YONKERS — Vanessa Smith continued to work and worked uninterrupted after the pandemic hit in 2020, but then struggled to keep up with rising food and other expenses, and her rent was delayed. rice field.
And it kept falling month after month.
“I couldn’t see a way out,” recalled Smith, a mother of three who works as a safety officer for a construction company. “I was looking at Plan B. Moving out of state, for example.”
That prospect seemed likely after New York’s 22-month eviction moratorium ended a year ago and Smith’s landlord brought her to court. It was a check to cover about 12 months of unpaid rent.
The Smith household was one of 853 households in Yonkers to benefit from a city program that paid out $14.5 million in rent and utilities to renters hit by the pandemic. This was a local version of the state’s rental assistance program, which ended last month after running out of funds, paying the landlord his $2.7 billion on behalf of 220,000 tenants.
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Yonkers officials announced the completion of the program in January, 20 months after it began. They created it in 2021 to replace the state program. This was because the city agencies thought they could distribute aid more quickly than the Albany agencies. They contracted five nonprofits to process applications, and joined his $87 million federal pandemic relief for the city to fund this program.
Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano said in a statement, “Nobody knows how to best serve our local tenants and landlords and connect them to local nonprofits that are the ‘boots on the ground’ for those in need.” I also know
Most New York locations relied on state programs run by the Temporary Disability Assistance Agency. In Rockland County, for example, the state paid him $28 million in rent and utilities on behalf of her 1,700 households, county officials said in January.
Yonkers, the state’s third-largest city with a population of 211,000, has gone its own way. So did Rochester and surrounding Monroe County. Onondaga County in Syracuse. Hempstead, Oyster Bay and Islip are three large Long Island towns.
Resume eviction:New York’s expiring eviction moratorium threatens hundreds of thousands of renters
Yonkers ultimately processed over 1,000 applications for rental assistance, some of which were referred to the state after reaching funding limits. State programs also ran out of money. The Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance “continues to seek additional federal funding to help pay for further applications,” agency spokesman Anthony Farmer said in an email this week.
The Yonkers program will be funded in two rounds, with a maximum of 15 months for the first round and 18 months for the second round, according to Jon Shenk of local nonprofit CLUSTER Community Services, which has helped about 240 families. I paid the applicant half the rent.
Applicants had to initially have lost income due to the pandemic to be eligible. But the federal government relaxed the second round of rules, allowing renters who were financially distressed during the pandemic to receive help as well, he said.
Shenk, who has a 31-year career in homelessness prevention, said handling the influx of applications was a “heavy task” for his agency, which has bilingual staff to assist Spanish-speaking applicants. rice field. But he was thrilled with the number of people who ultimately helped fund the federal government.
“It was just amazing,” he said.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for Journal News and USA Today Network. Please contact him at cmckenna@gannett.com.
