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Data show money for rental assistance in Fresno County processing at rates higher than State of California averages, with money available for renters affected by Covid available through August.

If additional money is allocated for rental assistance, those funds could be available through 2025.

Through the end of March since the inception of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program in 2021, RH Community Builders — who handled the program — received 4,236 completed applications, according to Katie Wilbur, executive director for the company.

By April 6, of those applicants, 3,307 had been paid, or 78%. Statewide, the funding rate was 44%. Of those payouts, 2,183 went to unique households, as some had been approved for additional funding as deadlines for rental assistance were extended.

The total payout as of March 31 has been just under $16.6 million, with $11.1 million left in the program.

Wilbur said RH received the contract because the County didn’t internally have the processing for quick payment.

For a lot of rental assistance applications, money typically was paid out within a week, Wilbur said.

After a Thursday night cutoff, checks would be sent off the next day.

Verifying Covid hardship was a requirement for receiving rental assistance.

In a lot of rural Fresno County areas, landlords kept more informal kinds of records.

“A lot of the times what we would see — especially with the rural areas — is a handwritten ledger that they documented they paid $25 this week and it wasn’t necessarily as neat or clean as you would see in more sophisticated property management systems,” Wilbur said.

Sometimes instead of a ledger, they would see bank accounts histories from tenants and landlords showing a withdrawal and corresponding deposit that they could use to establish a rental history.

Part of the application includes information required from landlords.

But cooperation from landlords has been all over the board, said Wilbur. Some were grateful for help and wanted to keep people housed. Others did not want to give out any information, scared that the program was a conspiracy.

To get people to know about the program, marketing campaigns were done on social media and direct mailers to all non-owner-occupied addresses in Fresno County in both English and Spanish, said Wilbur.

Radio ads were done and three outreach teams were sent. One went to the west side near Coalinga and Huron, another to the southeast near Selma and then northeast from Clovis to Auberry.

Marketing budget numbers were not immediately available. Administrative costs for RH Community Builders — a Limited Liability Partnership — are capped at 5% of the total program.

Based on average weekly funding, Wilbur says RH is projected to spend their current funding by August, so money is still available for renters needing assistance. They are required to spend their funds by September 2022.

They are currently working with the County of Fresno to bring in additional funds from the State of California as well as the federal government. Those additional funds would have a 2025 deadline.

Compared to the City of Fresno, the number of applications for rental assistance paled in comparison.

Wilbur said that they did receive a number of applications that were incomplete as well as a lot from people with addresses with the City of Fresno.

The raw number of applications approved with the City of Fresno is in line with payouts from RH — 3,632 funded applications with the City of Fresno compared to 3,307 in the County of Fresno. Population for the City of Fresno is 525,010 as of 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

There were 999,101 people in the County of Fresno as of the same time period.

But the City of Fresno received north of 33,000 applications, with 3,775 applications either being duplicates or missing substantial amounts of information. Another 10,692 were disqualified for various reasons.

Wilbur said they as well received a high volume of incomplete applications as well as people seeking mortgage assistance.

As of March 31, the City of Fresno spend $29 million of $48.5 million it had received for the program. They have another $18.7 million pending.