NHT Provides RELIEF to Low Income Renters

National Housing Trust (NHT) received $460,000 from Wells Fargo Foundation to launch a pilot eviction prevention program. Rental Emergency Lifeline/Eviction Fund (RELiEF) was created to help low income renters stay housed in Washington, DC when facing a one-time financial emergency. NHT partnered with Housing Counseling Services (HCS), a DC-based tenant counseling organization, who conducted resident outreach and counseling for the pilot. RELiEF enrolled one hundred and three (103) DC residents in 2023. The program offered enrolled residents up to $1,800 ($600 for 3 months) for on-time rent payments to enable residents to build savings accounts to avoid future rental emergencies. This Update details the evolution of the program through various challenges, including the COVID pandemic and its economic aftermath. It also shares the experience of one of the program's clients and outlines results and lessons learned from the implementation of the program.

The idea for RELiEF arose from reading Matthew Desmond’s 2016 book Evicted which demonstrated that eviction is not just a condition of poverty, but also a cause of poverty. Data that Desmond compiled showed that evicted tenants often owed less than one month’s rent. This reality, coupled with the statistic that 37% of Americans cannot handle a $400 emergency expense, prompted NHT to design this pilot program to avoid unnecessary evictions. Many Americans are one medical bill or car problem away from housing precarity and NHT believed that a small financial intervention could avert a painful cascade of eviction and its consequences.

NHT originally applied to pilot RELiEF through the Enterprise and Wells Fargo Foundation’s 2020 Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge. NHT was a finalist in the Challenge but unsuccessful in winning, though Wells Fargo followed up with pilot funding to test REliEF separately. RELiEF was initially designed to focus on communities East of the River in Washington, DC which are predominantly Black and face high rates of residential instability. As housing counselors who regularly work with residents in these neighborhoods, Housing Counseling Services (HCS) signed on to administer and support clients in the program. 

RELiEF intended to engage landlords in preventing evictions. Evictions are costly for landlords – filing and serving a complaint, paying an attorney, and turning over a unit can cost between $3,000-$9,000 and often takes eight months to process in DC courts. W.C. Smith, a major landlord in DC, signed up as a program partner to pilot RELiEF in their East of the River buildings. W.C. Smith strongly agreed with the pilot’s premise that both tenants and landlords stand to benefit from an eviction prevention program. 

The initial RELiEF design offered a one-time payment to renters who experienced an emergency and fell behind on rent in order to cover a rent shortfall. This was targeted for renters who typically paid rent on time but lived on a tight margin. The renter would be enrolled in case management with HCS to receive financial coaching and access to a 3:1 matched savings plan. For each month that a renter paid their rent on time and put money into their savings, they would receive a payment from RELiEF into the matched savings plan (up to $50 per month). Additionally, Pepco, DC’s utility company, would provide the renter with a free energy audit and a referral to the city’s energy and water efficiency programs to decrease utility bills. At the end of the program (12 months), if enrollees committed to saving $25 a month, they would have $1,200 in savings.

Additionally, if a resident continued to pay rent on time for those 12 consecutive months, the landlord would agree to repay the amount of back-rent that RELiEF covered to NHT. This funding would then be recycled back into the program. This repayment would allow the initial investment to revolve and help more families and landlords avoid eviction. 

This original RELiEF model was developed in early 2020 and rollout of the program was significantly impacted by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated emergency housing policy interventions. To avoid a massive wave of evictions and housing instability because of the health emergency, the federal government infused an unprecedented amount of rental relief funding. The District received $200 million from the December 2020 federal relief legislation and $152 million in American Recovery Plan funds to support residents to cover their rent or utilities when facing pandemic hardships. Additionally, there were federal and local eviction moratoria put in place to keep individuals housed during the state of emergency. These emergency funds provided substantially more assistance than RELiEF could and did not come with the counseling requirements. This made enrolling participants in RELiEF infeasible while other federal and local programs remained active.

In early October 2021, the eviction moratorium in the District expired. Shortly after, STAY DC stopped accepting applications. ERAP received additional funding and was able to cover the short-term gap for many residents as federal programs declined. Then in FY2024, ERAP funding was reduced by $10 million and eviction courts reopened. NHT and HCS chose to officially re-launch RELiEF in Summer 2023, when DC’s rent support was drastically reduced for the first time in two and a half years.

