Ending Rental Arears to Stop Evictions
End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) is a national effort led and coordinated by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC). ERASE is designed to ensure that the historic aid enacted by Congress, “Emergency Rental Assistance” (ERA), reaches the lowest-income and most marginalized renters it is intended to help. The project seeks to eliminate rental indebtedness caused by the pandemic and to prevent evictions by tracking and analyzing ERA utilization; documenting and sharing best practices and toolkits; influencing and shaping program design at federal, state, local levels; developing key partnerships for outreach and education; and assessing the remaining needs to inform advocacy for long-term investments to end housing instability and homelessness in the United States. You can read more about the ERASE project on the NLIHC website.
Housing Stability Task Force
The Housing Network of Rhode Island (HNRI) secured grant funding from NLIHC to locally promote visible, accessible, and preventative emergency rental assistance and work towards longer term measures to advance housing stability for at risk Rhode Islanders. To deliver on this goal, HNRI proposed to do the following activities:
- Building on existing relationships, elevate public visibility and accessibility of the Rent Relief RI program by offering and/or enhancing community-based training and supporting expansion of culturally relevant outreach.
- In partnership with Rent Relief RI, conduct focus groups to understand successes, challenges, and opportunities with ERA in the short and long term.
- Convene and staff the Housing Stability Task Force. The Housing Network of RI is partnering with United Way of RI to convene a diverse task force of individuals who represent landlords, government officials, tenants, and other important stakeholders to examine the eviction and displacement landscape in Rhode Island propose policy and programmatic changes necessary to reduce evictions and promote stable tenancies. See below for more details about the Housing Stability Task Force.
