By Ben Olivo | @rbolivo | Heron editor
The city of San Antonio is preparing to revive a program that has helped thousands of San Antonians pay their rent or mortgage, utility bills and other living expenses.
It will resemble the Emergency Housing Assistance Program, which the city launched at the start of the pandemic, and which has dispersed nearly $200 million in aid to more than 60,000 households.
The Housing Assistance Program, as the new version will be called, will be geared toward helping families on the verge of displacement, or those who are being displaced. The launch could happen in early April, but first the City Council must be briefed on incoming federal funding that will help bolster the program’s coffers. It could hold nearly $10 million when it debuts, city officials said.
Until them, city housing officials are processing roughly 7,000 applications that remain from the Emergency Housing Assistance Program (EHAP), which closed on March 1.
“Our focus is to work very hard to process those applications as soon as possible,” Veronica Garcia, deputy director of the city’s Neighborhood and Housing Service Department, said in an interview earlier this month. “We hope in early April to reopen a new portal … and this program will provide assistance very similar.”
Before the pandemic, the city had first crafted the Housing Assistance Program, which, at the time, was known as the “risk mitigation fund,” to help families who were in the path of gentrification stay housed.
It had been in operation for less than a year when Covid-19 hit. The program, having already been tested for several months, was augmented to assist anyone from across San Antonio who was having trouble paying rent or their mortgage, or other living expenses, because of hardship brought on by Covid-19.
“And then, of course, like the rest of the world, we really had to pivot,” Garcia said. “We really had to shift our focus and address not just temporary hardships, but the ongoing hardships that people were facing as a result of the pandemic.”
As Garcia put it, the city is shifting its housing assistance from response mode to recovery mode. The difference between the two programs has a lot to do with the duration of aid.
Under the Covid 19-based program, families could receive up to a year of assistance. The revived program can doll out assistance for up to three months, and only once during a 12-month period.
Certain types of sudden expenses a household endures, such as a hike in rent, an emergency car repair or medical emergency, could be covered under the Housing Assistance Program.
Summary of rental, emergency assistance
Eligible households must make up to 100 percent of the area median income, or AMI, which is $74,100 for a family of four.
[ Scroll down for a chart showing AMI levels. ]
In order for renters to qualify, for example, rents must spike a minimum of 5-10 percent depending on the AMI level the family falls under.
If a household is forced to move, the program will pay for those expenses—up to $3,000 for families who make less than 80 percent AMI. For those in the same AMI range, and who are forced to move a mobile home they own, the assistance maxes out at $7,000.
According to the policy, renters and homeowners can receive up to $3,500 to help keep them from being evicted or foreclosed on, for example.
[ Visit sanantonio.gov: To read other eligibility requirements, visit this page and click on the “policy” icon. ]
The total budget for EHAP is $214 million, aided by an assortment of infusions from local, state and federal resources. As of March 11, $17 million had remained, according to the city. After the city’s is done processing the remaining 7,000 or so applications, officials estimate $2 million will remain, which will be funneled toward the Housing Assistance Program.
Other sources are incoming.
The Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs (TDHCA) is chipping in roughly $3.7 million (from a larger grant of $6.7 million) that can be used to help people relocate, including moving costs and deposits on a new place—expenses that align with the Housing Assistance Program. The city also recently received $4.2 million in reallocated dollars from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Emergency Rental Assistance program.
The monies total $9.9 million for the Housing Assistance Program.
On March 25, the federal awards are scheduled to be reviewed by members of the City Council at its Planning and Community Development Committee meeting.
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Heron Editor Ben Olivo has been writing about downtown San Antonio since 2008, first for mySA.com, then for the San Antonio Express-News. He co-founded the Heron in 2018, and can be reached at 210-421-3932 | ben@saheron.com | @rbolivo on Twitter