by James A. Bacon
Virginia is in the midst of a housing eviction crisis arising from the economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. Here in Virginia, governments have responded through three major initiatives: The federal government distributed one-time $1,200 stimulus checks to American households and funded a $600-per-week supplement to state unemployment benefits through July 31. And Governor Ralph Northam has allocated $62 million to help families facing evictions.
With all that public assistance, how it is possible that tens of thousands of Virginia families are on the brink of being thrown out of their houses? Nearly 2,000 eviction judgments were rendered in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield counties alone in September and October, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
One answer is that the people who need the money aren’t getting it. The federal government managed to blast out its stimulus checks, but Virginia’s unemployment insurance agency has been overwhelmed by the spike in unemployment and can’t keep up. As Don Rippert pointed out a week ago, 70,000 Virginians had yet to receive their unemployment checks. Now we find out that the Northam administration has dispensed only $33.6 million of the $62 million set aside specifically for eviction relief.
Those numbers are buried deep in an article in today’s RTD describing the challenges facing the Area Congregations Together in Service (ACTS), a nonprofit that has been inundated with requests for help on back rent. The article details the obstacles to providing immediate relief. Before handing out money, ACTS requires proof of a tenant’s lost income — a defensible measure to ensure that the people who get money actually need it. However, processing the applications requires collecting documentation and making follow-up calls, often resulting in phone tag with tenants and landlords, sometimes leading to lengthy delays.
Northam’s relief program using federal CARES dollars has spent $33.6 million so far to settle balances for about 11,000 households, reports the RTD. That leaves $26.4 million yet to be distributed, along with $25 million in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund monies and $30 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds which can be tapped. In other words, while thousands are being evicted, the Northam administration has some $80 million yet to be spent to help them.
Even allowing for the fact that state agencies might encounter the same due-diligence issues as the nonprofit ACTS program, the state has been shamefully slow in dispensing eviction assistance. Getting a relief check a month or two after a being thrown out of its dwelling does not do a family much good.
The nation has responded compassionately to the COVID eviction crisis. But between failures in state unemployment-insurance and eviction-relief programs, the money is not getting to people in time to save them from the turmoil of being thrown out of their homes. Some of the damage from this unfolding humanitarian disaster still can be averted. Northam needs to prioritize fixing the administrative logjam, put people in charge of getting the job done, and holding them accountable for results.
The RTD and other establishment media can help by drawing continued attention to these administrative failures — as they assuredly would do if the governor were a Republican.
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