From the Urban Institute:
In follow up to the recently updated Emergency Rental Assistance Program tool, Urban Institute experts are offering technical assistance in using the tool to target outreach or dissemination of funds, as well as designing and implementing equity-centered rental assistance programs. This support is available at no cost.
Groups that meet Urban's criteria for participation are:
- Administrators of housing and community development programming, particularly emergency rental assistance programs;
- In a region that contains census tracts within the 90-99th percentile on Emergency Rental Assistance Priority Index; and
- Committed to embedding racial equity into their emergency rental assistance program.
Moreover, Urban Institute researchers have also developed a checklist for program administrators that centers equity in program design, outreach, and data collection. As the pandemic has shed more light on the disproportionate housing stability challenges experienced by Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities, Urban's hope is that this checklist will be used to more effectively target households at the highest risk of housing instability by prioritizing racial equity in program design and implementation.
For further reading, a recent blog post addresses how to leverage behavioral science to get emergency rental assistance into the hands of vulnerable households faster.
If you have any questions about eligibility for this opportunity or would like to apply, please email ERAP@urban.org.