A previous version of this article was published in the Marxist Sociology Blog.
Emergency Rental Assistance Programs (ERAPs) were a key element of the governmental response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Federal, state, and local governments rolled out these relief programs to offset the financial precarity that many suffered due to lost work, sickness, and job insecurity. The state of Illinois, for instance, allocated over $1 billion in three rounds of ERAPs from 2020 to 2022. This crucial aid helped many pandemic-impacted residents avoid life-altering evictions and remain housed.
Yet many of the most rent-burdened residents did not even complete applications for these programs. We dug into data from the Census Bureau’s weekly Housing Pulse Survey, which measured COVID-19 impacts during the pandemic. In Chicago, Black and Latine tenants were two to three times more likely to be behind on rent than white tenants. But 70 percent of Black renters and 80 percent of Latine renters in the city did not even apply for the first round of assistance.
Why did so many of the renters with the greatest need—those who were the intended beneficiaries of ERAPs—not participate?
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To find out the answer to this question and others pertaining to pandemic precarity, we conducted 101 interviews in Chicago. We talked to low-income renters, local housing policy experts, and community organization staff over a two-year period from 2020 to 2022. We recently published the results of our study in American Sociological Review. Our key finding—relevant for housing practitioners, policymakers, and academics alike—has to do with the gap between eligibility and what we term legibility. Eligibility refers simply to meeting program requirements, like income thresholds or having experienced pandemic-related hardship. Legibility refers to applicants’ ability to effectively demonstrate their eligibility, that is, to make themselves “legible” to bureaucratic systems. To receive funds from ERAPs (or any welfare program), renters had to translate their complex lives and challenges into predetermined and standardized categories. The true test was not necessarily meeting eligibility criteria, but rather providing documentation of needs within short time frames and through online platforms. Often, renters faced either an inability to become legible, or a situation wherein legibility might increase their vulnerability to immigration enforcement or landlord retaliation.
The gap between eligibility and legibility is best demonstrated through the experiences of three key groups of renters who were left behind during the rollout of rental assistance programs.
Handshake Agreements
First, we encountered many tenants—20 percent of our sample—who did not have formal, written lease documents. Informal “handshake agreements” are common among low-income renters and can be advantageous for both tenants and landlords looking to keep things off the books. The issue, though, is that these renters then struggled to provide the required documentation to prove ERAP eligibility, such as statements indicating the amount of rent owed. A housing policy expert provided an example: “In the last round [funded by the CARES Act], the application required the landlord to submit a written lease, which, by definition, excludes tenants with oral leases or less formal arrangements.”
Over time, the state of Illinois loosened regulations to make it easier for renters with antagonistic landlords or poorly documented agreements to access funds. Written leases and landlord participation were not always required in later rounds of assistance. But these adjustments did not necessarily translate to easier procedures, according to the renters we interviewed. For people who are unfamiliar with applications for government assistance, administrative hurdles became significant barriers. One tenant said that “getting certain documents, and getting them in a short period of time, before the money ran out or before the application period quit” was an impediment.
Many sought the assistance of nonprofit community organizations, some of which were funded by the state to help renters apply for ERAPs. Staff members were familiar with navigating application procedures, but the sheer number of people struggling to both pay rent and apply for ERAPs was often overwhelming. One nonprofit staff member we spoke with said: “I cannot tell you how many calls a day our caseworker gets for simply navigating rental assistance applications. … The platform is unfamiliar, the questions that are being asked are unfamiliar. It can be very simple questions, but people just don’t know how to answer because they haven’t had this level of recourse offered to them.”
Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
The second group that faced challenges accessing ERAPs were those who prioritized their rent payments at the expense of other needs like groceries or medications. This situation was especially common for tenants who lost income or employment at the beginning of the pandemic, because ERAP programs did not become available for several months.
Even if they still desperately needed help, these renters were no longer eligible for ERAP relief. ERAPs only provided money to those who were behind on rent—not to those who had made painful sacrifices to pay.
For instance, one renter—whose husband’s work hours had been reduced to only two days per week—told us that a local nonprofit had given her $100 of cash assistance for groceries. Instead, she put it toward her rent, trying to placate her landlord.
A care provider at a medical clinic said that some people chose to stop taking medications just to keep up with their rent. “A $10, $15, $20 copay, a lot of people think it’s nothing. If you’re taking multiple medications and for some of our patients, $20 a month is a lot of money. It’s making them choose between rent [and] food.”
