Coronavirus relief ‘fully allocated’ as hundreds of Miami Beach renters overwhelm city
Recently laid off and threatened with eviction, Miami Beach resident Johnnie Suarez said he was hopeful the city’s new rental assistance program would be the lifeline he needed.
He couldn’t even make an appointment.
The city stopped taking applications on Monday after 502 residents applied, although officials estimate the available money will only cover rent for 100 households.
Suarez, 27, was laid off from his job as an English tutor in March. He is behind on rent for April and May at his South Beach apartment, which amounts to $2,700, and his landlord has issued him two eviction notices.
After hearing that the City Commission allocated nearly $550,000 in mostly federal funds for rental assistance at its May 13 meeting, Suarez called the city’s hotline over the weekend and again at 7 a.m. on Monday.
“The whole day I was calling,” said Suarez, who told the Herald he is in the U.S. under asylum protection after leaving Venezuela about five years ago. “It was a machine all the time.”
In announcing the creation of the rental assistance program, Miami Beach instructed residents to begin calling on Monday to make an appointment. But after receiving calls Thursday, a day after the City Commission vote, city staff began taking appointments immediately.
By Monday afternoon, when the city had originally scheduled to begin taking appointments, the city said it had already booked appointments through June 12 and would stop taking calls.
The announcement came on Twitter.
“UPDATE: The rent assistance funds for qualifying residents adversely impacted by #COVID19 have been fully allocated,” the city wrote from its @MiamiBeachNews account. “We’ll notify the community if the City receives additional funds in the future.”
Suarez had been calling the city’s hotline from early that morning until about 3 p.m., when the announcement came. He was frustrated that the city began taking appointments before it said it would.
“If the landlord decides to evict me, I don’t really have a place to go,” he said. “I just need time for things to go back to normal to try to find a job again.”
In the throes of a global pandemic, and despite an executive order suspending evictions in Florida until June 2, Sunbrite Apartments has issued Suarez two notices threatening him with eviction unless he pays the rent that is due.
Sunbrite did not respond to a request for comment from the Miami Herald.
“That was a surprise because that was not supposed to be happening,” Suarez said.
First-come, first-served rental assistance
Booking an appointment is the first step, but it doesn’t mean you’re in the money.
For 48-year-old Miguel, a vacation-rental manager living in South Beach with his mother, the city’s announcement on Monday nearly dashed his hopes that he’d be helped.
Miguel, who asked that his last name not be published, said he has an appointment on June 3 with the city that he booked last week.
He’s been delivering food with UberEats since losing his job in March managing Airbnb rentals. But the pay isn’t enough to afford the $1,275 rent on his apartment.
“It’s not enough for me and my mom to pay everything,” he said. “We need to go back to work.”
Miguel is behind one month of rent for now, but June 1 is fast approaching. He said he “can’t wait” for Miami Beach and the county to reopen and get its hospitality and tourism industry back in full swing.
“Honestly, we cannot be in lockdown forever,” he said.
Half of money not available until October
Being accepted for rental assistance doesn’t mean your landlord will get paid right away.
Just 56 percent, or $308,611, of the money set aside for rental assistance will be immediately available, according to a city memo. The remaining $240,500 will become available after Oct. 1.
The money will be paid directly to the landlords of eligible applicants in the order their appointments were scheduled. The program is set up to bring tenants up to date on their overdue rent.
To qualify for aid, applicants must be Miami Beach residents with legal immigration status. They must also provide a notice from an employer stating that they lost their jobs or had their hours cut due to the coronavirus.
Eligible applicants must earn no more than 80 percent of area median income, which was $47,450 in 2019 for a family of one in Miami-Dade County.
The program is funded mainly from two federal sources: the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the HOME Investment Partnership Program.
State funding, from the State Housing Initiatives Partnership, accounts for about $20,500, or 4 percent of the available money.
Allowing hundreds more applications than what the funds can cover “affords people the greater opportunity to apply as others skip appointments or fail to submit required information,” a city spokeswoman said.
Thirteen applicants did not show up to appointments on Monday and none brought the correct paperwork, she said. Most applicants are either one or two months behind on rent, and many had made partial payments.
“Our goal was to receive enough applications to assume the number of no-shows, people who provided incorrect information during pre-screening, and who will not complete the application process,” the city spokeswoman said.
While $1 million in previously earmarked resort tax funds are going into a relief package for the city’s museums and cultural institutions, there isn’t enough money in the rental relief program to help the hundreds who have applied for assistance.
To help residents in need, especially those without access to a car, the city pledged about $175,000 per month in general fund money to feed up to 600 families a week in walk-up food distributions.
Suarez, the English tutor, said the city should freeze rent or put more money into the rental assistance fund.
Since his company, EC English, laid him off, Suarez said he has raided his savings and relied on his $1,200 federal stimulus check to stay afloat.
Without a car, he can’t line up for free food. But he is looking into the city’s new walk-up giveaways.
“We don’t have income, so it’s complicated,” Suarez said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
.JPG)