC)
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member McHenry,
and members of the committee, it is my privilege to appear before
you today to speak on behalf of the multifamily rental housing in-
dustry, the National Multifamily Housing Council, the National
Apartment Association, and our nation’s 40 million apartment
households on the urgent reforms needed to the Emergency Rental
Assistance Program, or ERAP.
My name is David Schwartz, and I am CEO and chairman of
Waterton, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with regional offices
throughout the United States. Waterton is a real estate investment
and property management company with a focus on U.S. multi-
family properties.
I am also the current chair of the National Multihousing Council,
or NMHC.
Our country has faced unprecedented challenges for the past 18
months, creating significant hardships for America’s renters and
jeopardizing the stability of the housing sector. We commend the
work of this committee in creating the Emergency Rental Assist-
ance Program, and appreciate your continued work to ensure the
ability of ERAP to serve those in need.
Throughout this crisis, rental housing owners and operators have
continuously worked to address the needs of our residents, employ-
ees, and communities, deploying various means to accommodate
the housing challenges presented by COVID-19, despite their own
financial uncertainty and economic losses.
The apartment industry knows better than anyone the impor-
tance of providing a safe, secure place to call home, and it is a re-
sponsibility we do not take lightly.
But the housing industry cannot shoulder COVID-relief efforts
alone. Moreover, housing providers were severely impacted by evic-

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tion moratoriums which just merely shifted the economic hardships
of the pandemic to housing providers.
One-size-fits-all Federal moratoriums were, and are,
unsustainable, and fail to address the underlying financial distress
of residents.
Instead, ERAP is a critical stabilizer for residents and housing
providers alike, and the most effective mitigation tool at our dis-
posal. This is why it is urgent to focus on implementing workable
solutions for renters and housing providers facing barriers and
delays in the distribution of vital rental assistance funds.
The apartment industry is playing a key role in helping execute
the Rental Assistance Program and to secure benefits for their resi-
dents. Given the widely varying nature of rental assistance pro-
grams, and the multijurisdictional footprint of many apartment
firms, this necessitates a significant commitment of resources and
staff to vet dozens, or even hundreds of programs, with differing
eligibility, application, and distribution policies.
We applaud this committee’s focus on reforming the program,
and appreciate that H.R. 5196, the Expediting Assistance to Rent-
ers and Landlords Act of 2021, and H.R. 3913, the Renter Protec-
tion Act of 2021, address many of our concerns.
My written testimony provides detailed recommendations for
unlocking the flow of ERAP funds and addressing barriers to the
delivery of relief to those in need.
In particular, we support efforts to help jurisdictions ramp up de-
livery of rental assistance benefits, including streamlining onerous
application documentation requirements, ensuring eligibility aligns
with those residents in need of support, leveraging housing pro-
vider capabilities to assist with application processes, and embrac-
ing practices and technologies with proven operational success.
Importantly, we caution against the imposition of new program
requirements unrelated to the accelerated distribution of funds
that further or create new barriers to participation in ERAP pro-
grams.
Instead, we urge a singular focus on those efforts that can lessen
the burden of program administrators and applicants while improv-
ing the outflow of benefits.
There is also a pressing need to address the ability to secure
ERAP funds when residents are unwilling or unable to cooperate
with the application process. Congress must enable housing pro-
viders to apply for rental assistance on behalf of residents who are
unresponsive, have vacated units, or are otherwise unavailable.
Without action to address ERAP’s current limitations and in-
creased participation in the program, renters are faced with further
uncertainty and a mounting debt cliff, while housing providers are
forced to address rental losses through foreclosure, bankruptcy, re-
moval of the property from the rental stack, and other measures
with long-term market impacts.
We are dedicated to working in partnership with policymakers at
all levels on addressing the challenges of COVID-19, while advanc-
ing proven solutions for long-term housing affordability.
This committee’s attention to addressing the root causes of hous-
ing instability is vital, and we are committed to efforts that would
bolster housing assistance to renters, increase housing provider

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participation in Federal housing programs, break down barriers to
provision of rental housing, and increase housing of choice for rent-
ers.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Schwartz can be found on page
83 of the appendix.]
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, Mr. Schwartz.
Ms. Yentel, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to present your
oral testimony.
STATEMENT OF DIANE YENTEL, PRESIDENT AND CEO,
NATIONAL LOW INCOME HOUSING COALITION (NLIHC)
Ms. YENTEL. Thank you. Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member
McHenry, and members of the committee, thank you for the oppor-
tunity to testify today.
When the Supreme Court lifted the Federal eviction moratorium,
it eliminated the last Federal protection keeping 6.5 million fami-
lies who were behind on their rent stably housed. The unprece-
dented resources that Congress provided for emergency rental as-
sistance has yet to reach many of them. Now, they are at risk of
losing their homes as the Delta variant surges.
The urgency of getting assistance to tenants and landlords can-
not be overstated, but many communities are spending their ERA
allocations much too slowly. Just $7.5 billion of the first $25 billion
of ERA has been spent or obligated. While ERA helped nearly 1
million households through July, at least another 1.2 million sub-
mitted applications but have yet to receive aid.
Many others struggle to complete applications due to complexity,
inaccessibility, or documentation requirements. Some programs are
successfully scaling up. New Jersey, Virginia, Texas, Massachu-
setts, and Washington, D.C., have all spent over half of their ERA
1.
Six States have spent more than 30 percent, and several States
have made major recent improvements. Dozens of cities have spent
over 70 percent of their ERA 1. These programs make clear that
success is possible.
But they are outliers. Seventeen States and many localities have
spent less than 10 percent of their first ERA allocation. Some were
slowed down by State legislatures or city councils. A few received
more ERA than needed due to Congress’ faulty formula allocation.
Many struggle with landlords’ refusal to participate in programs.
But the primary issue with slow ERA spending is that many pro-
grams are not following clear Treasury and White House guidance
and are not adopting evidence-based best practices.
Slow-spending ERA programs tend to do little outreach. They
don’t hire enough staff to process applications. They have long and
complicated applications with overly burdensome documentation
requirements.
For example, fewer than 17 percent of programs explicitly allow
renters to use self-attestation to document income or housing insta-
bility, this, despite Treasury guidance that has, since March, al-
lowed self-attestation for all eligibility criteria.
Only 28 percent of programs explicitly allow direct-to-tenant as-
sistance, despite it being permissible and critical to keeping renters
housed when landlords refuse to participate.

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It is unfortunately clear by now that if flexibilities and best prac-
tices remain optional, many programs will not adopt them. So, the
Biden Administration should continue to use all available tools, in-
cluding their ability to recapture and reallocate ERA funds, to re-
quire best practices in all programs.
And Congress should consider statutory changes to turn flexibili-
ties and best practices into requirements.
Legislation introduced by Chairwoman Waters builds off of exist-
ing Treasury guidance, and addresses the root causes of slow ERA
spending.
NLIHC has deep reservations about allowing landlords to receive
ERA without tenant involvement. The legislation provides impor-
tant protections in such cases to lessen fraud or tenant harass-
ment. These protections must remain and be expanded as the bill
moves forward.
Congressman McHenry’s legislation would halt most program
spending by first requiring Treasury to rescind and redo guidance,
then requiring programs to make changes counter to best practices,
and by prohibiting use of ERA funds for needed staffing or tech-
nology. The bill would ensure that the needs of many landlords and
renters go unmet.
There are proven and simple ways for ERA programs to expedite
assistance: hire staff; do robust outreach; simplify applications; use
self-attestations; and provide direct-to-tenant assistance.
The best programs are already doing this. Those that aren’t
should course-correct as Texas, California, New York, and Con-
necticut have done, and as South Carolina and Arkansas an-
nounced recently that they will do.
For those that don’t or won’t, both the Biden Administration and
Congress should require these improvements.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to
your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Yentel can be found on page 107
of the appendix.]
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Ms. Yentel.
And Mr. Winn, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to present
your oral testimony.
STATEMENT OF GILBERT WINN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
WINNCOMPANIES
Mr. WINN. Good afternoon. Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Mem-
ber McHenry, and members of the committee, it is my privilege to
appear before you today to speak on behalf of our organization,
WinnCompanies, and the more than 300,000 residents who call our
apartment communities home. Thank you for this invitation.
My name is Gilbert Winn, and I am the CEO of Winn, a devel-
oper, owner, and manager of multifamily housing founded in Bos-
ton 50 years ago. WinnCompanies is the largest operator of afford-
able housing, and the sixth largest multifamily operator of housing
in the country.
We manage over 600 rental communities, on behalf of a diverse
range of clients—private owners of all types, nonprofit groups, com-
munity development corporations, tenant-owned affordable co-ops,
and even public housing authorities.

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We manage mixed-income communities with local housing pro-
grams or Federal programs like Section 8, or low-income housing
tax credits. We manage naturally occurring affordable housing as
well. We also manage more than 10,000 unrestricted market rat-
ings.
WinnCompanies works in 23 States, in diverse geographies, from
the Northeast, to the South, to the West. Our company is also one
of the nation’s largest providers of housing-based community serv-
ices.
Why is this background important? Because it illustrates that we
bring an informed firsthand perspective, covering nearly all con-
stituencies of what is and what isn’t working on the ground when
it comes to emergency rental assistance, and the goals generally of
housing stability and eviction diversion.
As both an owner and an operator, we play a direct role on the
ground in fulfilling the dual intent of the ERAP program, which is
both to assist renters and to assist landlords.
Today, I will first talk about our housing stability goals and the
fundamental importance of rent collection in that endeavor. I will
then detail the specific successes and challenges we faced in access-
ing the ERAP program.
And I will conclude with our proposed revisions that we think
should be urgently implemented to make it more efficient.
While we are here to discuss the ERAP program, we all under-
stand it is but one component of housing stability. In early 2020,
WinnCompanies launched a holistic national housing stability pro-
gram. The goal was to reduce non-payment rent evictions by 50
percent across our portfolio through a combination of upstream,
consistent interventions.
The result is that WinnCompanies has had zero evictions for
nonpayment of rent since the start of the pandemic. These results,
and our program, have been recognized by my fellow witnesses
here at NMHC, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
As we are all gathered here today, it should be no surprise that
emergency rental assistance is the single-most important compo-
nent of that housing stability program in avoiding evictions. We
know this from experience, and we applaud this committee for rec-
ognizing the need for reforms.
We understand that this $46 billion program was designed to as-
sist both tenants and owners. This is not a choice between renters
and profits. Rent is fundamental to the ability of our company and
our clients, particularly our nonprofit owners, to operate and main-
tain existing apartment communities and to build affordable hous-
ing in the future. It is a virtuous ecosystem.
In addition to mortgage payments and real estate taxes, as rent
goes uncollected, variable operating costs that affect everybody’s
quality of life must be decreased, such as preventative mainte-
nance, landscaping, security, trash pickup, and resident services.
Staff hours at each property are cut if this happens, which
means the paychecks of frontline workers are decreased.
All in all, I am very proud of how the multifamily industry has
stepped up during this pandemic. The vast majority of owners and
operators are on the front lines, keeping homes safe and occupied.

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Now, in terms of ERAP, we have extended tremendous time, ef-
fort, and resources in order to make the rollout of the program as
successful as possible.
We have participated in 20 working groups across the country to
design and administer the funds. We have participated in forums
held by the apartment industry and the legal services community.
At the State level, we have worked with leadership to address
program glitches in portals and application processes. At the local
level, we help convene our peers to share best practices.
We have held 54 separate, 2-hour trainings to walk our team
members through every step of their areas’ individual ERA proc-
esses.
In terms of tenant communication and partnership, we have es-
tablished contacts with administrative teams, created marketing
materials, and begun a near-constant tenant outreach campaign in
every apartment community, including engaging with local church-
es, schools, youth organizations—
Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Winn, your time has expired. Thank
you very much for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Winn can be found on page 99
of the appendix.]
Chairwoman WATERS. I now recognize myself for 5 minutes for
questions. Mr. Schwartz, Ms. Yentel, I am troubled by the number
of landlords and renters who remain unaware of the availability of
rental assistance. According to the Urban Institute, more than half
of renters and 40 percent of landlords are still unaware of Federal
assistance.
I would like to share with you a little story about something that
I was involved in just a week or so ago. I know a landlord with
5,000 units. I went to him to ask him what was going on with his
rental units. He told me that only 40 percent of his renters had ap-
plied. I asked him why, and he said he did not know.
And then I asked him, Have you ever thought about using your
community rooms with a person, or persons, and a computer or so,
to invite your renters to come to get assistance in applying for rent-
al assistance? He said, no, they had not done that.
I went a step further. I called Legal Aid, I put them together,
and I taught him how to do the notices to pin to the doors to let
people know that assistance was available now in the community
area of one of the largest of his complexes, for them to come.
On the first day, 90 renters showed up. Legal Aid showed up
with organizers and one or two lawyers, and they assisted every-
body who came that day in applying for rental assistance.
Now, you talk a lot about what you have done, Mr. Winn. Have
you seen anything like the operation that I just described to you?
Mr. WINN. I’m sorry, Chairwoman Waters. Can you repeat that?
Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. Would anyone else like to respond
to that? Ms. Yentel?
Ms. YENTEL. Yes, Chairwoman Waters, thank you. I have seen
some communities doing that kind of robust and equitable outreach
that you mentioned. That is exactly the kind of outreach that is
needed in local communities.
But there are many communities where that is not happening,
and as you say, we are seeing a significant number of both land-

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lords and tenants not being aware that emergency rental assist-
ance is available in their communities, or not knowing how to ac-
cess it.
This could be a result of language barriers. It could be challenges
with various access to technology, or it could be simply that the
education, the outreach, is not happening.
So, we urge program administrators to work with community-
based organizations who have trusted relationships in some of the
more marginalized communities where some of the greatest—
Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, Ms. Yentel. Thank you very much.
I want to move on to—Mr. Schwartz, have you seen the kind of op-
eration that I just described to you, where the landlords use their
community rooms, or their space, to invite in the renters with no-
tices that they put on their door, and then they get the assistance?
I added to it Legal Aid, because I brought Legal Aid in to do it,
but I think the landlords ought to be thinking about doing it. What
do you think?
Mr. WINN. Yes. With our own experience, and I know our peers,
other operators in our industry are opening up business centers.
The people in most need, the lowest income, may not have access
to computers or WiFi.
The application process is very cumbersome. In your State of
California, there are 18 pages of manual input, and it is very com-
plex. A lot of our residents only speak Spanish, and a lot of the
forms are only in English, so we have to bring bilingual employees
on our team to help them translate it.
A lot of the forms or the websites require downloading paper-
work, like proof of loss of job, or paycheck stubs. A lot of the resi-
dents don’t have scanners, so we have to help them scan it into the
system—look, we are all motivated as landlords to assist our resi-
dents because we benefit from the ERAP as much as they do. But
the system is so cumbersome that it involves a lot of manhours,
and our industry is doing a great job shouldering that—
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Schwartz. Do
you think the self-attestations will help? And this is something we
have worked on very closely with the Treasury. Do you think that
will help?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Absolutely. We are big proponents of it, with re-
spect to proof of tenancy, where they don’t have to download a copy
of a lease—that is hard for a lot of our residents—housing insta-
bility, self-attestation income, which means you would have to
download a paycheck stub. All of these are barriers, and slow the
system down.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr.
Schwartz. I’m sorry, my time is up.
And now, I will recognize the gentleman from North Carolina,
Mr. McHenry, the ranking member of the committee, for 5 min-
utes.
Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Last December,
Congress enacted the rental emergency assistance program in a bi-
partisan way. And then in March, the Democrats did their partisan
bill, and had a new rental assistance program.

