Rent assistance partners have a record week, debut new dashboard!

One month in to 2022, the pace continues to accelerate as community-based organizations and County staff work hard to complete pending applications for assistance through the Eviction Prevention and Rent Assistance Program (EPRAP).

In fact, the partners just celebrated the biggest payout week ever, distributing over $14 million in rent assistance payments to over 1,200 households!

Getting payments out to landlords to stabilize the homes and lives of the individuals and families hit hard by COVID’s financial aftershocks is EPRAP’s highest priority. Both County and community staff are putting in long hours to gather the last pieces of information needed to complete the application process for 12,000 households assigned to a provider and in process, including the remaining landlords in the Large Landlord Program. 

So far since June 2021, EPRAP has expended $169 million to stabilize 14,920 households. This is in addition to the 11,631 households served with $49.6M from August 2020 to June 2021.  This extraordinary effort relies on a partnership between local landlords and property owners, staff in dozens of community agencies and a strong and determined County team.  

King County EPRAP has continued to take applications since the first of the year, and currently has over 11,000 households that have pre-registered for the program, and not assigned to a provider. The program has made clear that fulfilling those requests would be dependent on King County receiving additional funding that, so far, has not been awarded. The County has applied for additional funds to both the State of Washington and the U.S. Treasury, both of whom have previously provided millions of dollars in rental assistance funding since 2020. King County will continue to seek additional funding, but it is clear that the need in our region exceeds the likely amounts of additional funding that may become available.  

King County continues to collaborate with the Housing Justice Project, which is also working with King County to help households that become involved in eviction proceedings.

New dashboard shows how EPRAP is serving the community

Are you wondering …

• How many households have expressed a need for rent assistance?  45,111
• How many have received have some kind of assistance or are currently being served?  33,965
• How many households have received funding so far?  14,920
• Where do the recipients live? Countywide, but highest numbers served are in South King County.
• How does funding look by race and ethnicity? Meeting our goal of serving the most severely impacted by COVID-19, 76 percent of households served by EPRAP identified as Black, Indigenous and people of color and 20 percent identified as Hispanic or Latina/o/x.   
• What is the average amount per household? $11.3K (most are eligible to receive up to 9 months back rent and 3 months in advance)

All those questions, and more, are answered in our new dashboard. Take a look here.