Officials say some Multnomah County applications for the Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program (OERAP) will not be reviewed until March 2022 — long after county, state and federal eviction protections are set to expire. Additionally, county officials say it is currently unknown how quickly they can distribute federal funds for approved applications.
Multnomah County paid out $807,008 across 160 households, with a total of $5,056,182 approved funding and 664 households approved as of Aug. 30, according to the OERAP online dashboard. While that is more than double the 238 households approved by Aug. 11, it remains a minuscule fraction of the more than 14,000 applications attributed to Multnomah County.
Although county officials say federally funded OERAP assistance will be held up for an indefinite period of time after eviction protections expire, they hope other programs operated at a county level will fill the gap. Multnomah County residents have 90 days of eviction protection after submitting proof of a rental assistance application to a landlord, meaning someone who submitted proof on July 1 after the state moratorium ended will lose protection the last week of September.
Street Roots reported disarray and delays in the federally funded $280 million program in mid-August, which state officials said was flooded with applications when the web portal opened May 19. Multnomah County, in particular, had yet to disperse a single dollar at the time of the report, according to the online OERAP dashboard. However, the dashboard now lists 110 applications paid by Aug. 16.
The addition of 26 staff members to the application review team since mid-August has increased the pace of processing, according to Peggy Samolinski, division director for the Youth and Family Services Division within the county Department of Human Services (DHS).
While some funding has now been dispersed in Multnomah County, many OERAP applicants, including those who applied as soon as they could, have yet to hear anything regarding the status of their applications. State officials say delays are largely due to an overwhelming number of applications and not enough staffing. County officials point to the same issues, while also singling out the state’s application portal of choice — Allita 360.
Staffing shortages and technical difficulties
Nonprofits and city agencies, according to Oregon Housing & Community Services (OHCS) representative Connor McDonnell are not equipped to process the sheer volume of applications in an expedited manner — citing one local rent assistance partner experiencing an increase from 800 cases per month to 1,500 during the pandemic.
As a result, Oregon Housing & Community Services has been “ramping up capacity” with nearly 60 staff assisting with the processing of OERAP applications, while local administrators continue to add staff to meet the strains on their systems, McDonnell said.
In Multnomah County, Denis Theriault, communications coordinator for the county’s Joint Office of Homeless Services, agrees low staffing is a cause for OERAP delays, though he says this issue can in part be accounted for by the state mandating the Allita 360 system.
“The challenge ... is it’s a new portal,” Theriault said. “Other states have tried it, like Rhode Island tried to use Allita. They did not keep it.”
STREET ROOTS NEWS: Oregon emergency rental assistance in disarray, increasing risk of eviction
According to McDonnell, the state paid $395,482 to software vendor Allita 360 to implement a centralized application system for its federally funded, $280 million Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program. The figure was originally reported by The Oregonian.
Brian Greenwood, owner of Allita 360, declined to comment when reached by Street Roots on Aug. 30.
Theriault said state officials mandated the new system hoping it would streamline the application process by funneling tenants to a single application portal, rather than requiring them to seek aid through nonprofits and community agencies across the state.
Instead, the technical issues in the system and a lack of trained staff have led to massive delays in rental assistance, according to Theriault. The Allita 360 system does not utilize the systems communities already had in place, which Theriault said is a major issue.
“We didn’t necessarily think it was going to be very nimble or fast, and we knew that (Allita 360) didn’t come with any staff,” Theriault said. “We had to learn a new system to train people. We had to hire people, and that takes time. There (were) technical glitches early on that bedeviled everyone to this day.”
To rectify the delays, Multnomah County hired 26 additional staff members to work with the state and Allita 360 to address technical glitches and increase access to rapid response eviction protection. The new staff will allow county workers to process approximately 275 applications per week.
While the rate of processed applications has increased dramatically since mid-August, only 50 applications were paid out between Aug. 17 and Aug. 23. If only half of the more than 14,000 Multnomah County applications are approved, and funds are distributed at the same rate, it would take more than 148 weeks or nearly three years to distribute the funds.
“We have been, admittedly, a little slow to ramp up,” Samolinski said. “We started a whole new team of people to manage the system.”
This new team of 26 people, which reached full capacity the week of Aug. 16, operates separately from the staff charged with reviewing applications in Multnomah County for the Short Term Rent Assistance (STRA) distribution system.
Increasing staff for OERAP and assistance from the state has rapidly increased the rate of application processing, according to Samolinski, because the complexity of application review often slows down the process.
“Every application, every single application in that system has to be looked at,” she said. “It has to be reviewed for accuracy and completeness.”
For OERAP, the money flows through a pipeline from the state, to the Youth and Family Services division within the county DHS and from there to Home Forward — the housing authority of Portland — and finally into landlords’ hands. All of the currently approved funding has already been transferred from the state to DHS, said Samolinski, and the majority is waiting in her division to be moved to Home Forward, as applications are approved for funding.
In addition to creating a dedicated OERAP team, Samolinski said the state stepped in to process a portion of the Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties OERAP applications. The state is currently processing 5,460 complete applications from Multnomah County, per data provided by Theriault.
“We had, you know, 13,000 of them at one point,” Samolinski said of their application numbers, which are now slightly over 8,500 thanks to the relief provided by the state. “(The state is) coming through with help for the metro counties in particular, which is good because we have such a high proportion of applicants, I think we have 59% of all applications in Oregon are from Multnomah County.”