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We have two separate rental assistance programs at this point,
and Treasury has a set of rules that are different on implementing
these programs.
So my question to you, Mr. Winn, is, given how disastrous the
rollout has been and the slow spending rates of getting money out
the door to help renters, do you think it is better to combine these
programs, number one; and number two, do you think the focus on
getting people’s back rent paid should be the primary view or the
primary goal of the program?
Mr. WINN. Yes, I agree on both. I think the consolidation of the
programs will remove a lot of busy work and a lot of uncertainty
for both the landlords and the residents.
Also, the point of back rent is critical. A lot of landlords don’t
wish to participate in the program if they are only getting paid for
the current delinquency. If somebody moved out and they can’t get
paid for that past delinquency, they are not going to be utilizing
the program.
And that is, in fact, what has been happening. There are many
residents, who, when it comes time, are leaving with unpaid bal-
ances and are not able to complete applications.
Mr. MCHENRY. Ms. Yentel, under this bill, H.R. 5196, I would
ask how imposing both new regulatory and statutory conditions on
landlords actually speeds up assistance to renters?
Ms. YENTEL. There are many ways that Chairwoman Waters’
legislation would speed up assistance—by requiring self-attesta-
tion, by requiring direct-to-tenant assistance, by getting at the root
causes of slow ERA spending. Unfortunately—
Mr. MCHENRY. So, how is that different? Direct-to-renter assist-
ance, how is that different now than under this new bill?
Ms. YENTEL. It is currently optional, and only 28 percent of pro-
grams utilize it. So when landlords refuse to participate in a major-
ity of programs—
Mr. MCHENRY. Okay. So, under this bill, Ms. Yentel, under 5196,
how do you encourage landlords to participate when you are put-
ting in place new hoops to get money that they are legally owed?
How does that actually help?
Ms. YENTEL. The only place where new hoops, as you call it, are
put in place—I would call them essential protections for tenants—
are where we are changing the program to allow for direct-to-land-
lord assistance without any tenant involvement at all. These pro-
tections are essential to—
Mr. MCHENRY. Okay. But that is one change.
Ms. YENTEL. —limit tenant harassment.
Mr. MCHENRY. So, how about another change here? The bill re-
quires grantees to provide information to renters on how to sue a
landlord if a landlord follows the rules and receives the assistance
on their behalf. How does that actually encourage landlords to par-
ticipate?
Ms. YENTEL. Well, it doesn’t at all. What the legislation would
do, again, only in cases where we are changing the programs to
allow landlords to receive assistance without any tenant involve-
ment at all, it would require assurances that the landlord is using
those resources to pay the arrears that are owed, and that the ten-

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ant is no longer responsible for those arrears, which is why assur-
ances—
Mr. MCHENRY. So what you are saying is that providing informa-
tion on complaints against landlords helps expedite the distribution
of assistance to households and families? Is that what you are say-
ing?
Ms. YENTEL. What I am saying is that in cases where we change
a program and allow for a landlord to receive assistance without
the essential protection of tenant involvement in that application,
that there be protections for those tenants and that there be pro-
tections against fraud.
Mr. MCHENRY. And in the real world, landlords would think this
is a great new program to participate in, to encourage the people
renting from them to sue them.
Ms. Yentel, I know you have a significant involvement with my
Democrat colleagues on housing. Were you or any of your staff in-
volved in the technical drafting of H.R. 5196?
Ms. YENTEL. In the technical drafting of it? No. That is certainly
not our job. We have advised Chairwoman Waters—
Mr. MCHENRY. Advised, sure.
Ms. YENTEL. —and her staff about recommendations—
Mr. MCHENRY. Okay. And as president and CEO of your organi-
zation, I am curious if your organization stands to benefit finan-
cially if this bill is enacted?
Ms. YENTEL. No.
Mr. MCHENRY. So, your organization would not receive any dol-
lars under Section 6 of this bill?
Ms. YENTEL. I can’t speak to what Section 6 is off the top of my
head, but we receive zero Federal funding. We have no Federal
contracts. We don’t contract with States or localities—
Mr. MCHENRY. It is not a contract. And under this bill, it would
change to nonprofit entities that primarily provide housing services
would be eligible for these moneys. And so—
Ms. YENTEL. We would be eligible, and we recommended that—
Mr. MCHENRY. —it raises the question. If you have certified—if
you have testified that you will not receive a dime under this bill,
we will make sure that we note that in the record.
With that, Madam Chairwoman, I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. Let us remember,
the centerpiece of this program is such that it allows landlords for
the first time to be able to apply for the rental assistance, and they
have 10 days in which to notify the tenant. And they can talk in
that time, and maybe during that time, the renter will say, ‘‘Well,
I will do it,’’ but this is—
Mr. MCHENRY. Madam Chairwoman, is this your time or my
time? Is this your time or my time to debate?
Chairwoman WATERS. The Chair now recognizes the gentle-
woman from New York, Mrs. Maloney, who is also the Chair of the
House Committee on Oversight and Reform, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. Thank you all for your testimony
today, and thank you, Chairwoman Waters, for holding this timely
and very important hearing.

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As we have discussed, Congress provided nearly $50 billion in
December, and in the American Rescue Plan, to help residents stay
safely housed, and to be able to afford their rent.
This was necessary relief, 100-percent essential, not just for the
health and safety of these residents during a pandemic, but be-
cause a mass eviction crisis would have inflicted needless damage
to our economy and to our families.
Last week, New York Governor Hochul signed into law addi-
tional protections for New York residents, and included new re-
sources for landlords and tenants to access rental assistance. New
York law also extended the State eviction moratorium until Janu-
ary 15th.
It is no secret that the rollout of the rental assistance programs
hasn’t gone as smoothly as Congress would have wanted, which is
why I am so glad we have a great panel, to hear about your experi-
ences and ways we can further improve and streamline the pro-
gram to better serve renters and landlords alike.
One of the issues I have been hearing about from my constitu-
ents is the dual nature of the application. In effect, you need both
the landlord and the tenant to complete the application to receive
assistance.
Specifically, I have heard from constituents that many have tried
seeking assistance, but that their landlords were not willing to
apply. And I know the reverse has also been true.
So I would like to ask Mr. Morris, we will start with you, you
are on the front lines helping tenants with this program. Is this an
issue you are seeing in Philadelphia with the tenants you are as-
sisting?
Mr. MORRIS. Thank you for that question. It has presented as an
issue. There are two portions of the application: the landlord appli-
cation; and the tenant application. If the landlord applies on behalf
of a tenant, it generates an affidavit that the tenant has to sign.
I do believe that creating the additional flexibility where the
landlord would not need to go to the tenant to get the affidavit
signed and then submit it will allow that landlord to get a direct
payment themselves once they have made the necessary efforts to
inform their tenants that the program exists and to get them to
apply for funding. But it has been an issue.
Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you.
Ms. Yentel, can you add, or can you speak to how this issue pre-
sents a problem, if it does, for tenants seeking assistance, and how
the bill introduced by Chairwoman Waters would help address this
problem?
Ms. YENTEL. Thank you. Requiring a program to have both land-
lord and tenant involvement when getting emergency rental assist-
ance provides important safeguards against fraud and against ten-
ant harassment, really important safeguards for the tenant.
We have heard of cases where tenants are not able to complete
their applications, and certainly, there have been cases where land-
lords have been refusing to accept emergency rental assistance
when the application is approved and the money is presented to
them.

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So, the solutions on incomplete applications by tenants comes
back to simplifying applications, using self-attestation wherever
possible, and requiring that all programs do these actions.
On the landlord side, there is a whole variety of reasons why
landlords seem to be refusing to participate. A solution to many of
those challenges is to provide the assistance directly to the tenant,
so that the tenant can pay the rent, and the landlord, if they don’t
want to be involved in a government program, doesn’t have to be
involved at all.
Only 28 percent of programs are currently using direct-to-tenant
assistance explicitly, and all should be required to use this essen-
tial safeguard as would happen under Chairwoman Waters’ legisla-
tion.
Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. My time has almost expired, so I
yield back, and I thank you, Chairwoman Waters, for your leader-
ship on this important program. We are working very, very hard
to implement it on the ground across the country. Thank you. I
yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. The gentlewoman
from Missouri, Mrs. Wagner, is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. WAGNER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, but we are not
working very hard to get this administered. Because you know
what, the money is not getting out the door to the people who need
it, after months and months and months and months.
For far too long, struggling Americans, both renters and land-
lords in Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District and beyond, have not
received the assistance that Congress authorized.
From what little data—I think the last was in July—that Treas-
ury provided us since Congress has approved nearly $50 billion in
rental assistance, only $4.8 billion, or 10 percent, of these funds
have made it into the hands of those who need it most.
It is clear to the American people that the Biden Administration
has failed to distribute billions in rental assistance.
Months ago, Republicans introduced legislation to cut through
the bureaucratic red tape, to streamline this rental assistance pro-
gram to get this money out the door to support hardworking Amer-
icans.
However, Democrat leadership completely ignored this good-faith
effort, and I think it is critical that Treasury Secretary Yellen take
responsibility for the program’s failure, and appear before this com-
mittee as we have requested on several occasions, to no avail, so
that we can better understand what is keeping so many of Amer-
ica’s tenants and landlords from receiving these funds in a timely
manner.
Instead of working in a bipartisan fashion, and incorporating the
much-needed provision of Ranking Member McHenry’s legislation,
Democrats have been trying to shove through a bill, in the 11th
hour, that is full of bureaucratic red tape without any input from
across the aisle, and are needlessly putting families at risk of evic-
tion and pushing mom-and-pop landlords out of business.
We are not helping renters, and we are actively hurting land-
lords.
Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Winn, COVID hit in March of 2020, which
was 18 complete rent cycles ago. This means there may be some

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landlords who have not been paid a full month’s rent in a year-and-
a-half. What financial impact has COVID had on landlords to date,
Mr. Winn?
Mr. WINN. Thank you for that question. Currently, there are $37
million in accounts receivable and delinquency rents across our
portfolio. Despite all of the efforts I testified about that we have
done, only half of the residents have actually received the funding
that they are eligible for, and the tenant-consent aspect of that, we
feel is the largest barrier.
We have done the communication. We have met with them. We
have filled out the applications. We have handed them the com-
plete applications, and, yet, 15,000 of our residents who are eligible
have not received the assistance.
Mrs. WAGNER. And yet, we are sitting on over $40 billion, much
of which was in the CARES Act back in last December that is still
sitting there in this fund, not distributed. It is disgraceful.
What incentives do you think, Mr. Winn, would make a meaning-
ful impact in helping to deliver this emergency rental assistance to
repay those debts?
Mr. WINN. Very quickly, it would be informed consent as opposed
to signatures by the tenant so that landlords can apply on their be-
half. It would be bulk applications that landlords are able to sub-
mit and that are mandated to be approved by the ERAP adminis-
trators rather than just encouraged, a combining of the two pro-
grams to cut out bureaucracy.
Mrs. WAGNER. Yes.
Mr. WINN. And I would say, really, the fourth one would be to
make sure that when a unit is vacated, that that unit is still eligi-
ble for rental assistance, because that is where a lot of the out-
standing delinquencies are.
Mrs. WAGNER. Thank you. The December effort, which was a bi-
partisan CARES Act to get the money to eligible households quick-
ly and efficiently, was hastily undone with the creation of the
Democrats’ Emergency Rental Assistance 2 Program in March. And
that, and the Dems’ bill, that $1.9 trillion bill, was a second par-
allel program with similar purposes but different rules, timelines,
and incentives. And most of all, what is most egregious, is that it
pushed the end date of the Biden Administration’s mismanaged
program out to 2025—2025. We need rental assistance now, not in
2025.
We have to the fix this program’s bureaucratic problems and
come together, Madam Chairwoman. I yield back my time.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. The gentlelady’s time has ex-
pired.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr.
Sherman, who is also the Chair of our Subcommittee on Investor
Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets, for 5 minutes.
Let’s get beyond political talking points. Let’s legislate.
Mr. SHERMAN. Absolutely. I think this is the hearing we should
have, not a theatrical hearing where we bring in big names. And
what we need is people who are on the ground who can help get
this program to work better.
That being said, this program is not the best example of govern-
ment working together to help people. And those of us who want

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government to help people in need bear the rhetorical burden of
showing that government can be effective.
It is an emergency program, and an emergency program is one
where you are trying to build a plane while you are flying it. It is
not that easy to put something together in an emergency, but we
should have done better, and I think with this hearing, we will.
Mr. Schwartz, perhaps briefly you could tell us, what are the im-
pediments faced by property owners when trying to utilize the
Emergency Rental Assistance Program that have led some owners
to not even participate in the program?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. We have talked about one of them, which is
that owners would like to participate, but the resident doesn’t want
to participate, and so having that ability to apply on behalf of the
resident is super important.
Also, what we have seen is strings attached, like additional
moratoriums that you accept assistance but you are subject to a
new moratorium. Landlords are very reluctant to sign up for more
strings attached to accepting the assistance. Another one is rent—
or debt cancellation, where you receive assistance that is below
what you are owed and that settles the debt.
We don’t want to add barriers, and those are two things that are
in this bill that we think will make landlords reluctant to partici-
pate in the program. And the best solution to solving this is getting
the ERAP dollars in the hands of the residents and the landlords.
Mr. SHERMAN. I think, also, this crisis will determine whether
other people get involved in investing and building new apartment
buildings. And to put people in a position where they have to pay
the mortgage and they can’t collect the rent is not going to encour-
age people to go into this business.
Ms. Yentel, we have almost half of the renters in this country
paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent. We need to
build 328,000 new apartments every year. We are not even close
to that. The COVID crisis has slowed construction.
What policies would you suggest to create an environment that
incentivizes additional housing development and the preservation
of housing we have now?
Ms. YENTEL. You are absolutely right that the pandemic exacer-
bated a preexisting affordable housing crisis. Many of the same
renters who struggled to keep up with rent during the pandemic,
also struggled pre-pandemic, and they will continue to struggle
post-pandemic, unless and until Congress invests in long-term sus-
tained solutions to build a housing social safety net in our country.
And many of the investments that are included in the reconcili-
ation bill that Chairwoman Waters released are the kind of invest-
ments that are needed: a major expansion of rental assistance to
preserve our country’s public housing infrastructure; to build more
apartments affordable to lowest-income people through the Na-
tional Housing Trust Fund; and to incentivize or require local gov-
ernments to reduce or remove, eliminate restrictive local zoning
that inhibits the supply of any kind of apartments and especially
affordable apartments and drives up costs for everyone.
Mr. SHERMAN. Everybody is for more apartments, but not near
them. It is a problem that local government faces.

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Mr. Schwartz, many owners from large to small have been car-
rying these rental balances that they haven’t collected. They still
have to pay their mortgages, et cetera. What does that ultimately
mean for the solvency of property owners, their ability to continue
to be in the rental housing business, and should we be concerned
about the overall market and systemic effects?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes, we should be concerned. There have been no
reciprocal moratoriums with property tax bills, or garbage collec-
tion bills. Those are all due in full. The solution to that is the
ERAP and getting that in the hands of the landlords, because there
is financial distress. And we have seen that the most with smaller
landlords who can’t pay their bills.
Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Schwartz, the time has expired.
The gentleman from Texas—
Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you.
Chairwoman WATERS. —Mr. Sessions, is now recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Chairwoman, thank you very much. And
the opportunity to have our witnesses here today is appreciated.
Mr. Morris, I would like to perhaps engage you first, if I could.
The legislation, when it passes Congress, is given to an Adminis-
tration who then offers and makes the legislation conform to their
ability to offer guidance for things to work the way the legislation
is designed.
Can you please tell me your working relationship on a local basis
with the Administration people, whether it be in HUD or whether
it be in Treasury, about the guidance that you have received and
what feedback you have given back to them?
And the reason why I am asking this is because we have no one
from the Administration who can defend themselves on this, so I
am interested in your answers about that guidance and what you
have told them back about making this work better.
Mr. MORRIS. At least from the perspective of rental assistance
here in Philadelphia, there was an existing Philadelphia eviction
prevention project that had been working on these issues from at
least 2017.
So when the pandemic hit, we started engaging both our local
city council and State legislative leaders and the Pennsylvania
Housing Finance Authority, who had the first round of rental as-
sistance, on making the program more effective, eliminating bar-
riers that would basically discourage participation.
So, we have been involved in that process through and through.
And at least in building out rental assistance, every time an issue
is brought forward to us by tenants or landlords with whom we en-
gage, we provide that feedback to the agency and see how we can
address that.
Self-attestation has been a major issue, and we have gotten to
the place where landlords or landlords’ counsel can now provide let-
ters to agencies that verify tenancies and show how much is owed
without additional barriers being put in place. So, we have been
working in constant communication with our local representatives
to try and improve the program every step of the way.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Morris, in your locality in Pennsylvania, were
you given the flexibility to amend what we have heard would be

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the paperwork that we heard in California is not in any language
but English—were you given that authority and responsibility
ahead of time to change that, or was that just part of the bill that
said, only provide this in English for the application?
Mr. MORRIS. I believe we were given that authority, and we also
requested additional guidance from the Federal Government
through Treasury for additional flexibility around how we admin-
ister the program. So we are in constant communication to make
those flexibilities happen.
I believe, just generally, in terms of language access, we are re-
quired to provide the application in more than English. We also
work with the Neighborhood Action Council to make sure that
there is an agency out in the community that can target individ-
uals or create another location where someone can go and apply
and get that assistance.
Mr. SESSIONS. Yes, and thank you. And, Mr. Morris, perhaps you
are providing the feedback today to us, which is why not only Mr.
McHenry but also Mrs. Wagner are saying that we believe that
what should have happened today is that we actually heard from
the program administrators about the flexibility that they are pro-
viding across the country and following the Federal law when they
see, for instance, in California, where the applications are in
English only, as the testimony today was given to us.
And this is disturbing to us, because in the State of Texas, and
I am sure that what has happened is Ms. Yentel’s feedback helps
us to see who is successful, and there are characteristics of success
that the Administration would see or those administering these
programs, and then to know specifically what they were doing from
receiving feedback after they see perhaps those that were more ef-
fective than others.
And, Mr. Morris, I just want you to know that you and Ms.
Yentel and Mr. Schwartz are providing us information, but we are
interested in a follow-up on this. I am personally interested in
what kind of success you are finding with feedback from the Treas-
ury Department in making this work, and whether they actually
are a hindrance or a help, whether they are attempting to provide
you with the needed feedback that I would say would come from
the guidance that they would need to have and see from across the
country.
So, Madam Chairwoman, I would request that, as Mr. McHenry
and Mrs. Wagner have suggested, that we need to dig down with
information about providing the guidance from a national perspec-
tive of not only the Secretary of the Treasury but their feedback
about—
Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Sessions, your time has expired.
Mr. SESSIONS. —how we would make this work.
I thank the gentlewoman, and I will yield back my time.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green, who is also the Chair of
our Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, is now recog-
nized for 5 minutes.
Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Madam Chairwoman, I am very proud to associate myself with
your legislation. Your legislation does what I have been calling for,

