By Gloria Stravelli
MONMOUTH COUNTY – The COVID-19 pandemic has caused financial hardship for many vulnerable residents. Now Monmouth County has announced that, with the support of local community-based nonprofits, millions in federal funding has been leveraged to help those struggling remain in their homes.
Last year the county distributed a little over $13.3 million to 1,362 households impacted by COVID-19 from the $18.4 million in federal emergency rental assistance (ERA1) received from the U.S Treasury Department’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). This first round of funding covers the period between May 13 and
Nov. 30, 2021.
The county announced Dec. 30 that additional ERA2 and ERA2-High Need funding allocations would be distributed in 2022.
“On behalf of the Monmouth County Board of County Commissioners, we are proud of the work our Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) has done and will continue to do in the new year,” said Director Thomas A. Arnone in a press release.
“The success of the Monmouth County ERAP is truly a team effort and the board is thankful for all of our community partners and staff who have assisted in the planning, development and implementation of this program over the last year,” he said.
The support of nearly a dozen community-based organizations, including the Community Affairs Resource Center (CARC) in Asbury Park, and Project PAUL in Keansburg, is instrumental in the program’s success. Those groups help identify and assist potential applicants who meet the federal eligibility requirement for the program.
At CARC offices in Freehold Borough and Keyport, county residents can get that help applying for rental assistance funding. The organization also sends staff to certain areas to make that help more readily available.
“We not only hosted during Emergency Rental Assistance Week, we sent personnel out to every location to assist residents,” said Beatriz Oesterheld, executive director of CARC, which serves all of Monmouth County.
“We have been doing rental assistance for the county for several years,” she said. “We have really done a great job of spreading the word to residents.”
She also praised the county, saying it “has done a wonderful thing advertising the help. They stepped up to the plate.”
According to Oesterheld, in the first three months of the program, CARC helped residents file around 100 applications, each for up to $30,000 in emergency rental assistance.
“We have staff at every event, every outreach,” she said. “We saw 65 people in one day at my office. Now we have done another 100 applications. We have been very busy with this, I do believe this is the way we can help the community.
The goal for CARC is to avoid evictions. “That helps not only the tenant,” said Oesterheld, but also “the landlord who is renting a property and has a mortgage.”
In addition to the ERAP which comes from the county, CARC will also help residents with low incomes who are finding rental payments difficult obtain state funding.
The aid the organization gives extends to helping people navigate online applications.
“A lot of people don’t know how to work the websites” or even navigate the internet, Oesterheld said.
“So we do it with them and help them fill out applications. We actually walk them through and do it with them.”
According to Oesterheld, the financial impact of the pandemic has been especially hard on those who work in the service sector.
The work CARC does “gives an opportunity for people to keep their dignity,” she said. “The good thing about the grant is we can help everybody. If you’re homeless, we can pay for your motel, you just have to prove you were affected and we find it’s very rare that there is a person not affected by COVID.”
Another group working with the county through the ERAP, Project PAUL (Poor, Alienated, Unemployed, Lonely), started as a church outreach and became an independent nonprofit when it began accepting county funds for rental assistance.
Kathy West, director of client services there, explained that the outreach has been in existence for almost 40 years, serving residents of the Bayshore area.
“Just the week before last we had representatives from the county here and people could come and apply” for rental assistance, she said. “We helped over 30 people in one day.”
West said the ERAP is special because residents can apply for help with many months of rent. “Usually assistance is for one or two months,” she said. But because COVID-19 has affected people’s lives for so long, the amount of rent owed could be much higher. “They might owe four, six, eight month’s rent.”
Initially the program offered up to $15,000 in assistance; recently that has increased to $30,000 per client.
West also said a large part of the assistance they give is helping people navigate the application process. “You know, a lot of people don’t really have access to computers or they don’t know how to use them,” she said. Project PAUL staff can also help with uploading documents as part of the application. That documentation could be paycheck stubs showing reduced wages or even a letter from an employer explaining that a business closed because of the pandemic.
Even though there was a federal and state eviction moratorium during the worst of the pandemic, the rent for those months is still due, West said. The federal moratorium ended in mid-2021; the state moratorium ended Jan. 1.
“Mostly families with children are impacted,” West said. “They’re behind typically three to four months and rents are increasing now.”
West also noted that rental units are in high demand in this area. “There’s not enough supply,” she said. “It’s hard to find a place right now.”
Once families find a place, it can be even more difficult to come up with the security deposit and first month’s rent.
“A lot of families don’t have $5,000 sitting around,” West said. “So this is an ongoing struggle for a lot of families.”
Unexpected medical expenses or car repairs can also eat away at money families would have used to pay the rent, she said.
“This is not just the pandemic,” West said. “The pandemic may just have made a bad situation worse.”
According to the commissioner’s press release, Monmouth County received just over $38.4 million in direct funding from the U.S. Department of the Treasury under ERAP for ERA1, ERA2 and ERA2-High Need.
That money falls into the following categories: $10,920,468 in direct financial assistance; $1,115,000 for housing stability services; and $1,317,876 for program administration.
For more information on the Monmouth County ERAP, visit monmouthcountyerap.com or call 848-801-1297.
The article originally appeared in the January 6 – 12, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
