LEBANON — New Hampshire Housing announced in a Friday news release that it has placed a pause on accepting new applications for the New Hampshire Emergency Rental Assistance Program (NHERAP).
Friday’s announcement came after New Hampshire failed to appear on a U.S. Treasury list of places that received additional federal funds to support the program.
The COVID-19 relief program aims to keep people who have been impacted economically by the pandemic housed. New Hampshire Housing and the five Community Action Partnership (CAP) agencies around the state have been administering the program, using federal funds, since March 2021 and have provided over $230 million in assistance to more than 23,000 households in all 10 counties.
During the pause that began Friday, New Hampshire Housing will review the existing pipeline of applications, the amount of federal funding available and the status of the state’s requests for additional federal funding.
Meanwhile, support services will continue to be available through the CAP agencies, and all applications in the pipeline will be reviewed and funded, if eligible.
Upper Valley social service providers said that they were not surprised to hear that the program will be ending, but they have questions and concerns about what the end of the program will mean for people seeking housing assistance.
In the near term for the city of Lebanon, this means that no new people can be placed in hotels and have their stay covered by the program. Instead, Lynne Goodwin, Lebanon’s human services director, said when people come to her seeking assistance, she will need to talk with area hotels to see if they have vacancies and if they will accept the rates the city was paying before the ERAP program.
“Not all the hotels increased their rates, but some did and they more than doubled their rate,” Goodwin said. “The city cannot pay those rates.”
Another question is when the money will run out for the people covered by the ERAP program, who are currently residing in hotels and motels. Goodwin said she is uncertain whether they will be covered through Dec. 29 or whether the money will run out before then.
Additionally, Goodwin said she is concerned that people who rely on the program for rental assistance to stay in their homes may not be prepared to resume paying rent, which could lead to eviction.
“If the city can’t find vacancies in hotels or rates that are more typical of what the city had been paying for hotels, I don’t know what we’re going to do because there aren’t additional shelter beds,” Goodwin said. “I’m worried about the winter.”
Like Goodwin, Angela Zhang, Listen Community Services’ program services director, said she wasn’t surprised that the program will end, but she was surprised at how quickly it stopped accepting new applications. Listen has been helping about 300 people with ERAP applications, she said.
“We’ve been very concerned about ERAP ending for a very long time now, because the local nonprofits, city and town governments and other entities just can’t provide the same amount of funding as ERAP could,” Zhang said in a Friday email. “I’m expecting that we are going to see a very sharp rise in homelessness and evictions in the next few weeks, and this area just doesn’t have enough affordable housing or shelter beds for people to go to.”
With winter on the horizon, Zhang said she hopes that the community “can come together and collaborate on creative solutions to keep our neighbors safe and sheltered.”
People who are homeless or at risk for homelessness can call 211.
Assistance with an eviction is available by calling 603 Legal Aid at 603-224-3333.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
CLARIFICATION: New Hampshire Housing announced that it would place a pause on accepting new applications for the New Hampshire Emergency Rental Assistance Program after New Hampshire did not appear on a U.S. Treasury list of places that receiving additional federal funding for the program. An earlier version of this story was unclear about what motivated the pause.