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which is to ensure that the rent is paid. The tenants will have the
opportunity to access funds, but also, the landlords will have an op-
portunity to access these funds, and they can access funds for back
rent.
Some things bear repeating, Madam Chairwoman—Landlords
can access funds for back rent. I think this is exceedingly impor-
tant for, yes, all landlords, but especially for the mom-and-pops
who have had to bear the burden of maintaining property over so
many months now.
So, I proudly associate myself with this program, and I would
thank you for also looking into how we can inform people. A good
many of the people I represent are not knowledgeable about pro-
grams. This program that you are providing now, this legislation,
would inform people of what is available to them. I think this is
most beneficial.
And, finally, the landlords will have an opportunity to not only
get back rent, but rent for some time out into the future. The total
sum of months can be up to 24 months. So, this is an outstanding
program.
I would like to, if I may, Madam Chairwoman, mention one addi-
tional thing. There are many people who are still suffering as a re-
sult of the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery
(CDBG-DR) funds that have not been properly allocated, and Ms.
Yentel has some knowledge of what is going on with CDBG-DR, be-
cause she happens to be associated with some 800 national State
and local organizations calling for codification of a program.
So, Ms. Yentel, I would like to yield time to you to explain why
there is such broad support for the codification of CDBG-DR and
to a statute at this time.
Ms. YENTEL. Sure. Thank you, Congressman Green. The CDBG
Disaster Recovery Grant Program is one of the most essential re-
sources that communities receive after disasters, but the program
is not permanently authorized, which means that every time there
is a disaster, it needs to be reauthorized essentially through the ap-
propriations bills, the supplemental bills that provide funding.
This slows down the process pretty significantly of getting re-
sources to communities, and it means that very often, the rules for
the program get rewritten each time, creating a lot of uncertainty
to local communities when what they most need is certainty and
money to start helping people repair and get back on their feet
after disasters.
The Reforming Disaster Recovery Act, your legislation, would
permanently authorize the bill, which would in and of itself mean
resources would reach communities faster. It would also require
data sharing across programs, which would help to identify gaps in
need and ensure that those are being met. And it would allow for
much greater public participation in disaster recovery efforts. Alto-
gether, it could help to lead to more equitable and complete dis-
aster housing recovery in communities hit by natural disasters.
Mr. GREEN. A second question for you—
Ms. SALAZAR. Excuse me, Mr. Green? If I may jump in on that,
Mr. Green. I am so sorry to interrupt you.
Mr. GREEN. I will yield to you.

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Ms. SALAZAR. Thank you so much, Mr. Green. I just needed to
note that the residents of Oregon are still waiting for disaster re-
covery dollars from last year’s historic and tragic wildfires. So, I
just wanted to lend my support to Ms. Yentel’s statement.
Mr. GREEN. Well, let me extend my sympathies to the people
that you represent, as well as the people in Texas whom I rep-
resent. We have a similar circumstance, and I believe Mr. Cleaver
would attest to a circumstance that he is having to negotiate as
well.
But let me just ask this of you, Ms. Salazar, since you are now
speaking to me. This self-attestation seems to be pretty important,
and it seems to be something that the chairwoman has placed in
this legislation. Explain how important this self-attestation is?
Ms. SALAZAR. Thank you so much, Mr. Green. You are absolutely
right that tenant self-attestation has proven to be incredibly help-
ful to expedite the delivery of rental assistance. I will also note
that it is a big shift for many program administrators who are
charged with the important work of preventing fraud and running
these programs with Federal and State and local oversight.
And so, that is why we are supportive of the safe harbor provi-
sion in Chairwoman Waters’ legislation that would provide that as-
surance to program administrators that self-attestation is appro-
priate, useful, and encouraged in the program.
Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. As I yield back, on
a scale of 1 to 10, I would give your program, your legislation an
11. I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, Mr. Green.
The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey, is now recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. POSEY. Thank you, Chairwoman Waters.
Mr. Winn, you were talking about your outreach, I guess through
some church groups and others in your opening statement, and you
got cut off. If you would like to finish it up now, I would be proud
to give you the time.
Mr. WINN. I appreciate that, and I will do that. So, despite all
of that outreach, these are the statistics. To date, WinnCompanies
has been able to work with 15,000 households to apply for $22 mil-
lion of ERAP support. Of this amount, $17 million has been for-
mally approved.
And I recount all of our efforts not to boast about what we did,
but to make the point that despite all of these herculean efforts
that a company of our size can actually perform, we still have
15,000 additional households who are eligible for ERAP financial
support, but who have not yet participated because of program in-
efficiencies. It leads me to conclude that smaller landlords, without
the possibility of the resources that we enjoy, must find themselves
in an even more untenable and more unfair position. It leads to the
conclusion that something needs to change.
Despite our efforts, we, as I mentioned, and our clients are still
carrying $37 million in delinquent rent. Within that universe of
households, 2,400 households who are eligible for the assistance
otherwise are not able to participate because of more restrictive in-
come guidelines in certain States.

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On top of this is the 15,000 eligible households that I mentioned
who are noncommunicative, despite our best efforts, and for good
reasons and for understandable reasons—traumatized by medical
or financial hardships, language barriers, sometimes fearing insur-
mountable rental delinquencies, or technology barriers. Some are
confused by mixed messaging on eviction moratorium. Some simply
just don’t trust the system. Regardless, the unfortunate result is
that too many of the very folks that the ERA Program seeks to
help are those who are not benefiting from the program.
So, the real-world solutions are the direct tenant applications
with informed consent to the tenants for 10 days. But we also be-
lieve there shouldn’t be additional restrictions placed on that with-
out matching funding. Said differently, if there were to be an
agreement that if you take these funds, you have to stably house
residents for 120 more days, we ask for a requirement as rather
than a suggestion that rental assistance funds be made available
to match that obligation.
We also want to make sure that this happens, so it is not a major
deterrent for landlords across the country to enter into what is oth-
erwise a great program. We should mandate the allowance of land-
lords to directly apply for funds and make sure that those are proc-
essed quickly.
We want to make sure that the programs are combined and that
the eligibility is raised to 24 months rather than 18 months. And
we want to make sure that there is an implementation mandate for
bulk applications by landlords rather than just the allowance of it,
because we have seen across the States we work in that many of
the ERAP administrators will not allow bulk applications even
though it is permitted by the legislation.
I just want to end by saying that I believe that the work of this
committee has been excellent. I believe these amendments are re-
quired. I don’t believe this is a political issue. I believe this is a
practical issue. And if we can reach more people, we are all better
for it.
Mr. POSEY. Thank you.
Mr. MORRIS. Mr. Posey—I ’m sorry, Mr. Posey, if I may just add
to that really briefly. While I support all of the proposed changes
that Mr. Winn has just highlighted, I think it is critical that ten-
ants are informed, as the bill proposes to do, that something has
been done on their behalf so that they can govern themselves ac-
cordingly and that the landlord-tenant relationship can be pre-
served on a forward-going basis.
Thank you.
Mr. POSEY. Do any other witness want to weigh in on this?
I have just wondered from the beginning, and I even mentioned
it at the last hearing, why we wouldn’t turn to the Department of
Housing and Urban Development, that has a network in place al-
ready to deliver assistance.
I wonder why we would create a new program in the Treasury
to distribute rental assistance through a network of guarantees
that are yet to be put in place. If we were going to start giving out
free petroleum, I think the place to start would be through existing
gas stations.

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And I see my time has expired. I yield back. Thank you, Madam
Chairwoman.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much.
The gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver, who is also the Chair
of our Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development, and
Insurance, is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CLEAVER. First of all, thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for
introducing this legislation that is so desperately needed.
And, Mr. Morris, in your statement, there is a part in there that
I think everybody should make sure that they focus on, where you
say something like, all around the country tenants and landlords
are experiencing widespread delays in processing the rental assist-
ance application. And you go on and you talk about the number of
people in Philadelphia whose applications have not been processed
and so forth. Do you remember that statement?
Mr. MORRIS. Yes.
Mr. CLEAVER. Okay. The reason I want to focus on that is I think
what you are suggesting, and very strongly, I think, and it fits in
with what we are doing here, that we have to reduce the delays,
all of the barriers. And one of them, I think that my experience is
that the cities are trying to get the money out the door, but you
have to make sure that the grantees and their partners are able
to complete the application process, and sometimes that is a chal-
lenge.
I think, and you may or may not agree, that anything that we
can do to help get the money out the door, including, in some in-
stances, for example, maybe getting the Hispanic Chamber, the
Black Chamber, and the Asian Chamber all working to help inter-
pret the application process for people.
Here in Kansas City, we have run into people who say, ‘‘I don’t
know what’’—‘‘I didn’t understand that. I don’t know how to do
this.’’ Or in one case, one of my staffers and I had a huge meeting,
and somebody said, ‘‘I didn’t apply because I didn’t know I was
supposed to apply, or I thought somebody else would apply.’’
Shouldn’t we do everything possible to make sure that—I think
you are at 55,000 more. I don’t know the exact number of unproc-
essed applications. Do you think that there are some things that
we should include in this legislation, that I think are absolutely a
necessity if we are going to get this program running at the opti-
mum level? What do you think, sir?
Mr. MORRIS. There are a few things that I would say. At least
in the context of Philadelphia, we have already spent 85 percent
of our ERAP funding over several allocations. So, there is the need
for more money to flow into the City to address those applications
that are still yet to be processed, and that is a significant financial
constraint that the program is going to face.
In addition to that, making the program more flexible through
self-attestation, which we have already talked about. I believe the
first version of rental assistance required income to be verified
through the Department of Labor on a Federal level, which created
significant delays, so a lot of that money was not spent in a mean-
ingful way, so to the extent that we can eliminate those barriers
and that additional paperwork and create additional sites and
points for people to interact with the program.

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Outreach is going to be very critical in this process, and the best
way to reach people is in their communities, and that might re-
quire that programs invest in having someone go out to apartment
complexes and inform them that there is a process available to you
to apply. It might involve putting mailers—digital mailers in every-
one’s inbox, because most landlords use portals to communicate
with their tenants at this point in time.
So, there is a lot that can be done in terms of outreach, and there
should be a kind of a no-wrong-door policy. If someone shows up
to apply, they should be assisted. And documents are harder to get
at this point in time, because a lot of the Federal agencies—the De-
partment of Health and Human Services, Social Security, all of
those agencies are now remote. So getting paperwork is a signifi-
cant barrier to tenants, which leads to delays on the side for land-
lords.
So, to the extent that we can eliminate any red tape and make
it easier for both parties to apply and no one gets turned away and
any lapse of information is not necessarily held against the tenant
or a landlord, that is the best way to go forward, and make the pro-
gram easier to use and not harder.
Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you very much. Very quickly, it is in the
language of our legislation—not this legislation but the overall leg-
islation—that municipalities can eliminate some of the normal re-
quirements in order to get this out quickly.
Many cities, including my own, I think—you can’t expect the
head of a department to do something and later be criticized for
it—end up saying, okay, we need a 60-day period for a response to
an RFP or something.
There has to be a way that we get the word to all of the munici-
palities. Maybe the mayors could be the ones who actually sign for
the participation of this program so they can understand that the
regular processes are relaxed in order to get the money out quickly.
Is that—
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you so very much. Thank you, Mr.
Cleaver. Your time has expired.
Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. You get a 13
from my perspective. Mr. Green didn’t go high enough. It is a 13.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you so very much.
Mr. Huizenga, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. HUIZENGA. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
And I appreciate my friend, Mr. Cleaver, getting into some sub-
stance of these bills. And I do want to commend the Chair for at-
tempting to deal with some issues that we have some mutual con-
cerns about, and I want to start off with what I think are some
unified views of some of the problems.
We all agree that in 2020, when Congress appropriated this
money for the ERA 1, it was to eliminate rental arrears accumu-
lated by COVID-impacted low-income households. And then there
is, of course, the additional $21.55 billion in ERA 2 in March of
2021.
I think we actually all pretty much agree as well that there was
a failure to get money out the door that not only put renters at risk
of eviction, but it also hurt mom-and-pop landlords, who are more
likely to own and operate affordable rental units.

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The other thing I think that is pretty unifying is that Treasury—
we all understand Treasury has failed to responsibly administer
more than $46 billion of Congress-appointed funds and to eliminate
these arrears. That is why we are sort of in this spot.
Here is where maybe we diverge and we don’t agree as much.
Many of us view that the changes made in this program by the
Biden Administration actually may have punished landlords and,
frankly, scared many of them out of the program. Many of us also
believe that Secretary Yellen has failed to take responsibility for
the program’s failures and shortcomings, disregarding requests to
have opportunities to have these questions addressed to her by this
committee and by others and by allowing her to bypass the statu-
tory obligations to testify.
And, frankly, many of us believe that, instead of fixing the pro-
gram, the proposed changes would create even more bureaucracy,
add new burdens, and will scare off more landlords, steer funds
away from COVID-impacted low-income households, and remove
protections to combat fraud.
Now, I understand that there is a real need that we all have to
deal with this, and I will take the Chair’s request to say that we
need to legislate. I will note that I can see if the Trump Adminis-
tration had so badly bungled this program, there would be a nat-
ural desire of my friends on the other side to hold them account-
able, and that is what we are here trying to do with the Biden Ad-
ministration.
So, let’s talk a little bit about the bills themselves. And, again,
I commend the Chair for addressing specifically the ability of land-
lords to go and get some remuneration when their tenants won’t
sign off. Now, here is the key: Some remuneration. And in my view,
I believe this has been a legal taking. The takings clause, the
takings concept is, you forced me to do something that legally I
didn’t have to do, but you forced me to do it, so therefore, you need
to owe me and you owe me the obligation of what I legally own.
In the Chair’s particular bill, it requires landlords who submit
applications without a signature of a tenant to accept any amount
awarded to them as satisfaction of the entirety of the back rent
that is owed back to March 2020.
It requires landlords who accept assistance, including arrearages,
without renter consent to agree to an individual 4-month eviction
moratorium for that tenant beginning upon the date the assistance
is received, so an additional 4 months.
It binds landlords who do not accept assistance without renter
consent to comply with, ‘‘any conditions,’’ imposed by the Secretary
to ensure that renters, ‘‘remain stably housed,’’ with no end date
for such conditions. It requires grantees to prioritize applications of
tenants over those of landlords submitting with no-signature appli-
cations.
It requires landlords who receive assistance to, ‘‘set aside and va-
cate any past eviction order from an assisted tenant,’’ and to,
‘‘agree to seal any eviction filing, meaning it never happened.’’ We
can’t acknowledge that.
It removes accountability in protections that exist to combat
fraud. It prohibits grantees from requiring applicants to submit
proof of a written lease. It removes the tenant income verification

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by a landlord. We could go on and on. And, again, while I commend
the other side for realizing we have an issue, it seems to me these
handcuffs really are not going to get to that final goal and objec-
tive.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. Mr. Huizenga, your time has
expired. Thank you so very much.
The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Foster, is now recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. FOSTER. Am I audible and visible here?
Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Foster, we can hear you.
Mr. FOSTER. Thank you.
Mr. Morris, I was glad to learn that Philadelphia is proudly one
of the cities that has legislated a right to counsel for tenants facing
evictions. This is obviously monumental in a city where over 90
percent of tenants facing evictions were legally unrepresented, com-
pared to 81 percent of landlords who typically have attorneys.
So, although the pandemic has cast an unforeseeable and incom-
parable skew on the success of such a program, I imagine that en-
suring legal representation for tenants facing evictions would
greatly reduce the level of unjust evictions or evictions in general.
So, Mr. Morris, can you speak about the extreme importance of
having legal representation in eviction cases? And more broadly,
could you explain why organizations like Community Legal Serv-
ices, Inc., or the Legal Services Corporation nationally, are vital to
protecting marginalized people, especially during times like this?
Mr. MORRIS. Thank you for that question, and I would be happy
to. I think it is critical, especially now in the context of the COVID-
19 pandemic, that tenants be informed of their rights and protec-
tions that exist in any sort of eviction case.
Evictions have long-term consequences for tenants beyond just
being displaced. If you displace a family, you displace a child out
of school, you potentially displace an adult out of work, and you
can pack a family in poverty for generations to come, because the
cost of a forced move is both what you owe to the landlord that is
evicting you, the cost of relocation and the cost of finding new
housing, and any collateral consequences that come from being dis-
placed in that period.
To the extent that a tenant can be informed and given the ability
to self-advocate just as a bare minimum, to know that you have
rights as it relates to funds that have been received on your behalf,
your landlord has been paid and made whole and you are allowed
to stay, that is critical information that tenants otherwise often
don’t know unless they are connected with legal services or other
representation.
Sometimes, there are city protections or ordinances that come
into play that require landlords to meet certain standards of hous-
ing, just like minimum housing standards that tenants have to live
in and then pay rent. If those standards are not being met, then
the landlords should not be able to use the court to both collect
rent and evict a tenant out of those types of housing units.
And with the affordable housing crisis that is going on in the
United States, it is critical now more than ever that tenants are
equally as informed or have access to representation, because a
courtroom is a traumatic place. You enter a courtroom where you

