Mass. to start trimming back housing assistance in Jan.

MASSACHUSETTS WILL MAKE several changes to its housing assistance program next year that will limit who can get assistance, how much, and for how long. The changes are meant to preserve the program’s funding so it will last for longer and help more families – but housing advocates worry that it will cut off vulnerable families from assistance with little notice amid the Omicron virus surge. 

“We think that certainly we want the funds to be available longer, but the commonsense way to do that would be to seek additional funds,” said Kelly Turley, associate director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. “This is not the time for families, households, elders, to be experiencing additional housing instability in the midst of the ongoing public health crisis.” 

A group of 160 organizations – housing agencies, social justice groups, organizations representing minority populations, and a wide range of social service agencies – signed onto a letter urging state officials to rethink the changes. “At a time when application numbers are increasing, these changes will place additional burdens on families and individuals already in crisis due to the pandemic,” the letter said.  “These changes are being implemented on a very short timeline amidst another winter COVID-19 surge, without input from community stakeholders or notice to households counting on assistance to remain in their homes.” 

On December 16, the Department of Housing and Community Development sent out an email notifying the agencies it partners with that the state would be changing its housing assistance programs – the Emergency Rental Assistance Program and Residential Assistance for Families in Transition. 

The biggest change will be requiring a family to fall behind on rent before obtaining assistance, rather than making the money available in advance. Until now, under temporary rules put in place during the pandemic, low-income families that were about to fall behind on rent could apply for a three-month rental stipend. After those three months, they could submit paperwork to “recertify” that they remained eligible and get another three months of assistance, for up to 18 months. The new rules eliminate the recertification option and do not allow households to apply for help before they fall behind. Instead, a family must fall behind on rent for a month, and only then will they qualify for three months of assistance. If they still need help after those three months, they must reapply.   

The administration will also no longer allow someone to apply for benefits through the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition program once they exhaust their Emergency Rental Assistance Program benefits until the next fiscal year. Until now, a family that reached the cap for getting pandemic-related emergency benefits could apply for more help through the residential assistance program.  Now, households will only be able to get one benefit or the other in the same year. (The two programs are different in terms of benefits and eligibility.) 

Additionally, the state Legislature passed language in the fiscal 2022 state budget lowering the maximum residential assistance benefit from $10,000 to $7,000 a year in 2022.  

State officials say the changes are necessary because demand for money remains high, but the funds are running low. Cutbacks will make sure the program has enough money to get through the coming months. State officials have chosen to focus on opening the program up to new families who need help by limiting the benefits available to households already participating.   

Part of the problem is the federal government initially suggested that states that use a large portion of their money might get additional money reallocated from states that distribute less. So Massachusetts rushed to get money out the door and reached the federal threshold of spending 65 percent of its money – $270 million benefitting 40,000 households – by October 1.  

Through November, the state distributed $411 million to more than 55,000 households, out of the $768 million that is available. 

But while no action has yet been taken on a federal level, observers say the federal government has rethought its reallocation plan due to the politics of giving money from one state to another. Government officials are now discussing reallocating money between programs within each state. 

“Obviously there still remains tremendous need, but the question that is faced by policymakers is really two choices,” Coxe said. “Do you keep having bigger benefits for fewer people or do you try to help more households with less benefits?”  

Coxe worried that if the state kept generous benefits in place, the money would run out and lead to a cliff effect where families were left with no assistance. Allowing the program’s funding to drop precipitously, rather than ramping it down slowly, Coxe said, is “asking for evictions, in which case we just kicked the can down the road.” 

But the group of housing advocates counter that this is not the time to be lessening benefits, and the state could find other pots of money – like unspent money from the federal American Rescue Plan Act – to keep the benefits in place. Their letter expressed concern that the changes will result in increased eviction filings and displacement and will add confusion to an already complex process. “With so much money available for emergency relief, moving forward with these changes would be a disgraceful and unnecessary outcome,” they wrote. 

Turley said when the Legislature introduced language in the budget lowering the size of the maximum residential assistance benefit, it appeared that Massachusetts would be in a better place in the pandemic than the state is today. She worried that communities of color that have been hardest hit by the virus will also be hardest hit by housing instability. 

Andrea Park, a housing attorney for the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute who crafted the letter with Turley, said the benefit changes were announced suddenly, giving people little opportunity to plan for having their benefits expire and without the opportunity for a public discussion with lawmakers and advocates about how to keep the program sustainable.  

“It’s going to have a tremendous ripple effect on people who need the money the most,” Park said.