A paper published in the Finance and Economics Discussion Series (FEDS) by the Federal Reserve Board, “Targeted Relief: Geography and Timing of Emergency Rental Assistance,” provides new information about the implementation of the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program established by Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of the paper suggest that the ERA program was largely effective in targeting communities with the highest eviction risk. Census tracts with higher pre-pandemic shares of Black renter households, renter households with children, and renter households headed by single mothers – groups whose members have been shown to be at greater risk for eviction – received more funding per renter household than census tracts with lower shares of these households. Additionally, areas with higher pre-pandemic eviction filing rates and poverty rates were found to have received more dollars per renter household.
The ERA program provided nearly $45 billion in direct assistance to renters for eviction prevention and housing stability during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors aimed to assess whether the ERA program was effective in channeling assistance to communities most at risk of eviction and to understand the relationship between the pace at which ERA funding was spent and the implementation of other tenant protection policies. They combined the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s (Treasury) ERA administrative transaction data and the American Community Survey (ACS) 2016-2022 5-year estimates to examine the locations of ERA recipients at the census tract-level, the timing of the distribution of funds, and the exact amount of ERA spending among certain demographic and socioeconomic groups. Data from Eviction Lab on past eviction filings from 2000 to 2018 was utilized to estimate rental distress in communities prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The authors found that census tracts with the highest pre-pandemic eviction rates received $475 more per renter household than census tracts with the lowest pre-pandemic eviction rates. Similarly, census tracts with the highest pre-pandemic poverty rates received about $200 more per renter household than households in census tracts with the lowest poverty rates. Census tracts with larger shares of renter households with children and renter households headed by single mothers received over $300 more per household than census tracts with the lowest shares of these household types.
The study also examined the implementation of the ERA program and how ERA spending responded to changes in other rental protections that were enacted in response to the pandemic. The authors found that ERA program spending accelerated and peaked between June 2021 and November 2021, the period surrounding the federal eviction moratorium. Additionally, they found that when the federal eviction moratorium expired, the number of eviction filings increased rapidly, as did ERA program spending to assist with keeping renters housed for as long as possible.
The authors conclude by highlighting the apparent success of the ERA program in getting resources to areas with the greatest need. However, they also urge future researchers to be cautious when trying to estimate the impact of ERA on eviction filings nationally, as filing rates were also impacted by the implementation and expiration of other federal, state, and local renter protections.
Read the paper here.