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know that you owe someone a debt. Your perspective is, I don’t
have the ability to pay this money, but I also have nowhere to go
with me, my children, and everyone else in my household on a nor-
mal day, and then you add the pandemic to that and that is signifi-
cantly more of a pressing issue.
And as has been shown, and as I put in my testimony, the major-
ity of people facing evictions in the City of Philadelphia are single
parents, most predominantly Black and Brown females who are al-
ready living in poverty, and the poverty is exacerbated by the loss
of income. They are more likely to work in industries where there
is sporadic unemployment or these industries have been directly
impacted by the pandemic. They are forced to be frontline workers
or workers who are at a greater risk just by health morbidities for
getting COVID-19 and taking that into their household where they
may have vulnerable family members.
So the goal is always to empower tenants to be able to make de-
cisions, and to the extent that we can balance the playing field and
create greater flexibility for those tenants, that is always the goal.
No one knows more than an individual who is—
Mr. FOSTER. Yes, excuse me. So, you would consider that ade-
quate funding for Legal Services Corporation for the explicit pur-
pose of assisting tenants during this sort of situation is really an
essential element for ensuring fair housing infrastructure?
Mr. MORRIS. It is essential, and it is highly critical for the contin-
ued success of the rental assistance program, because someone has
to be there to assist tenants in holding landlords accountable, not
from the perspective of making sure that landlords can’t use the
court system, but making sure that they comply with any require-
ments that have been put in place that protect tenants and allow
them to remain housed in the long-term.
Mr. FOSTER. Yes. And do you think that having an expectation
of legal representation on both sides of an eviction dispute is likely
also to be a useful gate in preventing fraud, just that you have a
lawyer who has his law license on the line if he aids and abets
fraud? Are we likely to get a lot of the fraud concerns addressed
that way as well?
Mr. MORRIS. I believe you will get a lot of the fraud concerns ad-
dressed that way, and you will avoid a tenant feeling unsure or un-
safe about trying to communicate with their landlord with the
threat of a large balance hanging over their head if they have an
advocate that can stand with them and ensure their legal protec-
tion.
Mr. FOSTER. Thank you.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Foster. Your
time has expired.
The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Barr, is now recognized for
5 minutes.
Mr. BARR. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
And I would like to echo the sentiments of Ranking Member
McHenry and some of my other colleagues that I am troubled that
Secretary Yellen is not here to testify on this program. The Major-
ity invited Secretary Fudge to testify before the committee almost
2 months ago, which was somewhat informative but gravely insuffi-
cient for the gravity of the situation.

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Here we are today with another hearing on the same topic to dis-
cuss why less than 11 percent of the funds appropriated by Con-
gress almost a year ago have been used to support renters and
landlords, yet the responsible party remains absent from our wit-
ness lineup.
Congress directed Treasury to be the primary steward of these
funds and to operate the program in such a way that it is just
struggling renters and landlords. Yet, despite her direct responsi-
bility for this bungled operation, Secretary Yellen has not testified
before this committee, and the Majority has not even invited her
to do so.
While I am sure our witnesses today will be able to provide some
helpful insight, we do need answers from the ultimate decision-
maker and the party responsible for this total mess, and that is
Secretary Yellen.
Another preliminary comment, and this is maybe a different take
from my colleagues on both my side of the aisle and on the other
side of the aisle, yes, we need to expedite the emergency assistance.
That is why Congress passed it. But I hear a lot of talk in today’s
hearing about landlords, about tenants, and they have very impor-
tant interests. But there is someone that nobody has been talking
about here in this hearing, and that is the hardworking taxpayer
and the taxpayers’ sons and daughters and granddaughters and
grandsons who are incurring mountains of debt with this exploding
welfare state.
And I think what we are really talking about and hearing about
today is not just the incompetence of the Biden Administration
itself, but this program proves that big government welfare pro-
grams are ineffective and they are a recipe for waste, fraud, and
abuse. The breathtaking incompetence that we see here and the
waste and the delays and the open invitation for fraud is a direct
indictment of expansion of the Federal welfare bureaucracy.
Now, I want to ask Mr. Winn a question here. Feedback we have
heard from landlords across the country, including small landlords
who own only a handful of properties, suggests that the ERA pro-
grams are difficult to access because of bureaucratic red tape and
preconditions that disincentivize participation.
Mr. Winn, how can we improve the ERA programs to make them
more accessible for small landlords? How might the changes under
the Majority’s bill, which actually adds reds tape for landlords, af-
fect participation in the program?
Mr. WINN. I believe that, as always, there is some solution in the
middle. And I believe that the changes in the Majority bill by and
large can help as long as we are not also adding restrictions. What
I mean by that is, the bulk application processes where a landlord
can say, a small landlord can say, all of my eight tenants can apply
for assistance, I can submit as a landlord directly self-attestation
about things like income. That will greatly cut down on the red
tape.
Mr. BARR. Yes, I hear you, and I am sympathetic to bulk applica-
tions and landlord applications. But, again, I am going to return—
and I want to expedite these funds. And you haven’t heard this
today from any Members on either side of the aisle, but I am con-

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cerned about the taxpayer. This self-attestation idea concerns me
a lot.
The taxpayer is—we are talking about nearly $50 billion, and we
are going to just allow landlords and tenants to just self-attest
without any documentation of income or job? We have 10.5 million
unfilled job openings in America, and the reason is that we are
paying people to not work.
We can’t just continue to ask the taxpayers to subsidize people
to live on the taxpayers’ dime. Why can’t we have just simple docu-
mentation, allow landlords to apply for tenants, have sole protec-
tions for taxpayers who are getting fleeced?
Mr. WINN. I would say, one of the aspects of the original bill is
also audits that are allowed at the State or administrative level.
So to your point of fraud, I think that if people are committing
fraud, those audits hopefully will catch that.
Mr. BARR. Let me just say, in conclusion, that the solution to the
Biden Administration’s incompetence is not to dishonor taxpayers
by making waste, fraud, and abuse in this program even easier.
Taxpayers need to have confidence that the renters who can afford
rent are not just taking advantage of this program, reducing funds
available for those who actually are eligible and who actually are
experiencing housing instability. And I think some of these reforms
in the chairwoman’s bill make fraud not just likely but guaranteed.
And, with that, I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. Paying these land-
lords is not waste, it is not fraud, and it is not abuse.
I will now call on Mr. Casten, the gentleman from Illinois, who
is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CASTEN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
And thank you to our witnesses. I have learned a ton through
this hearing, and I appreciate you all taking the time to do this.
Some of my questions are COVID-specific, and some of them are
about sort of the broader sort of landlord-tenant issues that are
going on. And, Mr. Winn, I would like to start with you, if I could.
If I have heard you right, you said you have $37 million in ac-
counts receivable delinquency in your books?
Mr. WINN. [Nonverbal response.]
Mr. CASTEN. I see you nodding, okay. I will take that as a yes.
Help me understand, how much did that increase during COVID?
How much were you carrying 18 months ago compared to the $37
million now?
Mr. WINN. That is a good question. It has fluctuated. The $37
million that goes across our entire portfolio, including our clients,
has fluctuated. It is definitely higher post-COVID than it was pre-
COVID. We have seen statistically about a 5-percent drop in rental
receipts because of COVID, and on a portfolio of 100,000 apart-
ments, that can add up pretty quickly.
One of the interesting things to note is that the average balance
of a tenant in our portfolio is $1,400 of delinquency, which is inter-
esting because it is a fairly low number, but that is also because
of the affordable nature of our portfolio. I would imagine if some-
one’s portfolio was skewed to the market, that probably doubles to
about $3,000.
Mr. CASTEN. I seem to be frozen. Can you all hear me still?

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Chairwoman WATERS. We can hear you now.
Mr. CASTEN. Can you all still hear me?
Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Casten, you are on.
Mr. CASTEN. Sorry. We were frozen there for a second.
Can you estimate—are we talking about a 5-percent increase? A
10-percent increase? How much has it gone up during COVID, just
a quick answer, if you could?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. And I can answer too from our portfolio’s ex-
perience, but one thing I would say is our delinquency is about 3
times as high during COVID as it was before.
Mr. CASTEN. Okay. Since you picked up, Mr. Schwartz, and I
apologize for my IT issues here, how much of that are you carrying
on your books? When you borrow, you have this asset on your
books for whatever that receivable is. How much is either your
bank or your auditor—how much are they typically writing that
down? Are you carrying 80 cents on the dollar, 50 cents on the dol-
lar? How much are they writing off?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. We have the job, our accounting department, of
how much do we write off. We are being optimistic that we won’t
have to write much of it off because of emergency rental assistance,
and so we are reluctant to write off that right now. But if we don’t
get the assistance, we will have to write that off.
Mr. CASTEN. Okay. Ms. Yentel, then, speaking broadly, beyond
COVID, particularly for low- and moderate-income tenants, let’s
say they get behind, they miss a payment, they have lost their job
and then they get it back, how often are they able to become cur-
rent, and how often are those tenants just sort of carrying that
debt sort of in perpetuity even though they are staying current on
their rent?
Ms. YENTEL. Right. It is a really good, important question, be-
cause many of the tenants who are behind on rent are very low or
extremely low income. They worked before the pandemic, during
the pandemic, and will be working after the pandemic. They are
many of the frontline workers who initially lost their jobs or lost
hours of work. They lost wages. They fell behind on rent.
Even as they are employed now, it is difficult even pre-pandemic.
Many of them work at the lowest-wage jobs. They are not able to
make rent. They are certainly not able to pay back arrears that are
owed without assistance.
Many tenants during the pandemic made a lot of really difficult
tradeoffs. They borrowed money. They paid rent on their credit
cards. They stopped buying store-bought food, which is why we saw
such an increase in food pantries.
Mr. CASTEN. I am sorry to interrupt, but I want to get just two
more questions in.
Either Ms. Yentel or Mr. Morris, just quickly, can you comment
on what impact does that have on their credit score? If they are
carrying this rent that they can’t pay even though they are staying
current going forward, is that a permanent hit on their credit score
when they first prepay utilities, and what does that mean prac-
tically?
Ms. YENTEL. Yes. Yes, there are all kinds of harmful impacts
that come both from carrying debt and having poor credit scores.
It makes it more difficult for them to get loans that they might

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need in the future. They use credit cards again to pay for things
that they don’t have the cash for. And evictions as well are—a sin-
gle eviction filing on a tenant’s record stays with them for years
and harms their ability to get affordable housing in the future.
Mr. CASTEN. I am out of time, but as you can just tell, and I
would welcome all of you to follow up, I am trying to make this
connection, and I don’t know what this is, but for all of you on both
sides of this, if the landlords are carrying bad debt that is affecting
their ability to get credit, and the tenants are carrying credit scores
that are affecting their ability to get credit, how do we bridge that
gap from a policy perspective?
Thank you very much. I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Williams, is now recognized for
5 minutes.
Mr. WILLIAMS OF TEXAS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
I want to thank all of you for coming here today and answering
all of these questions. And I can tell you that every landlord I talk
to about this pot of money has been frustrated with how slowly it
has been getting to people in need. As much as we need to ensure
that renters are taken care of, we cannot forget the landlords. They
have financial obligations to handle as well. This money could be
a lifeline, but so far it has failed to live up to what it was supposed
to do.
So, Mr. Schwartz, could you talk—and you have done so well
today—about some of the hardships that your member companies
faced as a result of this eviction moratorium?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Sure. And one thing I would just point out is that
Texas is a model State for distributing—
Mr. WILLIAMS OF TEXAS. Yes, I am going to talk about that here
shortly.
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Okay. Good. Yes, the moratorium has created a
lot of problems in our industry. One problem I would point out is
it is a contributor to rent inflation. Someone suggested there could
be 1 million units out in the country that are non-rent paying. That
has been taken out of the supply when demand is surging. Econom-
ics 101 says you are going to get big price increases, and that is
an unintended consequence of the moratoriums.
They have caused landlords to have an inability to pay all of
their bills or to have to cut back on maintenance and keeping up
their properties. It has been a very challenging environment, when
you have residents who haven’t paid in 18 months.
And there is some confusion with moratoriums. The residents, in
some cases, think it is a rent holiday, and so they choose to spend
their money elsewhere rather than pay their rent.
And so this bill, we think, is important if the effect of the bill
is emergency rental assistance in the hands of people who have ar-
rearages and want to stay in the community so they can continue
to pay rent. But the moratoriums ultimately causes housing insta-
bility and creates massive debt on behalf of the residents and prob-
lems with the landlord.
Mr. WILLIAMS OF TEXAS. Okay. Thank you. I am also concerned
that all of the government interference into mom-and-pop landlords
during the pandemic will lead to a greater consolidation within the

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industry. Most landlords that I talk to are not massive corpora-
tions, and do not have access to huge lines of credit when things
get tough, but only have a few apartment units they are able to
maintain and rent out to the public. So when these people stop re-
ceiving rent payments, and with the Federal assistance stuck in
bureaucratic limbo, many will not have any other option but to sell
their properties.
Mr. Winn, how will the speed of these funds getting out the door
help prevent industry consolidation and ensure that mom-and-pop
landlords can once again thrive with their property?
Mr. WINN. I think it is a great point and a real concern. And no-
body wants to see ma-and-pa landlords go under because of bu-
reaucracy or because of process. So I really do think, as you have
said, the answer is in your question, which is the sooner we can
get the money to those who need it, the better. And I think the
bills that are being discussed do a good job of that. But they do not
do a perfect job of that.
And one of the things that we need to figure out is how to incent
those small landlords to actually use this program, not to layer on
restrictions that are burdensome to them, such as making sure
that they would forgive rents or partially forgive rent that isn’t cov-
ered by the rental assistance funding. I think that would disincent
small landlords, and that might have the effect that you are dis-
cussing.
Mr. WILLIAMS OF TEXAS. Thank you.
I have limited time here. Mr. Schwartz, I will keep this one sim-
ple. What is my great State of Texas doing right that other States
around the country should mimic and copy?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. I have this information from my team on the
ground in Texas. You are using a software called Neighborly Soft-
ware, which is a best in class, and so I would advise the committee
to follow some best-in-class best practices. It is a user-friendly plat-
form. It can bulk load applications, so landlords who have a large
number of units can bulk load it. It has great technical support,
and you can actually get someone on the phone there pretty much
anytime, so they have been great to work with. And it has real-
time tracking of the status of the payment, so you can see what has
been paid and what hasn’t real-time.
Mr. WILLIAMS OF TEXAS. Thank you, and God bless Texas. And
I yield back, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much.
The gentlewoman from Iowa, Mrs. Axne, is now recognized for 5
minutes.
Mrs. AXNE. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. And thank you to
our witnesses for being here.
I want to start with a little bit of background for our witnesses.
We have a couple of main rental assistance programs here in Iowa,
and there is a local program that has been doing a really good job.
It has Polk County and the City of Des Moines working together
on it, and they have actually allocated all of the funds from the
first round. But, at the same time, Iowa’s State program has not
done very well with getting out this aid, and as a matter of fact,
has used less than 6 percent of the money.

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I see a lot of this coming down to just the choices that are being
made as to how the program is being limited, including things like
the State did, which was refusing to allow tenants to apply for 3
months of forward rent that is clearly allowed under the rules.
So, Ms. Yentel or Mr. Morris, can you share a little bit of what
you have seen that really separates the programs that have done
better with this from the ones that haven’t?
Ms. YENTEL. Sure, I would be glad to. Thanks for the question.
And I couldn’t agree with you more that the fact that some pro-
grams are doing so well in sending ERA quickly and getting the
money to the tenants who need it most is proof that it is possible
to do it, and we should look to those programs to learn what is
working there and implement it across other programs as well.
And what successful programs are doing is having simple, acces-
sible applications. They are using self-attestation for eligibility
wherever possible. They are hiring the number of staff that they
need to handle the deluge of applications that they are receiving.
They are using direct-to-tenant assistance when landlords refuse to
participate. They are doing robust and equitable outreach to make
sure that tenants and landlords know these resources are available
and how to access them.
And programs like the example of Texas is a good one. Some pro-
grams are course correcting. They are recognizing that they got off
to a bad start, or something is not working well, and they are im-
proving their programs as they go. Those are the signs of successful
programs in ERA.
Mrs. AXNE. Well, I very much appreciate that.
Mr. Morris, let me ask you then, if we have a State Government
that isn’t inclined to get the aid out to the renters who need it, do
you think that the changes that we are talking about here today
are going to be sufficient to help get the funding into those people’s
hands, or do you think both renters and landlords in Iowa would
be better served by a group that is willing to really help them?
Mr. MORRIS. I can’t speak directly to the existence of a govern-
ment that is not willing to help tenants and landlords who are
struggling in this process. But I do think what bears saying is that
all of these States have existing networks to help vulnerable house-
holds, and there is no reason why we should be reinventing the
wheel and not using those networks. As you mentioned, they are
systems that are set up to help vulnerable populations access re-
sources and they should be the ones that State Governments con-
sult at the frontline to set up programs.
And there should not be an opportunity for States to create addi-
tional barriers or different rules for programs that make it harder
for renters and landlords to participate. If a Federal law says some-
thing is allowable, it should be allowed. The legislation should
probably say 3 months of forward rent, ‘‘should be paid,’’ not, ‘‘can
be paid.’’ Just any additional flexibility to make renters and land-
lords access funds is welcome.
Mrs. AXNE. Absolutely. I appreciate that.
Mr. WINN. I just want to say—
Mrs. AXNE. What is that?
Mr. WINN. I totally agree with what Kadeem just said. I think
that was a great point that we have encountered as well.