At the same time, District landlords experienced a new set of challenges, most significantly a substantial number of tenants delinquent on rent. DC is an expensive city to live and rent in, even before the pandemic or inflation; households that work and have a steady income struggle to make ends meet. While many tenants were still struggling from pandemic related challenges, the sudden loss of rental relief, and a significant inflation increase of 5% in summer 2023 resulted in substantially higher cost burdens for tenants. The result was high non-payment of rent rates that cause economic hardship for landlords. While evictions had resumed, the case backlog meant that many evictions cases were taking over a year before being brought to court. 

In re-launching the program, NHT and HCS modified program parameters with the core goal of supporting tenants in re-establishing on-time rental payments. Rather than aiding during a rental emergency, RELiEF now focused on renters who had experienced and recovered from a rental emergency in the last 12 months. The program offered enrollees who paid on time incentive payments that were intended to help the household build savings as a buffer from future crises. 

Under the new design, to enroll in RELiEF, residents must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• Live in DC and have lived in their current unit for a minimum of 6 months, 
• Demonstrate ability to make on- time rental payments going forward, 
• Document housing instability at some point within the last 12 months,
• Currently at or near a $0 rental balance,
• Household income no greater than 60% area median income, 
• Rent that is no more than 50% of their monthly income, 
• Not be enrolled in other programs that enable income-based rent payments,
•  Commitment to work with a housing counselor to develop a housing plan, credit report, evaluation, individualized budget and savings plan, and
• Commitment to share rental payment history for 12 months after the program end.

To support the program’s new aims, RELiEF did not incorporate a match component. Qualified renters were enrolled in the program for three months. If they could demonstrate on-time rental payments at the beginning of each month, they would receive a $600 payment (up to $1,800 total). If they were unable to demonstrate on-time rental payments, they could either leave the program or try again the following month. At the start of the program, enrollees were also required to engage in a one-on-one meeting with a housing counselor to develop a budget and savings plan. 

While the program was modified from its initial design, RELiEF remained an eviction-prevention program premised on the idea that getting tenants on track with their rent would help prevent evictions down the line, benefitting both tenants and landlords. The revised RELiEF was designed as a tenant incentive program rather than a payment to cover a one-time rent shortfall so did not extensively involve landlords. As a result, the landlord repayment and revolving fund were eliminated from the program.

HCS manages a variety of programs that serve renters in the DC area and used their relationships to identify enrollees for RELiEF. The revised program requirements, especially the $0 or near $0 rental balance at time of enrollment, made it difficult initially to find qualifying renters. Most of the individuals HCS initially contacted had a rental balance which made them ineligible. Of those who were current, many could not document a rental emergency they had experienced within the last 12 months or that their rent accounted for less than 50% of their income. 

Small modifications and additions to the original program requirements were needed to accommodate the circumstances of many potential enrollees of the program. For example, residents who had payment plans with their housing providers could be eligible for payments as long as they paid their payment plan amount along with their monthly rent in accordance with their agreement. Some applicants had agreements with their housing provider that allowed rental payments to be made past the 10^th day of the month in accordance with the tenant’s income schedule. Such agreements, if provided in writing, were deemed acceptable for the RELiEF program. 

For applicants who exceeded the 50% rent-to income ratio, exceptions could be made if they could demonstrate at least 3 months of on-time rental payments without additional assistance. Additionally, the definition of rental emergency was broadened beyond just a demonstrated rental balance to include tenants with a record of habitually late payments. In two cases, documentation that the applicant had fallen severely behind on other housing-related expenses such as electric bills was accepted as proof of a rental emergency. 

These modifications and flexibility with program requirements enabled applicants to enroll in RELiEF expediently between June and November (2023) with most enrollees joining the program in August and September. Many of the enrollees were former ERAP beneficiaries who were current with their rent at the time of contact and enrollment. The RELiEF program was able to connect and encourage these residents with financial incentives and support to maintain on-time rental payments going forward.

In total, 103 DC residents enrolled in the RELiEF pilot. Enrollees shared basic demographic information, which is aggregated below. 

• 57% of enrollees were men, compared to 43% women. 
• Over 75% of enrollees identified as Black or African American, with mixed race being the second largest population. 
• About 16% of enrollees identified as Hispanic. 
• Most enrollees had small households; 87% of enrolled households had three or fewer people.
• 43% of participants had incomes between 30-49% of the Area Median Income. In DC, a two person household in this income threshold makes between $36,500-$60,850 per year. One third of enrollees earned less than this per year. 
• Renters enrolled from all eight wards of DC, with over half of enrollees living in Wards 7 or 8. This area of the city, east of the Anacostia River, has suffered decades of disinvestment and has higher poverty levels than elsewhere in the city. This was also the initial target area of the RELiEF pilot.