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If Kansas and Missouri landlords and tenants don’t get money soon, it could disappear

Kansas and Missouri need to hurry and give out millions in federal emergency rental assistance money by the end of this month before the Department of the Treasury does what it has said it will: hold back hundreds of millions promised because the states didn’t spend what they had fast enough.

States and local programs have to spend or show how they intend to spend up to at least 65% of their federal emergency rental assistance funding allocation — a use-it-or-lose-it condition set by the Treasury — or see the feds reallocate their millions to some other state that has done a better job getting money to people facing eviction or utility cutoffs.

On Sept. 30, the Treasury will begin identifying funds that have not been obligated by a state or other grantee — nearly $100 million in Kansas alone. Missouri officials haven’t said what’s left to spend but a national dashboard this week from the 501(c)(3) nonprofit National Low Income Housing Coalition shows more than $150 million. We should not be scrambling now — a week out — to meet this deadline that we’ve known was coming for months.

Kansas and Missouri officials responsible for doling out rental assistance need to make sure they are not leaving money unspent or unpromised. Thousands of Kansas City area residents face eviction or living in darkness, an affordable housing crisis exacerbated by COVID-19. At the same time, for more than a year, a moratorium on evictions challenged landlords to collect overdue rent payments. The need for help is clear.

“There has been suffering on both sides. Landlords have problems paying their bills and tenants are in jeopardy of losing their housing,” said Stacey Johnson-Cosby, president of the KC Regional Housing Alliance, and a landlord with 21 rental units in Kansas City.

More than 8 million households in the U.S. were behind in rent payments as of July according to the U.S. Census Housing Plus Survey.

“We are in trouble. We need all hands on deck,” Johnson-Cosby said. “My fear right now is that our states are going to lose this money and that is a real problem for me.”

Missouri in 38th place, Kansas in 35th

Getting the money out the door, no doubt, is a monumental endeavor that most municipalities had no infrastructure to handle before the pandemic hit.

Part of what has held things up is a cumbersome digital application process. “I have a tenant who hasn’t paid rent for six months and has been trying to apply for a while,” Johnson-Cosby said. “It takes too long that some just give up.”

It is not acceptable that residents are left to give up on getting money meant to help them stay in their homes. Sure, states and local granters have to guard against abuse, but they also need to make sure getting the money isn’t so hard people turn away from the opportunity.

That may be a tall order, but the federal government is not giving grace to those who don’t use the money expeditiously.

“There’s no reason it’s not going out to landlords, to renters, no reason that people who are eligible are not benefiting,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last month.

To help speed things up, the feds now let tenants self-report financial information to qualify for assistance. Still, nationally fewer than half of the distribution programs are allowing this, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Missouri and Kansas should make sure they follow this best practice,

Some states are doing a lot better than others getting money out fast. Among the 50 states, Missouri is in 38th place for rate of spending and Kansas is in 35th place.

Kansas has paid out $40 million of the $169 million in first-round Emergency Rental Assistance Program funds, said Ryan Vicent, director of the Kansas Housing Resource Corporation, which distributes the federal funds for the state.

Vincent said he expects Kansas to hit a spending threshold sufficient to prevent losing funding. “We certainly don’t want to lose funding,” Vincent said, but added that the 65% threshold “may not be the best metric for determining the success of a program.” About 7,300 Kansas households have gotten help, “these are people and these are homes.”

So far the state has received about 16,000 applications. Half have been fully processed. Several thousand letters will go out letting people know their applications are being considered. That’s a good way to show the state intends to spend the funds. But actually spending the money to help these people should be a priority over accounting.

Missouri, which received $324 million, has distributed about $80.2 million to stop more than 13,000 evictions, according to the Missouri Housing Resource Commission.

Kansas City offering help to people applying for aid

On a smaller scale, Kansas City has distributed 75% of its federal funding — more than $10 million.

“Nearly 2,400 Kansas City households have received an average of $4,249 in assistance,” a Sept. 14 press release said. To further expedite the process, last week Kansas City opened a center where individuals get help applying for assistance.

“The biggest challenge we have in processing applications is incorrect or insufficient information, so this will help us process the applications faster and get the money out faster to those who need it most,” said Jennifer Tidwell, interim director of Kansas City’s Housing and Community Development Department.

In Kansas, Wichita is the only city with its own distribution program, and in six months it approved almost $6.5 million in rent and utility assistance payments. Nonprofits, such as the United Way, want to be trusted with dollars to help the state get assistance out faster. The Housing Resource Corporation hasn’t taken them up on that. “It’s really about efficiency and effectiveness,” Vincent said. “We don’t want to duplicate any benefits.” In other words, they want to control the flow of money.

Sarah Saadian, a vice president with The National Low Income Housing Coalition, suggests the Biden administration use the reallocation to “incentivize programs to adopt best practices.”

Slow spending programs, she said, should have to “complete performance improvement plans.”

States have to do whatever is allowed to make sure applications are being processed as fast as possible, and people are not getting put out of their homes when there’s money available to prevent it. Neither Kansas nor Missouri can afford to lose even one dollar of this sorely needed funding. It should not be the renters who suffer for the slow spending of states and local agencies.