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Mrs. AXNE. I appreciate that.
Let me shift a little bit here to ERA 2. Iowa has already said
that they are not intending to apply for the funds, despite the fact
that we continue to see renters evicted and landlords without un-
paid rent, as, of course, I have mentioned, only about 6 percent of
the funding has gone out.
Both landlords and tenants lose when this rental assistance is
not delivered.
Mr. Schwartz, I am wondering, with the second round being
available to help both renters and landlords for an additional 3
years, what are your thoughts on how it is going to affect landlords
by turning this down?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. The reason landlords are turning that down is
that it doesn’t prioritize arrearages, and we think that is an impor-
tant fix in this bill, and the McHenry bill takes a look at that.
Arrearages are so important because the resident would like that
arrearage cleaned up. Even if they are not living there anymore,
they still hold that debt, and the landlord is still pursuing collec-
tion. It could impact that resident’s credit, and the landlord still
has their bills to pay and needs that money to keep going. So we
think that is really important, and we hope that the committee can
fix that. It is an important fix.
Mrs. AXNE. Thank you. My time has expired.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much.
The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Hill, is now recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. HILL. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I appreciate you and
Ranking Member McHenry, even though you are not quite on the
same page—this issue is important, and it has just dragged on for
too long, which is why I was proud to support Mr. McHenry’s bill
to advance this funding, simplify it, and get it out. Because that
is the main issue here, that we help the people who are in arrears
on their rent.
That is what Congress wanted to do last December. If you are
in arrears due to losing your job, or a terrible impact from COVID-
19, that is what we are trying to do with these bills.
All of this other stuff, forward rent or whatever, is not the core
mission. The core mission is to help those families, starting last
April, who were brutalized in the economic collapse of shutting this
economy down, and haven’t gotten back on their feet.
And so it is frustrating, not only to tenants and landlords, but
it is frustrating to Members of Congress that here we are, in Sep-
tember, and we are still talking about how this could be a better
program and help the people that we intended to help last Decem-
ber.
I heard some discussion that was very interesting to me, and I
would like to try to get a little bit of data. I know it will be anec-
dotal, I know it will be dealing with Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Winn’s
testimony. But you have raised something that, in meeting with
my mom-and-pop landlords here in Arkansas, I have certainly
picked up on, which is, someone is impacted by COVID-19 and is
in arrears—April, May, June, July, last year—they haven’t gotten
the benefit of this rental assistance, and they moved, they left.

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And, so, both of you referenced an interesting concept, which is,
of the rent in arrears that you have talked about, and Mr. Winn
cited $37 million, how much of that is in a unit that is connected
to a tenant who left months ago? Mr. Winn?
Mr. WINN. A significant portion, and I don’t have the exact num-
ber in front of me, but it is very significant. In fact, you can make
a connection between the uncommunicative residents, the ones that
we have not been able to reach, with the ones who are more likely
to leave, because they don’t believe that the system will help them,
or they don’t believe that the program is for them, but they do
know that their balances are accumulating.
So I do think that there is that connection, and that there is sig-
nificant nationwide back rent owed for vacated apartments for
folks who don’t believe they have a way out.
Mr. HILL. Yes, and that makes this even more complicated.
Mr. Schwartz, let me hear you on that issue, if I could, please?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. I don’t have the exact number. Our total 30
days or greater past due is $8.5 million in our portfolio. I don’t
know what percent of that is past due for someone who doesn’t live
there. I would say, I don’t think it is significant. I think it is 10
to 20 percent, and that is a guess, but it is a meaningful amount.
Mr. HILL. But I think it is a key point here, that there is no ten-
ant to fill out paperwork. The tenants walked out on the lease and
left. And so, that is a whole other complex and we are not, per se,
suggesting they be gone after, but we suggest that we be able to
process that money and get that vacant unit paid off, and make
that less of a problem here.
So, I hope that we will put some priority on that as we talk
through these issues. I thought that one was an important one to
highlight today, Madam Chairwoman.
Also, Mr. Winn, you have talked about—you described some of
the speeding provisions, like bulk applications, and informed con-
sent, that are in Madam Chairwoman’s bill were helpful, but that
they are not as helpful because then we extend this eviction mora-
torium.
So, you are arguing, Mr. Winn—and I will get you to respond too,
Mr. Schwartz—that these are useful items to help speed up the
McHenry effort of getting this money out, but it is a contradiction
to extend that eviction moratorium. Is that your view, Mr. Winn?
Mr. WINN. I would say, yes, I think there should be a middle
ground. I believe as you mentioned, there are provisions in the bill
that are both necessary and will be very effective. I do think they
are burdened by more restrictions that will have the unintended
consequences of having landlords not wish to participate—
Mr. HILL. Okay. Mr. Schwartz, can you give a quick response?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. There are two things in the bill that could
cause landlords not to participate. The first one is an 120-day evic-
tion moratorium if you accept the ERAP funds, and the second is
the cancellation of debt if you accept ERAP funds, even in the
ERAP funds don’t pay all of the debt. We think that will impact
landlord participation.
Mr. HILL. I really appreciate those candid short responses.
Madam Chairwoman, thanks, and I yield back to you.

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Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. The gentlewoman
from Massachusetts, Ms. Pressley, is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. PRESSLEY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I know first-
hand the fear and the trauma that comes with an eviction notice
on your door. Evictions are disruptive and violent. These are vio-
lent events which destabilize families, but make it more expensive
and challenging to rent safe housing in the future, to apply for
credit, to borrow money, or to purchase a home.
Currently, almost a third of Black renters are at risk of eviction.
This eviction crises is exacerbating economic injustice for Black
families across America.
Ms. Yentel, while there is a clear economic-justice case to support
eviction moratoriums, wasn’t the legal justification of the CDC evic-
tion moratorium always to help us get COVID-19 under control?
Ms. YENTEL. Yes, absolutely. The purpose of the CDC Federal
eviction moratorium was to slow the spread of COVID-19 and con-
tain the virus. And research has since shown that expired eviction
moratoriums led to as many as 400,000 cases of COVID-19, and as
many as 11,000 deaths.
Ms. PRESSLEY. That’s right. So when I say eviction is policy vio-
lence, that is not just some catchy turn of phrase. We know that
when 27 States lifted their eviction moratoriums during the pan-
demic, again, it led to some 433,000 preventable cases of COVID-
19, and 10,700 preventable COVID-19 deaths. This policy failure
has ended the lives of more than 10,000 Americans.
Now, earlier this summer, before its expiration, some Democrats,
including our chairwoman, Maxine Waters, and I, fought hard to
implore every option to extend the eviction moratorium including
passing legislation.
Now, while we were successful in securing a targeted CDC exten-
sion for a month, at the time there were not enough Members of
Congress who were willing to vote yes to help pass this common-
sense legislation to prevent a public health crisis within a public
health crisis.
Somewhere along the line, the conversation about the eviction
moratorium shifted from it being a reasonable public health meas-
ure into an argument that Congress was anti-small landlord. That
is not it.
This is about saving people’s lives. That was a ploy to divide and
pit working families against working families. Every proposal be-
fore Congress has provided relief for renters and small landlords
alike.
Then, I discovered that the National Association of REALTORS
was the largest political action committee (PAC) donor to can-
didates in the last election cycle, and suddenly, that shift made
sense.
The fight to extend the Federal eviction moratorium has been de-
railed too many times because the single largest PAC donor is the
organization who was fighting, from Congress to the Supreme
Court, to ensure that renters are put last, which means they are
putting the public health last.
So, let me be clear. Our advocacy is about saving lives. Congress
has provided $46 billion to get landlords out of debt, and now we
need to protect renters too. Renters may not have a multimillion

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dollar PAC behind them, but they have a growing number of Mem-
bers of Congress in their corner.
Ms. Yentel, yesterday, Dr. Fauci said that COVID-19 rates are
10 times too high to consider the spread under control. Do you
think that the Federal housing agencies are doing everything in
their power to get COVID-19 under control by protecting renters
from eviction?
Ms. YENTEL. I think they can and should do more, and Congress
should as well. Clearly, Congress should implement a Federal evic-
tion moratorium, as long as the Delta variant is surging and people
are dying.
But as you said, Congress doesn’t have the votes to do so, and
so Federal agencies should act. We have urged HUD to implement
an eviction moratorium for all federally-subsidized properties,
which we believe they have the legal authority to do now, and we
have urged the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to con-
sider what authorities it might have to similarly implement an
eviction moratorium on federally-backed properties. Those two ac-
tions could protect about 30 percent of renters nationally.
Ms. PRESSLEY. Thank you. And we know there are an estimated
750,000 renters who could be evicted in the next few months. This
is an all-hands-on-deck moment. This is a public health emergency.
I urge every level of government to take urgent action to keep peo-
ple safely housed. And I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. The gentlelady
yields back.
Mr. Kustoff is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. KUSTOFF. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you for
calling the hearing today. And thank you to the witnesses for ap-
pearing. I think one thing we have heard is that we are all frus-
trated by the lack of funds that have been distributed by the Fed-
eral Government, and I think many of us have concerns that we
have not heard from Secretary Yellen about the process and that
she should be here.
But with that said, Mr. Winn, can you talk about the practical
effects, if you will, of the problem of getting in touch with past ten-
ants who have already moved out and have outstanding payments?
Practically, are you able to get their consent, and how would you
go about doing this?
Mr. WINN. Yes. As I alluded to earlier, this has been a real chal-
lenge for us. And I made a point of describing all of our outreach
efforts, at local levels, State levels, and Federal levels, working
with churches, and community organizations.
And yet, we still have been unable to reach about half of the ten-
ant population, despite having filled out the applications, and
knocking on doors. As I alluded to, there are many reasons that a
tenant may not feel comfortable signing that document.
And this is not meant to demonize any tenants. In fact, it is
meant to recognize that that problem exists, and to make sure that
landlords can apply with informed consent on behalf of those ten-
ants, or else I just simply believe the money will not get out there.
It will not get to those tenants. Those balances will chase those
tenants to the next place they live on their credit report. It is bad
for everybody.

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I don’t think we could have done anything more than we have
done, and I still think that we are only 50 percent successful. I
worry about the smaller landlords without our resources. They
would have been less successful.
Mr. KUSTOFF. I think you answered this, but I am going to ask
it in a different way. Prior to the pandemic, prior to 18 months ago,
and I rightly applaud everybody who tried to work with people, be-
cause there was no playbook, there was no historical guide on how
to deal and how to navigate through this.
But with the tenants’ outstanding balance during the pandemic,
what would that balance be where, essentially, they would pass the
point of no return? In other words, they couldn’t pay back a past
balance and have to work on evictions?
Mr. WINN. I’m sorry. You were breaking up a little. Can you say
the last part of that question again?
Mr. KUSTOFF. Sure. I was talking about, prior to the pandemic,
what level of back rent would you say was past the point of no re-
turn, that the tenant would be unable to pay back, and you would
have to begin eviction proceedings?
Mr. WINN. Yes. I would say from a statistical point of view, gen-
erally speaking, we, as a developer and as an owner, would under-
write 1 percent to 2 percent of bad debt as an allowance. We look
at the entire rental. You might have an allowance for 1 or 2 per-
cent. That number has increased significantly because of COVID.
And one of the things that I think everybody on this call is worried
about is that it is mounting. It is not getting smaller. There con-
tinue to be folks who suffer job losses, and have largely not re-
bounded because the COVID epidemic is still with us.
Mr. KUSTOFF. Thank you, Mr. Winn.
Mr. Schwartz, I think that Mr. Hill was asking you about the Ex-
pediting Assistance for Renters and Landlords Act, the 4-month
eviction moratorium. Can you talk about, again, the practical ef-
fects of the proposal in general, what is good, and what is bad, fol-
lowing on your testimony?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. The best eviction mitigation tool is the
ERAP funds getting in the hands of the landlords. If you tie that
to an 120-day eviction moratorium, what is going to happen is the
landlords have shouldered the burden of this pandemic over the
past 18 months, and have large rental balances due to them. And
now that that is gone, at least the Federal moratorium, and they
are told you have to sign up for a new moratorium if you accept
the emergency rental assistance, there is going to be a lot of reluc-
tance, and I think you are going to kind of do the opposite of what
the bill is intending to do. You are going to contract the number
of landlords who want to participate in the program by including
that in the bill, and that is our concern.
Mr. KUSTOFF. Thank you, Mr. Schwartz.
My time has expired. I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Lynch is now recognized for 5 min-
utes.
Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you very
much. First of all, thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I appre-
ciate all of your efforts to get this money out. We are facing some
difficulty here, but I do support your solution.

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I actually know Mr. Winn personally. He is a friend of mine. I
actually worked with his dad back in the day, developing a lot of
the affordable housing in my district, and I want to just say a cou-
ple of things about the WinnCompanies before I ask my question.
Number one, when this pandemic first hit, and there was great,
great anxiety out there, as there is now, the WinnCompanies came
out right away and they did two things. Before Congress could act
and before the CDC could act, the WinnCompanies came out and
they announced to their tenants—well, first of all, they announced
to all of their workers—in our district, we have union carpenters,
union electricians, union plumbers, and union laborers who main-
tain the housing, and they do a great job. And the WinnCompanies
came out right out of the box when COVID hit, and jobs were shut-
ting down all over the place, and people were being asked to hun-
ker down, and announced publicly that they would not lay off any
of their workers and that they would continue to pay them to do
the plumbing jobs and to maintain the properties.
So, that lowered the anxiety level among a lot of the workers.
The second thing they did—and, again, this is before the CDC
moratorium—is they came out and announced to the tenants that
they would not evict anybody for nonpayment of rent, and they
have thousands of units.
And that did wonders for the phone calls that I was getting in
my office regarding my folks in public housing.
I know most of the members on the committee realize I grew up
in public housing, lived there for almost 20 years, myself, my mom,
my dad, and my five sisters. The local housing project that we grew
up in is now renamed after my mom, the Anne M. Lynch Homes
at Old Colony. We are very proud of that, so I am all in on public
housing. Look, if we didn’t have public housing, my family and I
would have been homeless. I know what that fear feels like.
We had some tough times growing up. My dad used to say that
we had to save up to be poor. We had real difficulty. And I am
proud of my dad and my mom for pulling us out of that. They both
worked really, really hard, and I realize the opportunity that public
housing gave us.
So, I am going to ask you, Mr. Winn—look, you and I know that
we have been trying to develop affordable housing in the City of
Boston, which is a high-rent location, for years, and we have a cou-
ple that are coming up that we are making progress on, which is
good, thanks to Chairwoman Waters. Thanks to Chairwoman
Waters, we are finally getting back into the business of affordable
housing. We have been retrenching at the Federal level for the past
20 years, and now Maxine, God bless her, has pushed a lot of ini-
tiatives to help people in public housing and to create more of it.
But what is the biggest obstacle to us? Even when we have land
available, we are having difficulty developing affordable housing
and workforce housing that would help the people that we work
for. What are some of your thoughts on that?
Mr. WINN. Thank you, Congressman Lynch, and thank you for
those kind words, and for being such a great advocate for the City
of Boston and your district. Really, I think what Congress can do
is to concentrate more resources on public housing.

