SALEM, Ore. — Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS) and Local Program Administrators (LPAs) continue to make strong progress on processing applications for the Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program (OERAP).
As of Dec. 8, OHCS and LPAs have paid $170.2 million in federal emergency rental assistance to 24,705 applicants, up from $157.5 million and 23,155 applicants last week. OERAP continues to be one of the nation’s leading programs and is ranked 6th in the nation, up from 8th in the nation last week, in the percentage of ERA funds paid out and obligated, as tracked by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Progress and updated numbers
Through its three-point plan, OHCS and its processing partner, Public Partnerships LLC (PPL), have made significant strides to drive rapid application processing in the past several weeks. Currently, 150 PPL staff are processing applications with a focus on applications outside the 60-/90-day safe harbor period. In the past week, PPL processed close to 850 applications. exceeding their 500-application target. This is in addition to the applications paid out by Community Action Agencies working across the state to finish paying out ERA 1 funds.
To date, OHCS and LPAs have:
- Paid $170,274,579 to landlords and tenants to help 24,705 Oregon households.
- Processed and obligated an additional $21.1 million in funds for 2,465 households.
- Received more than 58,849 completed applications.
Visit the OERAP dashboard for more data.
Applications in review process
About 22,470 applications are in the review process. The 60-/90-day window of protection begins when a tenant shows proof they applied for the program. However, this data is not currently available. As proxy, OHCS is tracking when a tenant completes an OERAP application and the number of applicants who have not been paid outside of the 60-day window (90 days in Multnomah County and unincorporated areas of Washington County). Applications outside the 60-/90-day window are being moved from the LPA in their county to PPL.
The graph below shows an estimate of the geographic areas with the most applications outside the 60- and 90-day windows of protection as of Dec. 8. This graph does not include applications outside the 60-/90-day window from counties that received ERA funding directly from the U.S. Treasury.
Below is a graphic that shows average application processing times of Local Program Administrators for each county for the OERAP program as of this week.
*Multnomah County is not included in this as a comparison because they have a 90-day window. Their average processing time is 75 days. On average, PPL processed applications within an estimated 57 days from when they received the application. Improvements are underway to track PPL processing times that take into account they are taking over the processing of the oldest applications that were not processed by Local Program Administrators.