US struggling families face housing dilemma as pandemic aid ends

LOS ANGELES - US COVID-19 relief has kept struggling families, like Holly Williams and her two sons, out of a shelter. But as pandemic aid ends, those families are having nightmares in affording housing and other necessities.

Williams and her two sons have been living in Shipley Terrace house, in Southeast Washington, DC, since DC's Department of Human Services (DHS) approved Williams for the rapid rehousing program, according to a report of The Washington Post.

The program helps pay a portion of rent for the chronically unhoused, usually for about 18 months.

Washington, DC is just one of hundreds of municipalities across the country with a rapid rehousing program. The model was created in 2009 through the wide-ranging federal stimulus bill passed in the wake of the financial crisis, as a way to help unhoused families transition into permanent homes, according to The Washington Post.

Participants start off paying 30 percent of their income - in Williams's case 174 dollars per month - with the expectation that they pay an increasingly larger share of rent over time, eventually taking over the full market rate after about a year in the program.

In DC, more than 3,400 families currently receive rapid rehousing vouchers, according to the report.

In the early days of the pandemic, the DHS decided to extend rapid rehousing subsidies for those whose benefits would soon expire, including Williams.

The very population it serves -- low-income and mostly Black families -- was disproportionately harmed by COVID-19.

Meanwhile, federal relief also supported the most vulnerable through the medical and financial hardships of the pandemic.

But over the past year, pandemic aid in the country started to expire.

According to The Washington Post report, the reconfigured federal child tax credit, which provided monthly payments of up to 300 dollars, expired in December. A national 15 percent increase to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program expired on Sept. 30, and the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer, a direct cash assistance program available to those who receive food assistance, expired last year in 29 states and DC

For Williams, the crushing news she feared the most finally arrived in the fall, shortly after DC's eviction moratorium lapsed, according to the report.

Along with 281 other families, Williams received a final notice from DHS that her rapid rehousing voucher was no longer being extended and would expire by the end of April 2022.

Williams' case is not unique. Across the country, millions of people who have managed to scrape through some of the worst months of their lives are staring into a future made even more uncertain by the hasty dismantling of the pandemic benefits that helped them get by, said The Washington Post report.

The experiences of Williams and other families over the past several years illustrate how the temporary expansion of programs such as rapid rehousing staved off disaster.

"They also underscore the insufficiency of America's social safety net, which is growing more woefully inadequate just as it is needed the most," said the report.

"COVID threw America's income inequality crisis into stark relief and made it even more acute," said the report.