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With the federal government in the process of sunsetting the state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, dusk is also coming for the state of North Dakota's housing stability program ND Rent Help.
While applications will still be accepted for those households that are at "imminent risk of homelessness," officials from the state Department of Health and Human Services say that the program has reached a "utilization milestone." As of Monday, the program will be ramping down general rent assistance.
Going forward those seeking to apply for rental or utility assistance must be facing imminent homelessness, which HHS Executive Director Jessica Thomasson defined as receiving notice of a court date to contest an eviction or notice of utility shutoff.
"Emergency housing assistance really hasn't been available in North Dakota before these pandemic related dollars became available, so we understand that this isn't a part of our regular infrastructure but we do also know that housing affordability has been a challenge long before COVID," Thomasson said, "Those are the two most common situations we see, where it's that household who's on the brink of losing their housing, and that it is likely to happen within a matter of days without intervention."
North Dakota did not have a rent payment assistance program prior to 2020, with the first incarnation being made possible by funding appropriated directly by congress. All told the program paid out $112,898,171 to date for households in 52 of 53 counties in the state.
Rent Help was able to assist more than 17,500 lower-income households to provide housing sustainability during the pandemic, reaching an additional 3,000 more after the program widened its scope in September of 2021. Half of all enrolled households included children under the age of 18 while around 2,600 were renters over the age of 65.
Thomasson said that NDRH consistently received around 3,000 applications a month, which included new applicants and those previously enrolled seeking to recertify.
"It was a brand-new initiative that we were able to set up with some of the dollars Congress appropriated directly to the state to help with housing instability during the pandemic," Thomasson said, "In the earliest days of the pandemic we expected we would see a plateau and then we would start to see applications decline. But in fact, it’s been pretty sustained demand for the last year for sure."
Once the program opened itself up to general rent assistance, the number of households assisted per month began to rise significantly. After hovering slightly over 500 households enrolled per month for most of 2021, 2022 averaged 3,700 enrolled households. According to the most recent numbers provided on the Health Department's website, the numbers peaked in March 2023 at 6,579. Thomasson says that those who had their applications already in the pipeline are being evaluated, as Rent Help still has around $40 million of the COVID era funds available.
"Our goal is to put every single dollar to work and do that for as long as we can. But just couldn't to take in new applications to the broadly defined rental utility assistance program because of the high demand and the high number of households already in the pipeline that have been approved," Thomasson said, "We're continuing to see it now. Households are telling us even if they're working, they just are struggling to make ends meet and to get all the bills paid. Their food costs are going up."
Thomasson says her department has been forwarding data on the program to state lawmakers, who passed study resolution in the last session to investigate developing a path forward for Rent Help in the future.