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Emergency Rental Assistance Program Spending Plan & Appropriation Adjustment <br />February 16, 2021 <br />Page 6 <br />4 <br />1 <br />9 <br />The program also allows for prospective payments of 25% of monthly rent for the <br />months of April, May, and June. <br />Establishes a requirement for funds to be administered in at least three rounds, <br />prioritizing: (1) Below 50% AMI or unemployed for 90 days; (2) Below 80% AMI <br />and in a community disproportionately impacted by Covid-19; (3) Below 80% AMI <br />and not addressed by rounds 1 and 2. <br />Staff has reviewed the three options and recommends Option # 3: Self-Administer and <br />State Administer for three reasons. First, the City currently has 1,100 applicants waiting <br />for assistance through our CARES for Tenants Program. If we were to allocate our <br />funding back to the State (Option # 1), we would need to notify all of these families that <br />they will need to reapply to the State for assistance, sending them through a new <br />application process with LISC. Second, the State’s Rental Assistance Program essentially <br />replicates our CARES for Landlords Program which was not as effective as our CARES <br />for Tenants Program to allocate our funds. Specifically, we allocated $2.7 million of our <br />State CARES Act funds to our CARES for Landlords Program in August 2020. By <br />November 2020, we needed to reallocate $1.6 million of this funding back to our CARES <br />for Tenants Program because landlords were not participating in the program as much as <br />expected, even after staff exhausted outreach efforts with three mass mailings to every <br />multi-family property owner in Santa Ana and two workshops to the Apartment <br />Association of Orange County and California Apartment Association. If staff were to <br />request the State’s funding be allocated to the City via Option # 2, staff would have to <br />conform the City’s local program to the State program requirements and the City would <br />have substantial difficulty in administering the assistance for landlords directly. Finally, <br />the State’s Rental Assistance Program does not provide enough assistance per <br />household. Specifically, the State’s Program will only pay 25 percent of a tenant’s rental <br />arrears. To reach the City’s payment of $5,500 per household, the family would have to <br />owe a total of $22,000 in rental arrears (25% of $22,000 equals $5,500). The City’s one- <br />time assistance per family will go further to assist Santa Ana residents. Therefore, staff <br />recommends Option # 3 because: 1) staff has 1,100 applicants already waiting for <br />assistance through the City’s program; 2) not as many landlords will apply for the State’s <br />program based on the City’s experience with the CARES for Landlords Program; and 3) <br />the one-time assistance payments of $5,500 per household will go further to assist our <br />residents than the 25 percent payment that the State will be able to provide to each <br />household. <br />ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT <br />There is no environmental impact associated with this action. <br />FISCAL IMPACT <br />Approval of the appropriation adjustment will recognize $9,880,391.30 in the Emergency <br />Rental Assistance Program grant revenue account (No. 17718002-52008) for <br />expenditure as follows: