U.S. Department of the Treasury guidance encourages the use of categorical eligibility to verify income and reduce barriers to accessing emergency rental assistance. In accordance with this guidance, the Philadelphia Emergency Rental Assistance program, PHL RentAssist, which is administered by the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation (PHDC), is using administrative data matching to make applications more accessible and easier to process.
According to Treasury guidance, “If an applicant’s household income has been verified to be at or below 80 percent of the area median income in connection with another local, state, or federal government assistance program, grantees are permitted to rely on a determination letter from the government agency that verified the applicant’s household income, provided that the determination for such program was made on or after January 1, 2020.”
Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation (PHDC) established a data-sharing agreement with the city’s Data Management Office (DMO) and has begun to utilize DMO data for income eligibility for ERA applicants.
Per Treasury guidance, PHDC examines public benefits data for people who were receiving public benefits after January 2020. While DMO is sharing several datasets, the most significant information has come through Medicaid eligibility. PHDC receives Medicaid eligibility data in the form of spreadsheets twice monthly and uploads the data into its Quick Base system. If a tenant is on the Medicaid list, the system automatically checks a box that the tenant household is income-eligible to receive ERA funds.
Greg Heller, senior vice president of community investment at PHDC, notes that “This has been a time-saver for our staff, reducing the need to review income documentation and calculate income eligibility. So far we had 650 applications that were previously not approved due to lack of documentation of household income, which were subsequently approved after we started receiving the Medicaid data. In addition, 2,658 applications that were pending review were automatically income-verified by Medicaid data.”
To learn more about the PHCD ERA program visit their website at: https://phlrentassist.org/
For additional resources and strategies to ensure the emergency rental assistance programs are visible, accessible, and preventive of evictions visit the NLIHC Resource Hub and download the ERASE checklist.