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The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program has been wonder-
ful for creating new low-income housing, but there is aged infra-
structure in public housing across the country, and for years it has
been underfunded.
So, I want to thank the committee, and I want to thank Chair-
woman Waters and Congressman Lynch and everybody else who
fights for HUD resources, because people are living in substandard
conditions, not because of management, but because of a lack of
funding.
And so, I think if we could increase the Choice Neighborhoods
funding, the HOPE VI funding, I think we are going to be better
off as a community.
Mr. LYNCH. Thank you. And Mr. Winn, I just want to say that
I know that you do a lot of work on military housing—Ft. Hood,
Camp Lejeune, a lot of our bases. And this is probably not appro-
priate at this hearing, but I would love to sit down and talk to you
about how we can do a better job of housing our men and women
in uniform and their families.
Thank you. I yield back, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman WATERS. The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Gonzalez,
is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. GONZALEZ OF OHIO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for
holding this hearing today, and I certainly want to thank Ranking
Member McHenry for all of his work on this important topic. Mr.
McHenry has been talking about the importance of getting this
right for months now, and he should be commended for his advo-
cacy on behalf of renters and landlords throughout the country.
The fact of the matter is that this program has been poorly de-
signed from the beginning, and we should take next week’s sched-
uled markup and include Mr. McHenry’s comments and his legisla-
tion to streamline Federal dollars.
We have put in a lot of programs since the pandemic has started,
and I will contrast this one with the Paycheck Protection Program
(PPP). When you have insatiable need, and a well-designed pro-
gram, the money flows, it gets out quickly, and it gets into the
economy in the right way.
That is what happened with the PPP. It wasn’t perfect, but there
was a big need, and the program was designed for speed, and it
got out.
When you have a poorly-designed program or a lack of demand,
you get this outcome, which, in Ohio, is that only 6.8 percent of our
money has actually been distributed. I do believe there is demand,
but it is blatantly obvious when you look at the numbers that this
program is poorly designed.
And I would at least suggest we think about educating people,
as more than 50 percent of renters and 40 percent of landlords are
unaware of the Federal assistance. But today, we are talking about
the trouble that renters and landlords have had in accessing Fed-
eral assistance, and this is all within the backdrop, of course, of the
eviction moratorium which was in place until just last week.
Mr. Winn, I want to start with you. Just briefly, what has been
the financial impact on landlords, and how have we seen landlords
respond to the moratorium by putting in restrictions on new units

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as they come available that may be a barrier to some lower-income
Americans?
Mr. WINN. I think that the repercussions are significant. And I
think we are, as an industry, very excited to see these changes to
the ERAP program, because so many of the hardships that are cur-
rently outstanding among the landlords would be resolved through
a better administration of these funds.
So, we are talking about the right thing, but if the administra-
tion of these funds is not improved significantly, then the $37 mil-
lion of owed rent in our case, the billions of dollars across the coun-
try, is literally going to be lost, because again, tenants are going
to move on, landlords are going to lose their properties to fore-
closure, and they will never recover.
So the effect has been significant, but there is a wait-and-see at-
titude to see if we can figure out this ERAP program, because that
will make a huge difference.
Mr. GONZALEZ OF OHIO. Thank you. And again, Mr. Winn, in
Chairwoman Waters’ bill, it contains a provision which states that
if a landlord receives rental assistance without the consent of the
renter, even if this is payment only partially covering the renter’s
debts, that this payment will satisfy all monetary claims against
the renter. Are you concerned that this provision specifically will
deter landlords from seeking out emergency rental assistance,
should that provision be enacted?
Mr. WINN. Yes, it is a subset of the provision, yes, is a require-
ment to write off partial balances if only partial funds are received.
I do believe that is a disincentive.
And I don’t know that it is necessary. I believe a bill could create
other incentives to stably house folks that don’t entertain these
funds, that don’t require write-off of past-due debts. There can be
requirements to accept rental assistance program funds as an ex-
ample in the future.
That might be a better way to incent landlords to do it than to
say, ‘‘If you accept our money, you are writing off a 30-percent
loss.’’ I am worried how that will affect the outroll.
Mr. GONZALEZ OF OHIO. Thank you. I share that concern. And
before I yield back, it just seems like we have a poorly-designed
program. I think that is very obvious, given the bottlenecks, again,
6.8 percent of money distributed in my home State of Ohio. It’s a
very poorly-designed program, and then we have a bad idea to fix
a poorly-designed program.
So, I oppose that bad idea, I support Mr. McHenry’s legislation,
and with that, I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Don’t forget, we had to correct the prob-
lems with PPP also. The big banks created their own portals and
took care of their concierge clients. We had to put more money in
it to straighten it out. It was not a perfect program. We made it
work, as we are going to make this work.
Mr. GONZALEZ OF OHIO. That is what I said. I did say it wasn’t
perfect, but the money got out.
Chairwoman WATERS. Ms. Dean is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. DEAN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you for con-
vening this important hearing and for being focused on solutions
and success in making sure we protect people from evictions. And

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I say that with a special twist this week, because in my area of
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, we were shockingly hit by Hur-
ricane Ida, associated tornadoes, and devastating losses to housing,
to tenants and their tenancies, to landlords, to homeowners, and to
businesses small, medium, and large.
We had Biblical-level flooding in my district, and tornadoes that
we have never, ever, ever seen, losing a lot of our housing stock.
So I offer that as a backdrop to say, we have to find a solution.
I wanted to start with you, Mr. Morris, and I know you have
been talked with a lot, but with good reason. I am from suburban
Philadelphia, so I have heard about your program, and I am
thrilled with its level of success. It is always good to have a Phila-
delphia presence on our panels.
I read your testimony and learned more of the details of the
Eviction Diversion Program and Emergency Rental Assistance Pro-
gram in Philadelphia. I was hoping you could offer us a little bit
more granular details as to the success: specifically, how many ten-
ants have participated; how many landlords have participated; and
in what proportion of cases did mediation result in a good outcome
or some agreement?
Your high percentage of being able to deliver relief is just to be
commended. So, can you offer us a little more specifics on that, so
that we might learn from it?
Mr. MORRIS. Sure. I can try my best to offer you specifics with
the data that we have. I can tell you so far, across all phases, we
have spent $165 million in rental assistance dollars that have got-
ten out the door.
In phase 4 alone, there have been about 13,454 households who
have been assisted. So far, I think there are 50,000 applications
that are still pending, due to a resource limit, and also, just that
the time to process the applications is not there.
And we are working as hard as we can. We have spent 86 per-
cent of the money that has been allocated to us across all phases
of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. So, we are spending
the money.
And in terms of the average amount of assistance that is being
paid out, we are paying out 8 months on average to households.
The utility assistance we are paying is about 4 months on average
to households that have applied.
I don’t specifically have the number of landlords and tenants that
have applied separately because we track them as households. The
way our system is designed, there is a portal by which a landlord
can go in and pre-register, and some have been registered since
April when Phase 4 actually opened in Philadelphia, and then a
tenant can apply with their applications and those applications are
synced on the back end and processed as one.
So for every household, I would not consider that a landlord in
and of itself, because landlords do own several properties. But we
measure them by households that have applied, and there are
about 50,000, as I said, that are still outstanding, and we just
don’t, right now, have the financial resources to help all 50,000 of
those, because we have spent 86 percent of our funding thus far.
But in terms of demographic data, I can provide that over 74 per-
cent of the households that we have helped have been below 30

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percent of the area median income. So, those are very poor house-
holds that would otherwise not have any funds left over to help
them deal with any sort of crisis. Never mind an ongoing COVID
pandemic; they wouldn’t have $500 to pay on a bill that they are
not expecting. So, we are helping the most vulnerable. And our cli-
ents are also predominantly female; over 66 percent of the appli-
cants have been female.
Ms. DEAN. I wanted to ask you very quickly, how did you spread
the word? And then, I want to get one more question in if I have
the chance.
Mr. MORRIS. We had an existing network of housing councils
from the 2008 housing crisis. The City has also done a lot of advo-
cacy around the program. And we have tenant advocates who have
been on the ground working, and as someone contacts us about an
eviction or has an instability, we provide information that rental
assistance is available, and the courts have also cooperated with us
in that process.
Ms. DEAN. Thank you. Thank you for that extraordinary success,
and I hope we send you the resources you need.
Mr. Schwartz, I just have a little bit of time left, but from the
landlord perspective—because our committee and our Congress is
always concerned with tenants and landlords, what successful out-
reach have you participated in?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Outreach as far as promoting the programs, the
ERAP program?
Ms. DEAN. Exactly.
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. In our communities, we make all of our resi-
dents aware of rental assistance. Even before the pandemic, if any-
one had trouble paying rent, we connected them with local char-
ities or other programs. So nothing has changed.
With the ERAP program, as I mentioned earlier, this has been
an all-hands effort to help our residents.
Chairwoman WATERS. The gentlewoman’s time has expired. I am
so sorry, but we have to move on.
Ms. DEAN. Thank you.
Chairwoman WATERS. The gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Steil,
is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. STEIL. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. I would
like to dive in and follow up from right where my colleague, Mr.
Gonzalez from Ohio, left off. Mr. Schwartz, I would like to ask you
about the impact of landlords being forced to take a haircut. Maybe
on the surface, it sounds like that might be a productive thing, it
is anything to help renters, but I think in—not in a static model
but in a dynamic model, where are those costs going to go?
And, so, I would love your insight, in particular, if you think that
there are going to be landlords across the country that are going
to take those losses in one place, and then reach out to other rent-
ers in their pool, and try to recoup those costs, and what the im-
pact would be on other renters who were not the beneficiary where
the landlord took a haircut? Could you just start there? And then
I have a follow-up question to that, if you would, Mr. Schwartz.
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. One thing I mentioned is, we have rental in-
flation going on now that we probably all have read about, and one

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of the contributors is kind of the costs associated to the industry
with moratoriums and haircuts, as you suggest.
In California, when ERAP first came out, there was a blanket 20-
percent haircut to the landlords by the State, and thankfully, that
was changed, because the flow of funds from ERAP was going very
slowly because of that haircut.
Mr. STEIL. So you are seeing the causation of some of these in-
creases being—well, you take a haircut on the left, but ultimately
you are raising prices on the right. Does that uniquely impact low-
or moderate-income renters?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. I believe it does. Low- and moderate-income rent-
ers have a higher percentage of their income going to rent, and the
rent—
Mr. STEIL. Okay. Trying to move quickly, I appreciate your in-
sight on that. Let me shift over to you, Mr. Winn, if I can. In south-
east Wisconsin, we have a lot of really small landlords. I lived in
a duplex before I bought the house that I am in today. I was a
renter there.
Often, it’s the case here in southeast Wisconsin that you will
have somebody who owns a duplex where they live in one side of
the duplex, and they have a tenant in the other. That is how they
are covering their mortgage.
Could you provide some insight as to how these policies have dif-
ferent impacts between the really big landlords that are out there
versus these true mom-and-pops? I can’t tell you how many land-
lords in a technical sense, but often they think of themselves as
just a homeowner—they own a duplex, they are trying to rent out
the other side—have been negatively impacted either by the evic-
tion moratorium, or the ability to obtain funds and what the im-
pact is, in particular, on some of these smaller families who are
just trying to build some equity for themselves, of this policy would
be, Mr. Winn?
Mr. WINN. Yes. In Congressman Lynch’s district, we call them
triple deckers. So, yes, I understand what you are saying. No, the
impact has to be severe. I think at this moment, we know the sta-
tistics are that 10 to 20 percent of the funds have reached their in-
tended recipients.
For a small landlord who has four or five units, or one or two,
that is the real estate tax bill, that is the mortgage payment. That
is it. So, we know that they don’t have any wiggle room. They don’t
have any ability to go get a line of credit to cover these gaps.
So, urgency is just as important as the actual amount of money
for those small landlords. I think the committee is doing the right
thing. We are here talking about it. We are here seeing how we can
get the money out. But I can only imagine the hardships that small
landlords are going through.
Mr. STEIL. I can’t tell you how many of them have called my of-
fice, frustrated with the policies put in place by Washington, frus-
trated with how poorly-run and operated this has been in getting
the funds out.
There are a lot of people who are looking at their home’s mort-
gage. If you own a duplex, your home is on the line when the other
half of that duplex is truly paying zero rent, and you have no abil-

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ity for recourse. It is a really serious problem, and I appreciate you
providing those insights, Mr. Winn.
With that, Madam Chairwoman, I will yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. The gentlewoman
from North Carolina, Ms. Adams, is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. ADAMS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I appreciate
the opportunity to share with you today. Ms. Yentel, Mr. Schwartz,
thank you both for being here.
During today’s hearing, we have heard plenty about provisions in
our legislation that allow landlords to directly apply for back rent.
Specifically, we have heard about landlords’ hesitancy regarding
the requirement that accepting ERA funds would mandate them to
house for an additional 120 days.
I think it is absolutely critical, though, that we tackle that hesi-
tancy, and I want to talk just a moment about a solution that my
local nonprofit is employing with a great deal of success.
I represent Charlotte, North Carolina. Ramp CLT, as we call it,
is, beyond any doubt, one of the most effective ERA administrators
in the nation, serving the entirety of the City of Charlotte and
Mecklenburg County in North Carolina.
They have been accepting self-attestations since the early days of
the pandemic, and they work mostly with our County, our City,
and other nonprofits to distribute ERA funds rapidly and accu-
rately and critically. And in addition to any arrears they award,
they also provide an additional 3 months of funding to ensure that
tenants will remain stably housed.
Now, those additional funds immediately help landlords and ten-
ants come to the table, and have made Ramp CLT one of the most
effective distributors of ERA dollars in my State.
So, Ms. Yentel first, and then Mr. Schwartz, as a way to help
bring reluctant stakeholders to the table, do you believe that ERA
administrators should consider automatically providing several fu-
ture months of rent along with any arrears?
Ms. YENTEL. Yes. Thank you for the question, but first, I think
it is important just to clarify, as you did, that the prohibition on
eviction for a short period of time is only for landlords who receive
funds without any tenant involvement. That is a very important
protection against fraud, against potential tenant harassment,
against housing stability of tenants.
I agree that the program that you named is a very strong pro-
gram, and has been from the very beginning. They were very early
to get started in spending with their ERA program. They set up a
program that was very accessible for low-income tenants and for
landlords, and they have been doing a great job in getting the
money out.
I think the solution that they came up with is a good, creative
one that can be helpful in many cases. Certainly, it provides addi-
tional housing stability for those low-income renters, and it pro-
vides assurances for the landlords that those months of rent will
be paid.
So, I think it is a good solution that should be considered. The
only caution I would make is that in some communities, they would
need to first be sure that they have enough ERA to cover the ar-

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rears of all of the tenants in need before making this future 3-
month rent payment automatic for all applicants.
But I certainly think that in some cases, and in cases where the
tenant needs that additional assistance, I think that is a very good
component to a successful program.
Ms. ADAMS. Thank you.
Mr. Schwartz?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. I agree with Diane. I think you need to
make sure you have enough money to pay the arrearages and what
has been owed before committing to go forward.
I think it would work on a voluntary basis. I think legislating it
would, again, create this effect of reducing participation in the pro-
gram that we don’t want to happen, but I do think landlords would
take advantage of it on a voluntary basis.
Ms. ADAMS. Okay.
Ms. Salazar, I want to just speak for just a moment about
COVID-19’s impact on women of color. In my conversations with
the Ramp CLT administrator, I was disturbed to hear that the
highest number of ERA applications were coming from African-
American women between the ages of 20 and 35, who had at least
one child.
So, how can Congress ensure that the outcomes of the Emer-
gency Rental Assistance Program do not exacerbate existing racial
inequities in housing?
Ms. SALAZAR. Thank you so much, Ms. Adams. It is such a crit-
ical issue. We knew from the start that this pandemic would have
a disproportionate impact on Black, Indigenous, and People of
Color (BIPOC) communities, communities of color, and we are see-
ing that play out, of course.
In our program here in the State of Oregon, we have contracted
with the local community-based organizations to do outreach spe-
cifically in communities of color, with translated materials, to get
the trusted relationship with community-based organizations to
help folks apply for rental assistance. So, that outreach is critical.
And the other piece that we are employing in our State is—
Ms. ADAMS. I think I am out of time.
Ms. SALAZAR. —priority within the queue. So, I would say that
there are some reforms in the proposed legislation that we are talk-
ing about today—
Ms. ADAMS. Thank you very much.
Ms. SALAZAR. —to increase that technical assistance—
Ms. ADAMS. Madam Chairwoman, I am yielding back. Okay,
thank you.
Chairwoman WATERS. The gentlewoman’s time has expired.
Thank you.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Taylor, is now recognized for 5
minutes,
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I appreciate this
hearing. I will comment that it is clear to me from all of our col-
leagues, the importance of trying to get this program to work prop-
erly and the frustration with it. And I certainly appreciate the bi-
partisan consensus that this needs to work well.
What I have to admit I am frustrated with is, where is the Ad-
ministration? They have been trying to operate this program for

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months and months and months, and they are not here. They are
not providing the suggestions.
I know, Madam Chairwoman, that you are very passionate about
protecting renters, advocating for essentially the eviction morato-
rium. The President, only at the very last minute, advocated for it
and then ultimately tried to do it by rule. And we knew that was
unconstitutional, knew that it was illegal. It was struck down in
court.
He could have been here, ‘‘here,’’ meaning in this building, in
Congress, advocating for change months and months ago, but he
hasn’t been. And so here we are, here you are, Madam Chair-
woman, working to try to address this and, ‘‘clean up the mess.’’
And so, I wanted to just say that one thing that is concerning
to me in this legislation is the idea of self-attestation. I know that
nobody here wants to see limited government resources, limited
taxpayer resources wasted, squandered, used in a way that is
fraudulent. And I think that I speak for all of us when I say that
none of us want to see that.
I am concerned that self-attestation opens the door for fraud.
And so, I really hope that we would revisit that. I know we want
to go expeditiously, and I certainly concur with that general senti-
ment of, let’s move quickly, let’s make sure we get these dollars
out.
And I think that you have heard Republicans and Democrats
talk about the slowness of the process in terms of getting the dol-
lars out. And that is why we are here, we are here to talk about
why it is slow, and how can we improve it.
I think it is a little late to be having this discussion. We should
have been having this discussion months and months ago. But nev-
ertheless, here we are today.
Ms. Salazar, a question for you, you indicated earlier, a few
hours ago I think, that you had participated, or been consulted
about the drafting of the legislation in front of us today. Did I hear
you correctly?
Ms. SALAZAR. Thank you so much, sir. Yes. The National Council
of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA) has been engaged in these dia-
logues around the legislation.
Mr. TAYLOR. And was that consultation by the Legislative
Branch or the Executive Branch?
Ms. SALAZAR. It was the Legislative Branch.
Mr. TAYLOR. Okay. So, has the Department of Housing and
Urban Development or the Secretary of the Treasury reached out
to you? Has there been any effort by the Executive Branch to try
to reach out to you to ask about the implementation of this pro-
gram?
Ms. SALAZAR. Certainly, Representative. We have had dialogues
with officials at the U.S. Treasury. They have been helpful dia-
logues. NCSHA proposed, for example, the bulk payment process to
get bulk payments out to landlords, and the Administration was re-
ceptive.
I think where we stand at this point is that the guidance from
Treasury has been helpful, but we need those statutory changes to
really codify the reforms necessary to be able to expedite the pro-

