Wake keeping pandemic rental assistance program going into 2022
Some 9,000 individuals and families facing eviction in Wake County are still waiting to receive the rental assistance they've applied for, so county officials are keeping the agency handling the applications open a while longer.
The Wake County Board of Commissioners this week approved an extra $15 million in federal pandemic relief aid for House Wake! to cover administrative costs through January. The agency was to run out of operations funding this month.
Suzanne Orozco, president and chief executive of Telamon Corp., which has a contract to run House Wake!, said the extra funding will also allow the company to hire more staff to handle the backlog of pending applications.
"Caseloads are crazy," Orozco said Friday. "We are seeing a lot of elderly, a lot of young families, a lot of single parents."
"We already had a housing crisis here in Wake County," Deputy County Manager Duane Holder said. "When the pandemic hit, what that did was to create even more instability because of people's employment being interrupted."
Orozco and Holder said applicants are five months behind on rent, on average, which is too deep a hole to climb out of even if they have returned to work.
"They never thought they would be in this situation," Orozco said. "They have used the last of their savings to pay for rent, [but] they don’t want to come in for assistance."
House Wake! has already helped about 2,600 individuals and families, providing help to pay both overdue rent and utility bills, as well as legal and relocation assistance.
But critics complain the agency is slow-moving. Last month, WRAL News reported that House Wake! had disbursed less than half of the more than $100 million in federal aid the county had received to help people facing eviction during the pandemic.
"I really understand the frustration the tenants have," Orozco said.
