Targeted Relief: Geography and Timing of Emergency Rental Assistance

Abstract

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress established the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program, which provided nearly $45 billion to prevent evictions and increase housing stability. We provide new evidence on the implementation of ERA by examining the fine-grained geographic distribution of ERA funds and the timing of ERA expenditures by state and local governments. Using administrative data on ERA transactions, we find that ERA sent more funds per renting household to census tracts with higher pre-pandemic eviction filing rates, higher poverty rates, higher shares of Black renters, higher shares of renting households with children, and higher shares of renting single mothers. Our results suggest that ERA was largely successful in reaching communities that were most likely to have the highest risk of eviction. We also document that ERA spending increased substantially around the expiration of the federal eviction moratorium and at a time when eviction filings were increasing, which may confound quasi-experimental analysis of ERA.