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gram. Sox, really building on some of the early dialogues we have
had with Treasury.
I will just say one other piece is that we are in dire need of guid-
ance from Treasury around how they will approach the reallocation
issue. We are rapidly coming up on September 30th.
Programs like ours in Oregon are pulling out all the stops to ex-
pedite payments getting out the door, and we need to understand
clearly from Treasury that they will take into account things like
the strong demand for the program on the ground, and the efforts
that States like ours are making to expedite payment.
That is one area where we have not received the guidance that
we need.
Mr. TAYLOR. Sure. Are you testifying here today that you are still
waiting for guidance from the Administration in order to imple-
ment these programs?
Ms. SALAZAR. I would say, in some regard, the guidance has been
forthcoming. For example, the recent guidance to—
Mr. TAYLOR. But I think you just said you are waiting for guid-
ance—is that right, you are waiting for guidance?
Ms. SALAZAR. We are waiting for guidance, sir, specifically on the
issue of how Treasury will address the September 30th—
Mr. TAYLOR. Again, I guess I will just express frustration, indi-
vidually, and I think I speak for my colleagues—I am really frus-
trated that the Administration isn’t really coming to the table, isn’t
really offering legislative solutions, isn’t really leading on this.
I am glad to see the chairwoman and the ranking member work-
ing, in slightly different contexts, but trying to come up with solu-
tions. And I really think that the Executive Branch needs to be
part of this and part of these discussions.
Madam Chairwoman, I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. And we are all
working toward finalizing some of these issues and concerns. I am
working with the Treasury, working with the Administration, and
offering to work with the ranking member. So thank you very
much.
Next, we will hear from the gentlewoman from New York, Ms.
Ocasio-Cortez. You are now recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Thank you so much, Madam Chairwoman,
for hosting this hearing, and as Representative Dean had men-
tioned earlier, we just experienced devastating floods for which my
district was ground zero, in New York City, for the floods from
Hurricane Ida.
And this has been a travesty in my district. We have lost 12 peo-
ple in these floods, and the connection here is that in almost every
person lost to the floods, it was related to our housing crisis. The
lack of available housing stock and the fear of eviction existed even
prior to the pandemic, and the pandemic has only made it worse,
to the point that people are seeking alternatives to the housing
stock that are often dangerous.
Now, that being said, speaking about those long-standing inequi-
ties, many low-income renters struggled to make ends meet even
before the pandemic. And with the lapsing of unemployment, the
striking of the eviction moratorium, all of these things have placed
renters in an even more perilous position.

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We have discussed some of the difficulties, and the committee
has addressed some of the difficulties in State implementation. But
I also want to talk a little bit about the difficulties in getting these
funds out with the segment of landlords who are refusing to par-
ticipate in emergency rental assistance.
Ms. Yentel, is there evidence that lack of tenant participation is
a widespread problem for the Emergency Rental Assistance Pro-
gram?
Ms. YENTEL. I have not seen any evidence or data to show that
there is a widespread problem of tenants not participating.
Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Okay.
Ms. YENTEL. There is clear evidence of tenants not completing
applications, which points to inaccessible and overly complicated
applications that need to be simplified.
Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Okay. I see. And would you say that in rela-
tion to tenant participation, is lack of landlord participation in the
program more of a frequent problem that we are noticing?
Ms. YENTEL. We have seen evidence of this, yes. In a survey that
we and others did, about 44 percent of program administrators said
that landlords refusing to participate in ERA programs was a chal-
lenge. And from some of the more recent conversations, I would say
that number has likely grown.
Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. So that means that when landlords refuse
to participate, some Emergency Rental Assistance Programs are
not required to provide assistance directly to tenants, and they
could face eviction or homelessness if their landlord vetoes the ap-
plication. Is that right?
Ms. YENTEL. That is right. Unfortunately, it is optional for pro-
gram administrators to utilize direct-to-tenant assistance if land-
lords participate, and we are seeing that only about 28 percent of
all ERA programs are explicitly allowing direct-to-tenant assist-
ance. That means there are many tenants who are having their ap-
plication closed, who are not getting any of the assistance they
need because the landlord has refused to participate.
Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. And this is consistent with something I
have been seeing. If you are a tenant and you want to make right
on your back rent, and you apply for the Emergency Rental Assist-
ance Program, if your landlord has been trying to get you out, they
can refuse, in the majority of programs, to accept your rental as-
sistance and evict you and use that as grounds to evict you. Is that
correct?
Ms. YENTEL. That is correct, and we are seeing some very egre-
gious cases of tenants showing up in eviction court with the emer-
gency rental assistance in their hands, and the landlord saying, I
don’t want it, and the judge allowing the eviction to move forward.
Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. It seems as though we have a very urgent
issue, and I am so thankful to see Chairwoman Waters address
these issues.
Now, my last question is, what types of enforcement mechanisms
should we be exploring to ensure that the tenant protections in this
bill are adhered to by landlords?
Ms. YENTEL. That is a really important point, and we strongly
recommend that the legislation be very clear in identifying a Fed-
eral agency, the DOJ or the CFPB, and give them clear authority

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and responsibility to ensure that the tenant protections in this leg-
islation are followed and adhered to.
Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Thank you so very much.
Ms. YENTEL. Thank you.
Mr. SCHWARTZ. I would like to just chime in on this topic, be-
cause I am a landlord, so I can give you some reasons we have seen
landlords not want to participate. In a State like New York, there
are conditions imposed by participating, like rent freezes, not being
able to charge late fees, and extended protracted moratoriums.
That makes it hard for the landlords to participate with all of those
conditions.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. The gentlelady’s time has ex-
pired.
The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Loudermilk, is now recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. LOUDERMILK. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
First, I would like to recall how we arrived at this point. First,
the CDC established an eviction moratorium despite having no
statutory authority to do so. Then, after Congress established a bi-
partisan rental assistance program in December, Democrats cre-
ated an entirely new partisan program with a conflicting set of
rules.
Because of that incompetent law-making or policy-making, the
funds are now stuck in an administrative mess, and only a fraction,
a small fraction has been distributed.
When HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge testified before this com-
mittee 2 months ago, she said if we get the rental assistance pro-
grams to actually work, then there is no need for an eviction mora-
torium. But instead of focusing on getting the rental assistance
program to work, Democrats tried to pass legislation to extend the
eviction moratorium.
When that failed, the President then directed the CDC to extend
the eviction moratorium, which he knew was unconstitutional, and
the Supreme Court struck it down.
The HUD Secretary also said that streamlining the rental assist-
ance program would help get the funds out more quickly, and un-
like the Members of the Majority who are just now turning their
attention to this, Republicans proposed a bill to fix the rental as-
sistance program 3 months ago.
There are more than 10 million jobs available right now, more
than at any other time in the history of this country. There are
more open jobs than there are unemployed people, but instead of
focusing on getting people back into the workforce, the Majority
now wants to remove any requirement for renters to have a hard-
ship in order to receive rental assistance, and make taxpayer-fund-
ed rent a long-term entitlement regardless of whether people actu-
ally need it.
Mr. Winn, one of the items in the Majority’s bill is that it would
require landlords who apply for rental assistance on a tenant’s be-
half to accept any amount they receive as satisfying the entire rent
debt, even if the amount they receive is thousands of dollars short
of what is owed. Does that provide any incentive to the landlords
to apply for these funds?

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Mr. WINN. Thank you for the question. And I would answer that
in two ways. One is, I think we would appreciate more clarity on
what the proposal actually says, because read in its worst way, it
could be true that by accepting $3,000 in rental assistance, you
could be foregoing $6,000. And that doesn’t help anybody.
So, I think it would be very important to clarify what those rules
are, and frankly, don’t make them so burdensome that landlords
can’t participate.
Mr. LOUDERMILK. I appreciate that.
Also, the government is the reason why so many property owners
have been unable to collect rent and evict non-paying tenants.
Should the government make landlords whole by allowing the rent-
al assistance funds to reimburse property owners even if the renter
has moved? That is for Mr. Winn.
Mr. WINN. Yes. I think—and I mentioned this earlier—that is a
critical aspect of this. And it is only going to happen more as we
go through the pandemic. There are going to be tenants who see
insurmountable balances of rent delinquency, and just say, I have
to move. And so it is almost an effective eviction, but it is some-
body deciding to move, and unless the program explicitly allows
rent on those vacant units, the landlords are the only ones left
holding the bag. So the proposal really should, and I hope does, ad-
dress that.
Mr. LOUDERMILK. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Schwartz, do you agree that consolidating the two Emer-
gency Rental Assistance Programs under the ERA 1 program rules
would get the funds out more quickly?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. I agree with respect to focusing on arrearages,
arrearages with respect to vacant units like you just spoke about,
and occupied units, and by consolidating them, because ERAP 1 did
prioritize arrearages, and we think that is very important.
Mr. LOUDERMILK. Okay.
Madam Chairwoman, I have no other questions, so I will yield
back. Thank you.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much.
The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Garcia, is now recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. GARCIA OF ILLINOIS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and
thank you for your leadership on this issue. Good afternoon to all
of our panelists.
The majority of the constituents I represent are renters, so this
issue is very personal to me. Millions of people across the country
lost their homes after the last financial crisis 10 years ago, but
working-class communities like mine never recovered. Families got
evicted and priced out. In Chicago, this is a racial-justice issue.
The Logan Square neighborhood in my district lost over 10,000
Black families and 20,000 Latino families in the last decade. I can’t
stand by and let this happen again, and that is why I fought for
an eviction moratorium, and why I fought for emergency rental as-
sistance, and now, I am fighting to make sure that the program
works for neighborhoods like those in my district.
The whole point of rental assistance is to keep people in their
homes, and it is our job to make sure that happens. So, I want to

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thank the chairwoman and the ranking member for convening this
important hearing, and say thanks to all of our witnesses today.
I do want to direct a couple of questions to Ms. Yentel. You
talked about the importance of tenant protections in the Rental As-
sistance Program. I know firsthand how landlords have a lot of dif-
ferent tools to get rid of tenants they don’t want. Filing an eviction
in court is only one of them.
Can you briefly talk about how landlords might get rid of tenants
without formally evicting them, and is this common?
Ms. YENTEL. Yes. And it is important to recognize too that there
are multiple reasons why landlords might refuse to participate in
programs, and we have heard that concessions required of them is
one.
Another reason why we are seeing some landlords not wanting
to participate is because they are in hot rental markets and there
is a financial benefit to actually evicting the current tenant, in-
creasing rents, and making more money in the long run. There is
also a challenge of landlords who have unlicensed or otherwise ille-
gal units who can’t access the emergency rental assistance funds.
We do see during the pandemic and at other times as well, unfor-
tunately, ways that landlords harass or push out tenants. It is not
a formal eviction filing and it is illegal in most places, but they
might put a lock on the door and just not let the tenant back in;
they might turn off utilities, turn off water, and force that tenant
out; or, in less explicit ways, they use harassment to push that ten-
ant out.
It is part of the reason why it is so essential that these protec-
tions be included if ERA is given directly to landlords without any
tenant involvement. It is certainly not all landlords who will act
this way, but we have to prevent creating perverse incentives for
landlords to potentially harass tenants, to push them out, receive
the emergency rental assistance, without having to agree to any of
these other requirements that we are hearing are considered so on-
erous for landlords.
Mr. GARCIA OF ILLINOIS. Thank you for that. And I have a follow-
up question. How can Congress improve the rental assistance pro-
gram to prevent landlords from unreasonably getting rid of tenants
and claiming funds anyway?
Ms. YENTEL. Again, in most cases, landlords and tenants are ap-
plying for assistance together, and the landlord gets paid for the
arrears that are owed to them. In those cases, there are ways the
programs need to be improved; they need to be simplified; there
needs to be self-attestation used; they need to do outreach to get
that money out faster.
In cases where the committee considers allowing landlords to re-
ceive assistance without involvement of the tenant, there have to
be strong protections in place for that tenant to remain stably
housed. And many of those protections are included in the chair-
woman’s legislation—protections against eviction immediately after
receiving the funds, protections against going back and claiming
more funds from the tenant in the future—and are really impor-
tant protections to ensure that we are not increasing tenant har-
assment or housing instability.
Mr. GARCIA OF ILLINOIS. Great. Thank you very much.

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Madam Chairwoman, I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr.
Timmons, is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. TIMMONS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
We all voted for the CARES Act back in March of 2020. That leg-
islation, of course, included an eviction moratorium which would
last until July 24, 2020. I think that most people thought that was
reasonable. It was the right thing to do. We needed to help people
who needed help. But I don’t think anyone on this committee would
have anticipated or supported such a moratorium going on for an-
other year, but that is exactly what happened, and even that
wasn’t long enough for some people.
I also think it is fair to say that, at that time, most of us serving
on this committee truly believed that renters who are economically
disadvantaged because of economic lockdowns often imposed by
State and local governments should not have been evicted from
their homes. That is just straightforward common sense.
But so much has changed between then and now, primarily the
development and distribution of safe and effective COVID vaccines
for anyone who wants one. This allowed the economy to largely re-
open over the spring and summer months of 2021, making jobs
available literally almost everywhere. There are 10.9 million jobs
available in this country today.
I talk to employers of all different sizes and industries, and a
common refrain is always, we need more people. We need more
people working. Jobs are available, and thanks to the vaccine, it is
safe to return to the workplace.
On top of this, as we all know, Congress has shelled out close to
$50 billion in rental assistance funds to help renters cover back
rent they may owe. These two developments, vaccines allowing for
the economy to reopen and the Emergency Rental Assistance Pro-
gram, made an eviction moratorium completely unnecessary many
months ago.
If the last few months have taught us anything, it is that the
current Administration is completely incapable of putting a plan in
place and executing it, with the primary examples being the disas-
trous Afghanistan debacle, and this emergency rental program.
We have also learned that President Biden has zero qualms
about abusing his power. I think at the other end of Pennsylvania
Avenue, we have forgotten that in our system of government, Con-
gress writes the laws and the President executes them. He doesn’t
get to just do whatever he wants or gets pressured into doing when
people camp out on the Capitol steps. The Supreme Court has al-
ready knocked down this illegal moratorium extension, and will
surely do the same for the vaccine mandates we saw last night.
What is sad is that this was all avoidable. A competent White
House would have had ERAP up and running, and been working
with State and local governments to distribute dollars in a produc-
tive way that would have made the eviction moratorium debate a
moot debate.
I know everyone on this committee wants to help people in this
country who need help, but we need to be thoughtful in the manner
in which we deliver that help, and make sure that it is not counter-
productive.