Other renters borrowed money from family or friends to pay for housing. An undocumented Chicago resident who lost his job at the start of the pandemic told us: “My son has been loaning money to me to pay the rent. So, I already owe my son like $4,000. … Really, it’s stressful to see the end of the month. You don’t have the money available to make rent payments, pay bills, and even sometimes for food… it worries me a lot. Getting myself further into debt. I mean, I would like to reimburse money to my children.”
When we spoke again seven months later, his debt to his son had increased to nearly $6,000, and he feared that it was harming his family dynamics. His son had recently separated from his wife, and the man worried that financial stress was partially to blame.
Technically, an eviction moratorium meant that most renters could not be put out legally through court order. ERAPs generally relied on this protection to keep people housed while they were waiting for relief payments. In practice, however, tenants feared that their landlords would force them out extralegally. A tenants rights activist in Chicago told us in 2021 that “instead of the landlord wanting that balance paid off or wanting to take them to court to get the money, instead of that, they’re providing the option to just get out… The threat of eviction is still very relevant regardless of the moratoriums that we currently have in the state of Illinois and also nationally.”
For this reason, many tenants felt that they couldn’t wait for the possibility of rental assistance. So they continued to make sacrifices to get the rent in on time.
Not Sticking Their Necks Out
The third group, undocumented immigrants, often did not apply for rental assistance because of the risks created by formal applications for state resources. Undocumented migrants were eligible for ERAP funds if they were behind on rent, and they were intended to be among the recipients in Illinois. But the advocates we interviewed reported that many avoided the program out of fear of becoming more visible to the state. Though our interviews ended in 2022, we imagine that this issue would be heightened under the policies of the second Trump administration.
This group is unique from the other two: In addition to simply being unable to render their legibility, those with precarious documentation status often preferred to remain illegible due to the perceived risks of eviction, or becoming more visible to immigration enforcement. A human services representative explained to us some of these unique risks: “The reality is, if you’re undocumented, and your landlord says, ‘Get the F out,’ you get out. You don’t get a day notice, you don’t get 10 days’ notice, you don’t get a month’s notice, you’re out. And if you’re not out, they will call the police, who will call ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. They’ll threaten to call ICE, or they’ll just change the locks on you because what are you doing to do?”
Undocumented migrants also feared negative government attention. For example, the so-called “public charge” rule allows immigration officials to deny applications for permanent residency or visas if applicants have received certain public benefits as undocumented residents. In 2019, this rule was expanded by the first Trump administration to include Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies. (In 2022, the Biden administration issued a new rule that again blocked these programs from consideration.)
Ways to Help
What, then, are potential solutions? How can rental assistance programs best reach the vulnerable communities that they intend to serve? Our analysis suggests a few possible steps to make relief programs more accessible.
At the most basic level, illegibility occurs when people face widespread material hardship but cannot access relief programs due how these programs define and verify need. Broad-based aid provision—closer to universal welfare programs like pandemic-era child tax credits—alleviates the need for extensive documentation from applicants and may result in bureaucratic savings due to the reduced need to manage cases and assess eligibility. For instance, a recent study found that unconditional cash transfers paid directly to individuals experiencing homelessness were not only effective in getting people housed, but also led to overall social safety net savings. In the case of ERAPs, this might include organizing eligibility around a broad category (i.e., all renters, or renters below a certain income threshold) rather than individual demonstrations of hardship or need.
We also suggest that minimizing the involvement of landlords in aid applications would likely improve outcomes for tenants and alleviate fears of retaliation. Cities could also offer stronger legal supports against extralegal evictions, especially for undocumented residents who may fear deportation or other repercussions. Research has shown that “know your rights” campaigns and other educational outreach from organizations like tenant unions reduce evictions.
Undocumented residents face unique threats under the current federal administration, and local government may be limited in the assurances it can offer them. Whatever steps can be taken to decouple housing issues from policing and offer legal support may help reduce the compounding burdens we observed among the undocumented people in our study.
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Yes, and: Search the MassLandlords site for the article, “The Complete Guide to the MassLandlords vs. EOHLC Loss and How it Hurt Renters.” Even in states you would normally consider progressive when it comes to preventing homelessness, there are sharp conflicts of interest between the state and its residents.