Serena Cho file photo
LCI's Schroeter: Contact us for aid.
Two years after launching a pandemic-focused rental assistance program, the city has distributed $511,122.93 in aid to help 79 households stay in their homes — leaving roughly $105,000 still available for tenants in need.
Cathy Schroeter, the deputy director of the Livable City Initiative (LCI), provided that update to the Affordable Housing Commission on Wednesday evening during the board’s latest monthly Zoom meeting.
She told the commissioners that the city’s federally funded Coronavirus Assistance and Security Tenant Landlord Emergency (CASTLE) program has received a total of 208 applications so far.
Seventy-nine of those applications have been successful and have resulted in rental relief dollars distributed, another 18 applications have qualified for CASTLE aid and the money should be going out soon, and still another 26 applications are still pending and under review by LCI.
Schroeter also said that 37 CASTLE applications have been turned down by the city, largely because of a requirement that an applicant prove that their income has been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. And she said that 46 applications have been withdrawn, often because a tenant has moved or a landlord has declined to participate in the program.
CASTLE currently caps individual awards at $15,000.
In order to qualify for a grant, tenants must earn at or below 80 percent of the New Haven-Meriden Area Median Income. (That means that tenants earning up to $63,120 for a one-person household, or up to $90,080 for a four-person household, would qualify.)
Click here and here to apply to the program.
Schroeter’s update to the board came two years to the month after the city launched the rental assistance program as part of a $800,000 housing aid fund supported by the federal CARES Act. The program was designed to provide direct financial assistance to low-income renters who have suffered economic hardship because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
While the housing aid fund was initially pitched as an $800,000 program, Schroeter told the Independent that CASTLE ultimately received roughly $600,000 in total, while the remaining roughly $200,000 was allocated to legal aid eviction prevention efforts.
The program got off to a slow start despite indications of a widespread need for rental help. Applications have required time-consuming paperwork for renters to fill out, and for LCI to process. They trickled in at a lower rate than the state’s UniteCT pandemic rent aid program, which assisted over 37,000 households with $235 million in aid before closing down in March.
Schroeter told the Independent in an email that one roadblock to allocating the federally funded, city-managed rental aid has been incomplete information about tenants’ incomes in applications.
As LCI continues to administer CASTLE funding, Schroeter said the agency is also preparing to open a new security deposit assistance fund in early October.
That program, funded by $3 million of federal American Rescue Plan dollars, will offer one-time grants of up to $5,000 to tenants moving into new apartments.
Tenants earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level — up to $40,770 for a one-person household and $83,250 for a four-person household — will be able to qualify.
Schroeter told the board members Wednesday that the city has already received its first application for the forthcoming program. She said a tenant reached out in August about security deposit assistance.
“She’s right now waiting for her check,” Schroeter said. The tenant’s landlord agreed to accept the deposit after the woman moved into her apartment, she added, once the city is able to distribute the grant.