Miami-Dade tripling its rent relief program. Applications available soon

Miami-Dade County spent about $20 million on rent relief last year during the coronavirus pandemic. That number is about to be swamped by the next wave of federal dollars heading to the Miami area.

County commissioners on Wednesday approved a $61 million program to cover unpaid rent for tenants hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. Funded through the federal stimulus bill passed in December, the program will cover up to $3,000 per month starting as far back as March 2020.

While tenants apply for the relief, landlords receive the dollars. Landlords can also refer their tenants to the program, and case workers hired by the county will contact the renters to start the application process.

When will applications open?

Applications aren’t available yet. Michael Liu, the county’s housing director, said he hoped to let tenants start applying for the aid by March 1. The county is hiring dozens of case workers and operators to manage the application process and field inquiries online and by phone.

Miami-Dade funded its prior rent-relief programs using a portion of the $474 million in CARES Act dollars it received from Washington last spring. That included programs for veterans, and rent-relief initiatives launched by cities using county CARES dollars. About 8,400 families received help through those programs, Liu said.

The new federal program directs the full $61 million be spent on rental relief and administrative costs, with stricter guidelines than governed the CARES dollars.

Priority in the new program goes to low-income households (a family of four earning less than $45,700), followed by households making up to 80% of the area’s median income (a cap of $73,120 for a family of four).

Mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced the outlines of the program at a press conference last week. She said priority would go to tenants far enough along in the eviction process that their landlord has received a court writ to have county police remove them.

Most evictions frozen for now by CDC, county police

Those court papers are frozen at the moment, with county police under orders from Levine Cava not to serve residential evictions filed after the COVID-19 emergency began in March. Her predecessor, Carlos Gimenez, had issued a similar order to police at the start of the pandemic last spring.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Commissioner Oliver Gilbert objected to giving an advantage to landlords pursuing evictions after Miami-Dade had all but shut down the eviction process. He endorsed equal help for landlords who are owed rent but haven’t taken their tenants to court.

“They waited. Because the mayor told them to wait,” he said. “Be careful that we’re not incentivizing the conduct we previously prohibited.”

Liu said he thinks the relief pot is large enough to accommodate most tenants who either seek help or are referred into the program by landlords.

“I don’t think it will end all of the eviction problems,” he said. “I do think we’ll be able to take care, I would say, the majority of the cases.”

While the county was the only Miami-Dade government to receive money last year under the CARES Act, both Miami and Hialeah are receiving rental-relief dollars under the $25 billion national program signed into law in December by then-President Donald Trump.

Separate rent relief for Hialeah and Miami

Hialeah received about $7 million from the program, according to a Liu memo, and Miami $14 million. Residents of those cities will initially be disqualified for the county rental-relief program, but allowed to apply if funds run out in their municipality.

A Feb. 17 report by the commission’s auditor office documented about 3,000 eviction writs issued in 2020, representing about a third of the nearly 11,000 eviction cases. That’s actually a decrease from prior years. In 2019, there were almost 18,000 eviction cases filed and 9,000 writs issued.

The decrease has Miami-Dade bracing for a flood of eviction cases once the legal system opens up again. A federal eviction moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention remains in place through March, and Levine Cava continues to bar county police from evicting people in 2020 proceedings tied to back rent.

“Our landlords are desperate,” said Commissioner Eileen Higgins, the sponsor of the rent-relief item.

Also on Wednesday, commissioners approved $100,000 to set up an online portal with the Miami-Dade Circuit Court designed to steer landlords and tenants into mediation procedures and away from eviction actions.

Sponsor Raquel Regalado said she expects the court system to get the website up in the coming weeks. “I want it up before the end of March,” she said. “I know once the CDC order goes away, there’s going to be a flood.”

This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 6:00 AM.