The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) has released Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) spending data through March 2022. More than $714 million of ERA1 and more than $1.1 billion of ERA2 was spent in March, compared to $660 million of ERA1 and $1.3 billion of ERA2 spent in February. Overall, $26 billion of ERA1 and ERA2 – or 56% of total ERA funds – has been spent on assistance for households, administrative expenses, and housing stability services. The ERA program has made nearly 5.2 million payments since January 2021.
Nearly $714 million of ERA1 was spent in March, up slightly from the $660 million spent in February but down from the $797 million spent in January. Spending levels in 2022 continue to be lower than spending in the latter half of 2021, which is likely due to fast-spending grantees exhausting ERA1 and a few slow-spending grantees spending a combination of ERA1 and ERA2. This is the third consecutive month that grantees have spent less than $1 billion of ERA1. More than $1.1 billion of ERA2 funds were spent on assistance to households in March.
ERA1 Trends: States have spent nearly $12.1 billion in ERA1 funds, or 66% of the $18.4 billion initially allocated to them, and localities have spent more than $4.7 billion, or 88% of the nearly $5.4 billion initially allocated to them. By the end of March, 15 state grantee and the District of Columbia had expended over 75% of their initial ERA1 allocation on assistance to households. California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Virginia had spent more than 90% of their initial ERA1 allocations. Because grantees are allowed to spend 10% of their allocation on administrative expenses, it is likely that these grantees have exhausted their entire initial ERA1 allocations. Conversely, 17 state grantees had expended less than 40% of their initial ERA1 allocation by the end of March 2022. All of these grantees have reallocated a portion of their ERA1 funds either to other grantees within their state or to a general reallocation pool.
ERA2 Trends: State grantees had spent $5.4 billion of ERA2 funds by the end of March, approximately 34% of the $15.9 billion allocated to states. Similarly, localities have spent approximately 35% of their allocation, or $1.9 billion of the $5.3 billion allocated to localities. Ten state grantees, the District of Columbia, and 26% of local grantees had spent 50% or more of their ERA2 allocations by the end of March. Eight state grantees have yet to spend any of their ERA2 funds.
ERA2 Reallocation: The first round of ERA2 reallocation will be based on expenditure data through March 31, 2022. Based on recently released Treasury guidance, grantees with an expenditure ratio below 20% as of the end of March will be considered to have excess funds. More than 160 local grantees and 26 state grantees have not reached this expenditure ratio. Not all these grantees will have funds recaptured based on mitigating factors, as explained here.
NLIHC tracks ERA spending on the ERA Dashboard and Spending Tracker. Our tracking integrates Treasury data with real-time data from program dashboards and program administrators to provide a closer estimate of how much ERA funding has been obligated to date.