Requests for housing assistance in the Minot region have continued to pour in since the federal government began providing rent help in response to COVID-19 in 2020.

Keeping up with the statewide influx became a challenge for the North Dakota Department of Human Services last fall due to some processing changes, and the agency since has been focused on getting back on track.

Jessica Thomasson, executive policy director with the department, said the goal is to distribute payments within two to three weeks of application submission, rather than the four to six weeks that has been typical recently.

“The last couple of months in particular, we have seen some delays,” she said. “We had a technology system we kind of built real quickly to get us through what we thought would be a short-term program, and the longer it went, we knew we needed to improve that experience for the applicants. So we went to a new system in mid-October. It’s taken us a little time through that transition to get back up to productivity, but we’re making progress every day. In addition to just the progress that comes with time, we’re enhancing the staff that we have, responding to calls and inquiries in our contact center.”

Six new staff members started Friday, which Thomasson said should increase responsiveness significantly.

“We’re also supplementing the staff that we have who can actually process applications to get us through that backlog that accumulated over these last couple of months,” she said.

Also in early November, the state created an individual dashboard for applicants, who now can go into the online system and see the status of their applications. The system is helping the state and application counselors ensure information submitted is complete, which moves applications through the process more quickly as well, Thomasson said.

“We think we’ll really start to see that time improvement that all of us know is so urgent for the renters and the housing providers and the utility providers,” she said.

Some agencies that have been partnering to provide application assistance have raised concern about the state’s decision to return $149 million of the initial $200 million in Emergency Rental Assistance allocation from the federal government. Applicant eligibility is restricted to those who show a COVID-19 hardship.

Willy Soderholm, executive director at Community Action Partnership in Minot, said his agency, as an application counselor for the seven-county region, does not consider the turnback of federal funds to be a concern.

“In reality, we pretty much understood some of that money would be going back to the feds anyway,” he said. “It really wasn’t much of a surprise for us.”

He explained there was an initial delay in deploying the money because the funds had to go through the legislative process for appropriation. By the time money was available, many of the COVID-related issues were no longer in play, he said.

Even though there continues to be a need for assistance, existing funds that include $152 million from a second round of federal money, should be adequate, he said. Those additional federal dollars come with fewer eligibility restrictions.

Prior to the federal money arriving, North Dakota had its own Emergency Rent Bridge program that expended $2.9 million over nine months in 2020 to meet urgent needs, Thomasson said. Having much more available now in federal dollars allows for thinking more broadly about how to help people recover and improve the economic success of their households, she said.

Meanwhile, the demand for help has continued.

“As far as the need, we are still getting lots of phone calls,” Soderholm said. On a single day last week, the office received more than 40 calls.

“We do see some evictions. Some of that is the frustration of the landlords on the length of time,” he said of the payment delays. “We know the state is working on it, but it’s definitely frustrating.”

Daniel Erickson, president of the Magic City Apartment Association, said the benefits of the program outweigh the struggles with delayed payments.

“We’re patient because we know that this is a good program for the community,” he said. “This started back in May of 2021 with the Emergency Rent Bridge program, and at that time, there was a lot of pressure on both landlords and tenants. The Emergency Rent Bridge provided a good solution for those that were financially impacted by COVID, and it still is doing that. It’s now changed from the Emergency Rent Bridge program to what they call Rent Help.”

Making the program work takes communication, and the Department of Human Services is doing well on that front, he added.

“There’s many moving parts to this and it takes good communications from all the people involved, from the tenant to the landlord to North Dakota Human Services. I found that with good communication, it goes pretty smoothly,” Erickson said.

“It’s important for our local housing markets to have strong housing providers offering people places to live in their communities,” Thomasson noted. “So we know that this is a multiple benefit for all the parties involved, and that’s why we’re trying to make sure we get payments out as quickly as we can.”

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Emergency rental assistance helps North Dakotans

The ND Rent Help program recently served its 4000th household, and almost 1,700 housing and utility providers across the state have received payments on behalf of renters who had fallen behind or were struggling to pay their rent and/or utilities, according to the North Dakota Department of Human Services

Through the state’s emergency rental assistance program, the department provided $18 million in rent and utility assistance from May 2020 through December 2021.

In December 2021, the state distributed a monthly record $2.36 million through ND Rent Help in rent and utility relief. Working with local agencies, the department also committed $1.5 million in 2021, including $800,000 in December alone, toward the housing needs of individuals experiencing homelessness.

As of early January, 351 households from across the state who were experiencing homelessness had applied for or been approved by the ND Rent Help program.

ND Rent Help is intended to augment the low-income housing resources that were available in North Dakota pre-pandemic, such as Housing Choice Vouchers, formerly known as Section 8. North Dakota has about $200 million in federal emergency rent assistance funding to support housing stability needs and benefit about 15,000 renters over the next three years.

As context, the Housing Choice Voucher program currently serves about 7,000 families in North Dakota, with an annual budget authority of $40 million. Department of Housing and Urban Development and USDA Rural Housing Service project-based vouchers also provide millions of dollars in rent assistance per year in North Dakota.

ND Rent Help can provide up to a year of rent and utility assistance to households with incomes up to 80% of area median income, which equals an annual income of $68,000 to $79,000 for a family of four, depending on the county in which they live. Households must have received unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship due to the pandemic since March 13, 202, and be at risk of housing instability or homelessness due to housing-related costs. To learn more and apply, visit www.applyforhelp.nd.gov/nd-rent-help.

For renters who receive help, the program gradually scales back the amount of the tenant subsidy over the course of the assistance.

“Since this is a temporary and emergency assistance program, we’re trying to help people progressively plan towards sustainability for their household by supporting them through that transition time,” said Jessica Thomasson, executive policy director with the North Dakota Department of Human Services. “With any sort of a temporary assistance program, helping the household plan for what normal is like after that assistance ends is really a responsibility we have with these programs.”