But Samolinski and Theriault said the county still has to navigate communication errors and glitches within Allita 360.
“There have been some legitimate technical issues in Allita that the state is aware of, so I’m not speaking bad about that,” she said. “It’s been legitimate that some of the payment process functions don’t work as they were intended, which has created time lags and having to do work over again. Sometimes that communication system out of Allita itself isn’t functioning properly. Sometimes when they make upgrades, that changes some of the way things look on the screen or the calculations, which can just mean people have to do work over.”
Samolinski said the glitches recently resulted in nearly 300 applications failing to upload to Home Forward, where applications that have moved into approved payment status are checked again, as Home Forward begins to disperse the money to landlords.
“You’ve probably heard there are some ... technical issues in the latest system that do slow down all of our processes and any of those at any step along the way,” Samolinski said during an Aug. 17 Multnomah County Board of Commissioners meeting.
Theriault also said the system’s glitches and the tremendous demand for aid have slowed the process.
“Allita does not allow us to identify applicants with eviction notices,” Theriault said. “So, we are prioritizing those households who have applied for assistance with July or August rent, and people who have started an Allita application but still ended up on the court docket.”
Theriault said the Allita 360 system was a key factor in the delays.
“The platform is not designed to be an immediate response for such large-scale demand,” he said. “Accelerating the Allita application process to meet a 90-day timeframe will depend on additional resources from the state and ongoing technical support, which the state has already indicated they are committed to providing.”
To address technical issues within Allita 360, Samolinski said her team works with the state and Allita 360 to resolve issues as they arise.
“We were actively engaged with the state around that but, but it’s an example number one of some of the glitches that just slow us down, because it’s not stopping us,” Samolinski said. “We’re deeply, deeply committed to keep continuing to work with this. We want tenants to get this assistance.”
McDonnell said the state has noticed some communities experience Allita 360 technical issues more than others.
“Some counties don’t cite that as an issue,” he said, though he wasn’t sure what factor caused some counties to experience issues with Allita while others don’t.
But McDonnell said the state is committed to “address those [issues], work with the vendor and local community to address that particular item,” depending on the issue experienced.
Technical issues with Allita 360 only add to applicants’ complaints about a lack of communication from DHS about their OERAP application status. But tenants may have to keep waiting on communication outside of the status alerts that Allita 360 is supposed to send — though applicants say they don’t always receive. DHS is undecided about sending applicants an email update.
“We’ve been reluctant to send everyone a mass email message just to say we’re working on it, and we’ll get to you,” Samolinski said. “I may end up doing that because I know people are stressed out about having a plan and not having heard anything.”
As long as technical issues remain at a minimum, Samolinski believes the county’s new team can process approximately 275 applications per week.
“With our team fully staffed, the number of applications we help complete for renters will continue to increase, and we are on track for meeting our goal of spending down our allocation by March 2022,” she told the board.
What else is the county doing?
Despite the ongoing delays with OERAP — the largest potential source of funding — being dispersed in Multnomah County, officials say the county is working to distribute other funds through their own programs in an attempt to avoid a wave of evictions in Multnomah County.
Theriault said Multnomah County and the city of Portland received $55 million in funding directly from the federal government and have used a portion of that assistance to direct funds to renters at immediate risk of eviction without having to go through the state system.
Samolinski said DHS added staff to STRA and a new eviction defense program at the county level because of the immense strain on staff trying to process applications for the various rental assistance programs.
“We heard that loud and clear that the pressure on existing staff was really high,” Samolinski told the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners on Aug. 17.
Additionally, Samolinski told the board that the county is adding rapid response eviction protections and making them easier to access.
“We actually started up a separate eviction defense program in Multnomah County, so if you get an eviction notice right now, whether you’ve applied through the Allita portal or not — anything you’re doing, you call 211,” Samolinski said. “And then 211 will refer those folks to a county program, Bienestar de la Familia. And those folks get people rent assistance. The average time to get folks money was five days to get the commitment to the funding.”
The county did not provide proof of the average wait time for assistance through 211 when asked.
Samolinski said Multnomah County DHS is also paying Metropolitan Public Defender to help people on the court docket and contracting with Bienestar to have staff at the courthouse.
“We’re not just waiting for someone to call; we’re actually looking at the eviction docket, getting out the people calling people who were on the eviction docket letting them know that (we can help),” she said.
Through DHS services or assistance from nonprofits like Urban League of Portland, Samolinski said renters can qualify for the 90 days protection in Multnomah County.
“If people are having trouble, we would encourage them to either call 211 or they can call (503) 988-0466, our phone number,” Samolinski said. “We have a dedicated phone line for Allita 360, where people can call and get a call back within a couple of days.”
Samolinski said 211 will likely be more prompt.
With the goal of dispersing all the funding by March 2022, Samolinski promises applicants that their assistance is coming.
“People understandably get concerned when they see no money has moved, but that’s why we’ve tracked it all throughout the pandemic,” Samolinski said. “This is the amount of money we’ve committed to tenants … which means that they will be getting that rent assistance, and their landlord will get the money that they have agreed to take, and we have basically committed or promised it to them.”