The city's Emergency Rental Assistance Program was designed for residents who struggled to pay their monthly rent and utility bills between April 1, 2020 and March 31. According to the existing rules, the program covers most of the back rent for eligible tenants; they are responsible for a small portion of the remaining rent.
But the program has had a slow start, with the city distributing about $2.4 million of the program's $35 million — or about 7 percent of its funds — as of June 7, according to a recent city report. City leaders attribute that to a sluggish bureaucratic process and administrative delays.
Advocates, meanwhile, are focused on the number of people who haven't accessed the funds.
Despite receiving at least 6,023 applications to cover unpaid rent, the city has approved just 712 applications — or about 11.8 percent — as of June 7, according to the report. Advocates are concerned the program's slow approval process has left a significant portion of the city's poorest residents without help. They also say its low participation rates stem from residents being confused over who qualifies, as well as insufficient outreach to the communities that most need the assistance.
In Fresno, where a quarter of the population lives in poverty, thousands of families who are at risk of losing their homes could be eligible for the funding. The city has approximately 86,926 rental units, which are home to predominantly working-class Latino and Black residents, according to census data from 2019.
Advocates and city officials are now calling on the city to step up efforts to ensure low-income tenants receive the financial assistance they need — or face a wave of evictions that could exacerbate Fresno's growing homelessness crisis.
"The city and partnering organizations have to find creative ways to make sure that the knowledge of this program is reaching as many people as possible — the people who most need it have not yet found out about it," said Naindeep Singh, executive director of Jakara Movement, one of the non-profit organizations partnering with the city to help tenants apply for the program. "Housing precarity is already so high throughout the state, especially in the Central Valley, where we have a lot of people really teetering at the edges because of the low wages in the region."
Benita Vásquez, 35, is an undocumented mother of three who lost her job as a housekeeper in Fresno during the pandemic. Though legal status is not a requirement for the program, she said many immigrants can't provide all of the documentation for the application. They feel discouraged when they're asked for certain information like a social security number or proof of income, she added.
"I know my community is not benefiting from the program," Vásquez, an immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico, said in Spanish. "I feel it's unjust. They should change the requirements."
Who Qualifies For Rent Relief and What Does It Cover?
The city program was created through SB 91, the state law that established the eviction moratorium and rental relief initiative amid the pandemic. It is funded by federal and state grants, with about $15.8 million from the federal government and $19.1 million from the state.
State lawmakers announced a deal Friday to extend and expand SB 91. The eviction ban was set to end June 30, but is now scheduled to expire Sept. 30. The new deal would allow a city to reimburse up to 100 percent of a tenant's unpaid rent to a landlord.
Here's how the rental relief program has worked up until now: According to the most recent state guidelines, if a landlord and tenant apply together, the city will pay the landlord up to 80 percent of the tenant's back rent, with the landlord writing off the remaining 20 percent.
The tenant must provide documentation showing income verification, a rental agreement and a rental bill or statement in order to qualify.
If a landlord refuses to file with a tenant, the city will directly pay the tenant 25 percent of what he or she owes the landlord. In this case, the tenant would be exempt from eviction due to nonpayment until the eviction moratorium is lifted.
But Chris Montelongo, the mayor's deputy chief of staff, said the city has faced several problems administering the program, in part because it has a small team of 10 employees to review and help people with the applications. Though the city has also partnered with six community-benefit organizations to process the applications, the team is still handling the bulk of the paperwork, he said.
A major slowdown for the city's team, he said, is culling through incomplete applications. At least 1,350 applications were disqualified because they were either duplicates or incomplete and didn't contain all of the documentation requirements, while more than 650 were disqualified because the applicants did not meet the income eligibility requirements, were not located in the city of Fresno or did not have a loss of income due to COVID-19.
"The process in itself of the database — having to do it online, filling out an application, providing documentation — those are all issues and things that take time and that prove to be challenging when you're trying to get the right information from applicants," Montelongo said.
In some cases, getting landlords and tenants to work together on an application has also been a challenge, he said, because some landlords who may not have good relationships with their tenants lagged on participating in the process. He also said that many residents were confused about what the eviction moratorium did or if it applied to them, believing that it meant they didn't have to pay rent at all.
Advocates Say Challenges Could Have Been Avoided
But some advocates say the city could've done a better job of addressing these hurdles before the program went into effect.
Genoveva Islas, executive director of the public health advocacy organization Cultiva la Salud, said it's difficult for many Latino tenants to provide a history of a rental agreement and past due rent notices.
She said many of the city's poorest residents, especially within the immigrant and undocumented communities, live in "non-traditional" housing such as converted garages or makeshift in-law units. Often, she said, these individuals also don't have formal written rental agreements, making it difficult for them to prove eligibility for relief.
"From my perspective as an advocate, if the city really wanted to create a system to better serve all of its residents, it would really reflect on why some of the requirements that they're asking for are necessary," Islas said. "If they're only serving as impediments from limiting people to apply, then it seems really unjust."
Many residents have also struggled to access the application process online and in their native language, she said. Some "bad actor" landlords, she added, don't cooperate because they only "want to see people removed" or "use this as the excuse to remove them" from their rental units in order to lease out the property at a higher price for a new tenant.
The program also offers little aid to people who kept paying rent, but fell behind on other payments. Vásquez, who was financially impacted by the pandemic, also had to care for her husband, a construction worker, who fell ill with COVID-19 earlier this year. But neither of them received rental relief, unemployment or any other type of government assistance, she said.
Instead, Vásquez — and many like her — fell into debt, took out loans from friends, family or lenders and used up savings to fork up the money for rent each month.
"For us Mexicans, paying rent is always our number one priority," she said. " That's why I don't qualify."
Fresno Renters Could Receive Help, With or Without State Program
City Councilmember Tyler Maxwell said "administrative hurdles" are contributing to the barriers that prevent people in disadvantaged areas from applying.
Maxwell's central-east Fresno constituents have submitted more applications than residents in any other city district. Maxwell, who describes his constituents as "blue collar, working class and middle class families who have not seen their wages increase for years," said it's possible more people have been applying from his district because they face less barriers accessing the existing program.
"It may be an accessibility issue," he added. "Most of the folks living in (my district), English is predominantly spoken at home... and unfortunately a lot of government material is readily accessible to folks who speak English as a primary language. There needs to be better efforts made to do outreach to Spanish-, Hmong- and Punjabi-speaking communities that may be interested in this program but are having a hard time accessing that information."
In response, Maxwell in May proposed a citywide Eviction Protection Program with District 7 Councilmember Nelson Esparza.
He's hopeful the new program will guarantee protections for Fresno residents even after the state-sponsored emergency rental relief assistance program ends. The program, which unanimously passed during a City Council meeting last month, would protect Fresno renters by providing those facing unlawful eviction with mediation services and free legal counsel. It could go into effect as early as next month, he said.
"We do have some safeguards in place that say you can't evict someone because of hardships due to COVID-19," he said. "Unfortunately, even though that's the law, that hasn't necessarily been the reality here in the city, as there are still folks being evicted for unlawful reasons."
Without it, Maxwell says a wave of evictions could push poverty-stricken families into the street.
"We are taking this very seriously," he added. "We're doing everything that we can to help account for any of these cases that might fall through the cracks."
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