March 22, 2022

By Amelia Leson

SAN JOSE, CALIF. — Since the start of the pandemic, many families and individuals have become homeless or financially unstable. Because of this, the government has created a Rent Relief program set to begin on April 1, 2020. Unfortunately, because of the amount of people being applied to this, they are running out of funds to keep paying the taxes of others. 

The Rent Relief program will not accept any applications after the date of March 31, 2022. This is because the requests for aid of rent have reached $6.9 million. Officials have said that some of the applications will be ineligible or duplicate. They also need around $2.5 billion to cover the upcoming amount of people joining the program. 

State officials requested the government for $1.9 billion, but only retrieved $200 million, which is less than 30% of the needed money to support the program. There is also a money shortage in the government from the unemployment and labor programs like temporary assistance for needy families (TANF).

The graphed prediction of covid cases in the upcoming months (red line is cases, blue is masks and purple is projection). Graph from the institute of Health metrics and evaluation.

Both Renters and landlords can sign up, but it is a long process which can take up to 15 days. But this would protect anyone who signed up before April 1, 2022.