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One of the biggest problems we have had implementing any new
program, particularly ones that are quickly stood up and quickly
send money out the door, is with making sure that only the in-
tended eligible recipients get funds, and fraudsters get locked out.
I think that we need to really be careful that we are not going
to do more harm than good. We have to get back to work. We have
almost 11 million jobs available, and the only way that we are
going to get out of this—the only way we are going to get our econ-
omy back on track is by getting back to work.
Mr. Winn, I know hindsight is 2020, and it is easy to be a Mon-
day morning quarterback, but looking back over the last 18
months, if you knew all this was coming, what is the one step you
wish we could have taken to weather the storm that was/is COVID,
and why?
Mr. WINN. I would say—I feel like I am repeating myself so I
apologize, but I do believe it would be the informed consent model
for tenants rather than the wet signature. I do believe that would
have doubled the amount of resources we could have given to ten-
ants on that basis.
Mr. TIMMONS. Thank you. I just want to remind everybody that
we have $30 trillion in debt and we are talking about spending tril-
lions and trillions of dollars we don’t have. Our kids, our
grandkids, and our great grandkids are going to have to pay this
money back. It is not just funny money.
We have to get serious and we have to help people who need
help, but we have to get our economy back open and get people
back to work, because that is the only way that we are going to
be able to help the people who need help the most.
And, with that, Madam Chairwoman, I yield back. Thank you.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much.
The gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Garcia, is now recognized for
5 minutes.
Ms. GARCIA OF TEXAS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. And
thank you once again for your leadership on this issue and for
prioritizing this very important piece of legislation that will help
many constituents in my district and all across America stay
housed this winter.
During the pandemic, our county has faced unimaginable chal-
lenges. In Houston, many families were still trying to recover from
Hurricane Harvey when COVID hit. As of now, hundreds and thou-
sands of Houstonians are behind on their rent, and since April
2020, Harris County landlords have filed almost 34,000 cases for
eviction—34,000 just here in Harris County.
With our dollars that we have received through the ERA 1, as
page 10 of Ms. Yentel’s paper suggests, Harris County is at 81.9
percent, almost 90 percent of the dollars. I understand anecdotally
that the dollars are gone, and I can tell you that if there is any
city or State or county that has extra dollars, we will take them,
because the need is great in Houston and Harris County. We must
also make sure that all of the measures that we are taking here
do not adversely impact on any renter’s ability to apply for any of
these funds.
My first question is for Ms. Yentel. Ms. Yentel, in your testi-
mony, you highlighted that among those behind on their rent, 31

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percent of the households were forced to use debt instruments such
as credit cards to make ends meet. And last month, the New York
Fed reported that household debt is at an historic high of almost
$15 trillion, that is, ‘‘trillion,’’ with a ‘‘T,’’ marking the largest nomi-
nal household debt increase since 2007.
This, of course, concerns me because some people did pay their
rent, they just put it on their credit card, and now they are stuck
with credit card debt. So what can we do to make sure that we
aren’t forcing people to take on more risk than they are ready for?
And could you elaborate on any of the ripple effects that any of
these financial hardships due to housing—what that does to con-
sumers and the economy in general?
Ms. YENTEL. Yes, and it is one of, I would say, the very unfortu-
nate consequences of Congress having delayed action on finalizing
emergency rental assistance for so long. As you know, in the House
of Representatives, emergency rental assistance was passed 3
times, in May, June, and July. If the emergency rental assistance
had been enacted in that time, it could have been used as it was
designed, which was to keep low-income renters current on their
rent, to help them pay the rent during the pandemic and not fall
behind.
The legislation was held up in the Senate under Republican lead-
ership, and it wasn’t enacted until December of 2020. By then, ten-
ants had accrued an estimated $50 billion in rent arrears, and it
became a different need that the program was trying to serve,
which was to help pay those rent arrears. So, that is one of the
more unfortunate outcomes of how long it took for Congress ulti-
mately to enact this.
As you said, in the meantime, most tenants did everything they
could to stay current on their rent during the pandemic. And some
of them had to make tradeoffs in not buying store-bought food or
paying for internet, despite their children needing it for virtual
school, and many of them took out loans or used credit cards to pay
for the rent.
The data is very clear that there was an increase in the number
of tenants using credit cards to pay the rent, and, in fact, many
landlords were in communication with tenants, encouraging that to
keep the rent payments current.
It is unfortunate now that many of those tenants hold that debt
but are not able to be paid back through the Emergency Rental As-
sistance Program for the debt that they owe. And I would encour-
age the committee to consider ways to enable tenants who can
prove that they used credit cards or otherwise took out loans to
stay current on their rent, to access emergency rental assistance to
make them whole as well.
Ms. GARCIA OF TEXAS. Thank you.
And quickly, Mr. Morris, I had a question for you about trans-
lation services and interpreters. I think it was you who testified
that some of the delay and some of the concerns from the renter
side is not having the forms and the information, the outreach in-
formation in the language of their own. Is this a problem nation-
wide that we also need to address?

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Mr. MORRIS. I believe this is a nationwide problem, and all of our
applications in Philadelphia are available in several languages
based on demographics for the populations.
Ms. GARCIA OF TEXAS. But should this be a mandate in the bill
itself? Because obviously—
Mr. MORRIS. It should.
Ms. GARCIA OF TEXAS. —we are hearing that in some cities, in
some programs, that is not the case. So, the only way that we can
make it uniform and that we make the program accessible to ev-
eryone would be to put it in the bill. Would you agree?
Mr. MORRIS. I agree. Even if the bill itself has not changed, there
should be a person who can interpret on behalf of someone in a dif-
ferent language available.
Chairwoman WATERS. The gentlelady’s time has expired.
Ms. GARCIA OF TEXAS. Thank you, and I yield back. Thank you,
Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you.
The gentlewoman from Georgia, Ms. Williams, is now recognized
for 5 minutes.
Ms. WILLIAMS OF GEORGIA. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman,
and thank you for holding this hearing today.
Too many renters, through no fault of their own, have fallen be-
hind on rent payments during this pandemic due to economic hard-
ship, forcing people on the streets during a pandemic that is still
raging, and I have seen it firsthand.
Back in early June, when a local eviction moratorium expired, I
posted pictures on social media from my district where people’s be-
longings had been tossed out on the street, and this was with the
CDC eviction moratorium still in effect. That is because people
didn’t know how to access the actual moratorium, let alone the
rental assistance associated.
Those pictures were a stark reminder that we must keep working
to find a Federal solution to keep people in their homes. I knew
that we had to pull every lever to protect tenants from eviction and
give them a leg up in recovering from this pandemic.
For one, the CDC eviction moratorium protected countless fami-
lies, which is why I was quick to cosponsor Chairwoman Waters’
bill to extend it through the end of the year. Unfortunately, some
Members of Congress stood in the way of this extension despite the
tireless work of Chairwoman Waters, Speaker Pelosi, and so many
other Members of Congress working to protect our constituents.
However, like Chairwoman Waters, I knew that we couldn’t stop
fighting. We still have to address the fundamental problem of get-
ting folks out of rental debt. The key is efficiently distributing the
rental assistance already provided by Congress, which has gone out
too slowly in many localities.
This week, I was proud to join Chairwoman Waters, and co-spon-
sor the introduction of the Expediting Assistance to Renters and
Landlords Act, which will make the rental assistance Congress ap-
proved go out more efficiently. And today, I am glad to talk more
about how we get rental assistance to the people.
Ms. Yentel, in your testimony, you noted that my home county
of Fulton County, Georgia, has distributed 76 percent of the ERA
1 funds that were allotted; however, the rate is not that high in

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every county nearby. In fact, you noted that Georgia as a whole has
only distributed 3.6 percent of its funds.
If enacted, to what extent will the Expediting Assistance to Rent-
ers and Landlords Act help to reduce distribution disparities in
places like my home State of Georgia? And in addition to pushing
for passage of this legislation, what should Members of Congress
be doing to help more localities get assistance out the door more
quickly to people in need?
Ms. YENTEL. Thank you. The legislation that Chairwoman
Waters has introduced and that you cosponsored would speed up
the assistance of emergency rental assistance in several ways, and
it would build on lessons learned and best practices during the
pandemic.
We have learned by now very clearly what makes some programs
so successful and what makes some programs much less so. Some
of the reforms that are included in this legislation, for example,
would require that all programs use self-attestation for all eligi-
bility requirements. This would drastically streamline applications,
and speed up the delivery of funds. It would also require that all
programs utilize direct-to-tenant assistance when landlords refuse
to participate, ensuring that tenants aren’t penalized for their land-
lord’s lack of action.
It would redefine eligible grantees for emergency rental assist-
ance to go beyond State and local government entities to include
the community-based nonprofit organizations that are doing the
door-knocking and outreach to get tenants engaged in the process.
It would prohibit the requirement of written leases, which has
also been a barrier for some landlords and for many of the most
marginalized tenants who have informal leases but still owe rent
to their landlords. So, there are a number of really important
changes and protections in the legislation, which we support.
In terms of what more Members of Congress can do, I think this
legislation is a very good start, but I also think taking the actions
that you have taken in your community to help improve and en-
courage improvement of these Emergency Rental Assistance pro-
grams, the example that Chairwoman Waters gave of the actions
she has taken in Los Angeles, to connect legal aid attorneys with
the emergency rental assistance with the landlords, this is really
important leadership that all Members of Congress could take that
could help educate constituents about the availability of resources
and then help them to access them.
Ms. WILLIAMS OF GEORGIA. Thank you, Ms. Yentel. And not
knowing what the future holds, do you think it would be useful to
study the implementation of the Emergency Rental Assistance Pro-
gram, including any changes to the program, to see how we might
improve other programs, going forward, across the country?
Ms. YENTEL. Absolutely, we should be constantly studying, learn-
ing, and improving as we go for this and for any future programs
that are set forth.
Ms. WILLIAMS OF GEORGIA. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. My
time has expired, and I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you.
The gentleman from West Virginia, Mr. Mooney, is now recog-
nized for 5 minutes.

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Mr. MOONEY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
We understand that last month, the White House essentially
caved to political pressure from the left and unilaterally extended
the eviction moratorium, even though they knew it was unconstitu-
tional for President Biden to assume this power to himself, the
power that is rightly placed in the legislature, the Congress.
After the court struck down the moratorium and once again told
the White House that it was unconstitutional, Democrats in com-
mittee here, in Congress, finally decided to propose changes to the
Emergency Rental Assistance Program. The Republicans had al-
ready proposed changes to the Emergency Rental Assistance Pro-
gram months ago, well before the eviction moratorium standoff
took place.
Instead of going to the President to abuse his powers, we should
have worked with committee members on common-sense reforms.
Now, the Democrats are rushing to do a rental assistance program
through this process. We are scheduled to mark up this bill on
Monday of next week. And we are having a hearing on the bill Fri-
day, today, the week before.
Hearings are supposed to give us a chance to step back and as-
sess legislation well before they are marked up or make it to the
House Floor. But there are zero business days between our hearing
and this legislation and the scheduled markup vote. That is unfor-
tunate, because I think this bill has some very significant prob-
lems.
I am concerned that the legislation could open up the Emergency
Rental Assistance Program to waste, fraud, and abuse. One of the
most irresponsible provisions in this bill, which appears to be a
completely one-sided partisan Democrat bill, which we have seen
too much of in this Congress, is it requires self-attestation from a
renter to be considered as proof of eligibility for the program.
That means an applicant could self-report their income and re-
ceive rental assistance from the United States taxpayers with no
documentation, and no verification. If someone simply tells the gov-
ernment they are income eligible for the program, we just take
their word for it. This bill would say, take their word for it and give
them the hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
I was pleased that my colleague, Congressman Andy Barr of
Kentucky, mentioned earlier in his comments that we are talking
about the use of hard-earned taxpayer dollars here, not money that
grows on trees that the government just has; the government
doesn’t have any money that they don’t first take from the United
States taxpayers. It is their money we are watching over here.
So, my question is directed to you, Mr. Winn and Mr. Schwartz.
When a potential resident begins the process of moving into one of
your units, can they self-attest their income level or do you use
some means of verifying their income level?
Mr. WINN. I can answer that as it relates to governmental pro-
grams that we help administer, like the Low-Income Housing Tax
Credit or Section 8. Yes, there has to be verified income for those
Federal programs. So by and large, we do have that information in
our own portfolio. For market-rate renters, for renters who are not
under those programs, we are not in the business of verifying their
income necessarily, so I just wanted to point that out.

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Mr. MOONEY. Mr. Schwartz?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes, we do income verification for our residents.
I guess my only point with self-attestation is the download of these
forms, particularly for lower-income residents, has been a big bar-
rier to getting the emergency renters assistance, and we do our
best to help them, but self-attestation would streamline the proc-
ess. And I do think there is a capability of the Federal Government
to audit the self-attestations through the tax returns and informa-
tion the government has and catch people who are committing
fraud.
Mr. MOONEY. Okay. Thank you for that.
A quick follow-up to both of you, if you were forced to accept self-
attestation as proof of income, would that cause you to be con-
cerned about the tenant’s ability to pay rent?
Mr. WINN. I just want to say, I think that the issue that we are
encountering now as a country is not landlords getting paid too
much out of ERAP; it is landlords getting paid too little. So, I do
believe that if the attestation can help get the money out—the flip
side of that argument is that smaller landlords are often unable to
have the follow-up required to verify incomes themselves, to make
sure that the tax returns are properly dated, to make sure that
they have filed it correctly. So, I do believe there is a need to sim-
plify the process.
And to your question of, would it put us in a position to take
somebody as a tenant that we otherwise wouldn’t have, I think the
issue is that they are already there. They are already in our units,
and we can’t find a way to get them ERAP.
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. And I would just follow up—I know you are
out of time—that we only verify once. We don’t know after the ten-
ant moves in what their income is. They could be with us for 10
years, and we wouldn’t know.
Mr. MOONEY. Okay. I don’t know if I am out of time, but I have
a closing statement if I am not out of time. Thank you for your
comments.
I want to say, I think it would be irresponsible—
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. The gentleman’s time has long
expired.
The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Auchincloss, is now rec-
ognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Madam Chairwoman, thank you for the op-
portunity to work on this bill.
I have heard a number of my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle talk about the unconstitutionality of President Biden’s ac-
tions. And while I appreciate that everyone in Congress needs to
be laser-focused on protecting the Constitution and holding the Ad-
ministration to account, I have to say that these words would reso-
nate more with me if we had seen this same kind of attention on
the Constitution in the last 4 years, after the most egregious depre-
dations of the Constitution in the history of the United States, by
President Trump. So, I would encourage everybody in Congress of
both parties to continue to hold Presidents of both parties to ac-
count for protecting and defending the Constitution.
I am also hearing a tremendous amount of frustration, again
from both sides, about the bureaucracy and the paperwork around

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if it was grounded in good intentions and was really directed to-
wards an extreme need. And it has made me think a lot about the
Child Tax Credit.
And the connection here is that we have seen over and over
again empirically with Federal policy that when we directly trans-
fer money to working families, whether it is through the Child Tax
Credit or the Earned Income Tax Credit, they spend it on what
they need and they spend it on a better future for their kids.
And so, the expansion of the Child Tax Credit and making per-
manent the tremendous gain in childhood poverty reduction that
we will achieve in the American Rescue Plan and reconciliation can
be viewed not just as expanding and improving social welfare, but
also, in the long run, obviating the need for some of these programs
that I know my Republican colleagues get frustrated with for some-
times being inefficient or bureaucratic or increasing red tape. Just
give money directly to people [inaudible] Needs [inaudible] Without
being market distortions or even without creating a new level of
Federal bureaucracy. So, I would encourage you to think about the
Child Tax Credit in that lens.
I will pivot now towards the program in question. And, again,
Madam Chairwoman, thank you for the work that you have done
to help correct some of the flaws we have had in the distribution
of these funds.
Earlier this week, a local news station, WBUR, [inaudible] Rent-
ers in the southern part of the district I represent in Bristol Coun-
ty were twice as likely to have been evicted during the pandemic.
And they have actually seen more authorizations for evictions in
two cities, Fall River and New Bedford, than in Boston, which is
a city 6 times their size.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of them, as the article
pointed out, is that some renters do not even learn of the rental
assistance at all until they are actually in eviction court itself, and
sometimes learn of rental assistance even in eviction court. They
are literally getting evicted through the court process and never
had been told about it.
So, I would like to focus on housing courts and their role as the
last tripwire in this whole process for making people aware of their
rights. Ms. Salazar, if you could start by saying if you have seen
any programs that are effective, where the courts are doing their
job?
Ms. SALAZAR. Thank you, sir, for that question about the role of
courts and eviction diversion. Certainly, our hope is to be able to
respond quickly to get rental assistance into the hands of tenants
before we reach that point.
But one of the things that we are seeing work really well is that
our local program administrators on the ground are collaborating
with the court systems to intervene and directly get rental assist-
ance into the hands of folks who have received a filing. And so, it
is those kinds of relationships and cooperation that are absolutely
critical.
And I would say that one of the things that is helpful in the
chairwoman’s bill is being more focused on administrative dollars,
technical assistance, and the support for local community-based or-

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ganizations so that we can set up those kinds of effective programs
to engage [inaudible] Solution.
Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. And in my final minute, Ms. Salazar, again,
perhaps you could, and with each witness [inaudible] Say for the
sake of the record whether you support self-attestation as pro-
grammed in this bill.
Ms. SALAZAR. Thank you for the question. Self-attestation cer-
tainly speeds the provision of rental assistance. What we have seen
in our own program in Oregon is that some of our local administra-
tors have been quick to adopt self-attestation as part of the process
and some have been slower to adopt it for various reasons. And
when we see it utilized—
Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Ms. Salazar, I apologize for interrupting, but
I only have about 20 seconds. I want to let the other witnesses
quickly say if they support self-attestation or not.
Mr. Morris, perhaps you next?
Mr. MORRIS. I do support self-attestation.
Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Thank you.
Mr. Winn?
Mr. WINN. Yes. It is not a perfect solution, but I do think it is
required at this time to get the money out effectively.
Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Thank you.
Mr. Schwartz?
Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes, I support self-attestation.
Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Okay. Thank you.
Ms. YENTEL. And we strongly support it as well.
Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Thank you all.
Madam Chairwoman, I yield back.
Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. The gentleman’s time has ex-
pired.
Do we have any more Members on the platform who have not yet
participated?
If not, I would like to thank all of our witnesses for being here
today and for providing us with very valuable testimony.
The Chair notes that some Members may have additional ques-
tions for these witnesses, which they may wish to submit in writ-
ing. Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 5
legislative days for Members to submit written questions to these
witnesses and to place their responses in the record. Also, without
objection, Members will have 5 legislative days to submit extra-
neous materials to the Chair for inclusion in the record.
And, with that, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:44 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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APPENDIX

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File and source

File: Protecting-Renters-During-the-Pandemic-Reviewing-Reforms-to-Expedite-E-500813a0bb.pdf
Size: 21,444,080 bytes
SHA-256: cec74376f0bc99ad01d872a4e373761323b20f8ef50371413d5536dd6fb958d9
Our copy: Protecting-Renters-During-the-Pandemic-Reviewing-Reforms-to-Expedite-E-500813a0bb.pdf
Original: www.govinfo.gov