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Pennsylvania House of Representatives
04/23/2024 07:02 AM
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=H&SPick=20210&cosponId=36711
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House of Representatives
Session of 2021 - 2022 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: January 13, 2022 04:13 PM
From: Representative Elizabeth Fiedler and Rep. Sara Innamorato, Rep. Rick Krajewski
To: All House members
Subject: Investing American Rescue Plan dollars in rental assistance
 
In the near future, we plan on introducing legislation to allocate $500 million of the Commonwealth’s remaining American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds to the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP).

179,915 applications have been received by counties across the Commonwealth, according to data from DHS. At this point, counties, such as Delaware, Philadelphia and Berks, have more applications than they can fund. We believe no application received while a program was open should be turned away during this time; therefore, we are proposing utilizing $500 million of ARP dollars for distribution to counties that have spent all of their funds and have remaining applications they are unable to fund.

The needs of many residents of the Commonwealth are outpacing the available funding.  For example, Philadelphia shut down applications for their ERAP on Friday, January 7, 2022.  Based off information provided from Philadelphia, they estimate 53,2000 applications are in their system and are unable to be funded due to lack of funds. Regrettably, Philadelphia is not the first county to shut down their program because the demand far exceeded available dollars.  Due to extremely high demand Berks County shut down their program in 2021.
Congress made $25 billion available for ERAP through the Consolidated Statute of 2020 and an additional $21.550 billion through ARP for communities across the nation to provide rental assistance for those who fell behind as a result of COVID.  The Commonwealth and several communities received more than $847.688 million from the Consolidated Statute and more than $552.345 million through the ARP for rental assistance through the Consolidated Statute. 

We hope you will join us in sponsoring this legislation to help people stay in their homes across the Commonwealth.

Introduced as HB2359