Another round of funding soon will reopen Mecklenburg’s rent relief program, an assurance to the thousands who have fallen behind on payments during the pandemic.
But the $22 million available when applications reopen March 1 is expected to last only a few months. What will happen when that money, too, inevitably runs out?
“That’s the thing that keeps us up at night,” Erin Barbee of DreamKey Partners, the nonprofit administering the RAMPCharMeck program, recently told Mecklenburg County commissioners.
The cascading effects of tenants unable to afford their rent — including forgoing essentials like food or medication, missed payments, a possible eviction and its long-term effects on securing future housing — have plagued Mecklenburg renters long before the pandemic.
Those issues were magnified by COVID-19, and as a result more than $100 million from the federal government has been used locally to keep people out of eviction court and in their homes.
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This story is part of I Can’t Afford to Live Here, a collaborative reporting project focused on solutions to the affordable housing crisis in Charlotte.