Santa Cruz offers rent-assistance lottery - Santa Cruz Sentinel

SANTA CRUZ — Going a step beyond an existing moratorium on certain types of rental evictions, the City of Santa Cruz and a community partner now are accepting applications for a limited amount of residential rental assistance grants.

Low-income city residents with past-due rent bills can apply for grant payments from the Emergency Eviction Prevention Program beginning this week. Once the application period closes July 24, recipient names will be chosen by lottery, with duplicate entries removed. The rental assistance opportunity comes amidst widespread economic challenges for renters and landlords due to the coronavirus pandemic and shelter-in-place restrictions.

Those approved for a grant would be eligible to receive as much as $5,000 toward past-due rent incurred since April 1. The new program is being run as a collaborative effort between the city’s Economic Development Department and nonprofit Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County. The rental grants, for as much as $2,500 per month for two months, would be paid directly to renters’ landlords.

A waitlist has been created for the eviction prevention program. To qualify, applicants must be Santa Cruz residents, have experienced a loss or reduction of income due to COVID-19, have past-due rent with no alternative means to pay and be qualified as a “low-income” recipient. A minimum of 90% of the grant funds must assist those at 60% or less of the area median income and as much as 10% of the funds can help those making 61% to 80% of the area median income.

At its June 23 meeting, the City Council extended through Aug. 13 its ordinance preventing residential or commercial evictions for non-payment of rent as a result of economic losses related to the coronavirus pandemic. The extension was the second by the council since it first enacted the city’s coronavirus eviction moratorium at the end of March. Council members also reviewed and voiced support for numerous local programs initiated since the pandemic’s outbreak to assist community members through economic hardships, using a federal CARES Act allocation of approximately $283,000 in Community Development Block Grant funding.

The Emergency Eviction Prevention Program is an existing Community Action Board grant offering that has been beefed up to respond to COVID-19 hardships, with help from $230,000 in federal housing funds and $11,000 from the American Red Cross.

Information and application assistance related to the Emergency Eviction Prevention Program is available by calling the Community Action Board at 831-457-1741. The program’s online waiting list and other resources are available at cityofsantacruz.com/financial-assistance.

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Santa Cruz offers rent-assistance lottery - Santa Cruz Sentinel
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