COVID-19 has affected Texans across the state. We`ve provided more than $1 billion in emergency funding to help Texas tenants pay rent and utility bills (including late rents and utilities). Note that if you receive rent assistance for a future month and then pay that month`s rent out of pocket, the landlord should apply the rent assistance to the month you paid. The landlord may apply the money you paid out of your own funds to another month after the period for which you receive assistance. The assistance you are requesting must relate to the dwelling you currently occupy. The length of stay in a rental unit need not be eligible for assistance. The Texas Emergency Rental Assistance Program (TERAP) is only available in the 44 cities and counties that participate in the program. The TERAP program allows no more than 6 months of support and applicants apply directly to their local participating city/county. The TERAP program is funded by the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with funds from the Community Development Block Grant CARES (CDBG CARES), which are allocated to the state. It is the responsibility of the tenant who receives funds directly to pay the landlord or utility for eligible expenses. It is the landlord`s or utility`s responsibility to assist the tenant in entering into their subsequent lease or to consider eligible costs, as outlined in the approval email. Funds must be returned to TRR in the following scenarios: If your landlord sues you for eviction even though Texas Rent Relief pays your rent, you may be able to take advantage of your landlord accepting rent assistance as a defense. You can let the court know during the hearing, but it may also be a good idea to include this information in your response. Make sure you bring all the evidence you have to the hearing. You should also contact a lawyer for help. “Given that the tenant has been evicted from the unit associated with this application, rent arrears will only be approved for the period during which the tenant was in the unit under program policies,” the email reads. A few weeks after their deportation, Scott received an email from Texas Rent Relief on Nov.
9 confirming that the check was originally sent to the wrong address. But the program had fixed that error, according to the email. Tirloni, the spokesperson for TDHCA, declined to discuss the cases of individual tenants, including Scotts, citing state law that prevents TDHCA from disclosing information about people receiving benefits from programs administered by the agency. But she said the program doesn`t allow landlords to recover rent if they`ve evicted a tenant — the opposite of what the email to Scott said. The MAI is the regional median income, which is used to set income limits for program eligibility. The AMI is based on the median income of the county where you live and the size of your household. You can check what falls under the program`s policies from 0 to 80% AMI here: Median Area Income (AMI). Johnson`s landlord — a partnership owned by Houston-based developer Mark Musemeche — had already agreed to more than $4,200 in federal funds in August to pay four months` rent, according to a copy of Johnson`s rent book she provided to the Tribune. At the time, Johnson said she contracted COVID-19 and had to take a month`s time off work. “The industry standard here is fraud,” said Stuart Campbell, an executive attorney at the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, typically speaking of cases where landlords receive rent relief funds and evict tenants. “These landlords are the main beneficiaries of these rent assistance programs and have simply violated the terms of the programs en masse and, moreover, have consistently misled judges and enforced judgments and evictions, even when they receive money. If tenants feel they were wrongly evicted, they can appeal the eviction, Mintz said.
Any allegation that “a tenant or rental property owner is not following the rules of the program” should be reported to the program for investigation, he said. The federal and state governments added enforcement provisions when they created the rent relief programs. In Texas, two state agencies — the TDHCA, which oversees the statewide rent relief program, and the State Auditor`s Office — have the authority to investigate allegations of waste, fraud or abuse within the program. At the federal level, this task falls to the Office of the Inspector General of the United States Department of the Treasury. The program is not intended for dormitories or room rentals, but can be used for apartments that are primarily occupied by students where the student is rented. The student must meet all program eligibility requirements. TEDP uses a special judicial procedure that allows courts to suspend deportation actions and refer them to TEDP. Both the tenant and landlord must agree to participate and meet the requirements.
Lump sum payments are made to landlords if they allow tenants to remain in their units, and backdoor cases are rejected and made confidential by the public. You may be eligible for assistance if you are staying at a hotel or motel and meet all other program requirements. You must provide a written lease or proof of your last three full payments to the hotel, or your landlord (in this case, the hotel/motel) must confirm your expenses. Without a signed lease, hotel or motel tenants are not entitled to assistance for months to come. However, you may be eligible for the maximum amount of assistance for the past due months and the current month. You can also ask for retrospective help. While applicants can be supported for up to 15 months, the program will not tie up funds for current and future rent for more than 3 months. Each calendar month in which a renter household receives PRRT assistance counts towards the 15-month limit, regardless of the type of assistance provided. Complete an online application at TexasRentRelief.com OR call a program representative at (833) 9TX-RENT (toll-free) to apply by phone. The toll-free number offers support in several languages. “In our view, the judge erred in allowing the process to proceed as soon as [the property manager] confirmed that the landlord had a pending application for rent assistance,” Stamm said in an email. “I`m sitting there thinking, `My rent is paid, OK, all I need to worry about is December and January,`” Gates said.
You can monitor the status of your application via the online dashboard or by calling (toll-free (833) 9TX-RENT to speak with a call center program representative. We will notify you if we need more information to complete your application. The call centre is available Monday to Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. CST. Help is available in several languages. Yes. For information on other rent assistance programs in your area, call 211 or visit www.211texas.org/. No. If the landlord does not participate in the program, the landlord cannot require the landlord to waive the fees or end pending evictions.
For example, the program prevents landlords from accepting rent relief payments after evicting a tenant. Rent relief checks erased RDRH`s bank account on Feb. 4 — less than two weeks after Gates was evicted. Texas received more than $2 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that President Joe Biden signed last year to establish the Texas Rent Relief program, designed to help those families stay home when the pandemic triggered a tsunami of business closures and hundreds of thousands of layoffs. It turned out that the state program had sent the check to the wrong address in September. Yes, owners can receive payments by check, although the payment process is faster when owners create a Bill.com account to receive payments via ACH/direct deposit. For more information, see our payment guide published texasrentrelief.com/forms-resources/.