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Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis is providing reassurance to local tenants that still need rental assistance after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to extend the eviction moratorium through the end of July.
The Houston-Harris Rental Assistance Program is available to renters located in Harris County or the City of Houston who have been financially strained as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, those who don't have stable housing and whose household income is at or below the 80% of the Median Family Income in the area.
"#HarrisCounty is committed to equitable recovery and will continue allocating funds from the #AmericanRescuePlan toward rental assistance to help people in need due to the #COVID19 pandemic. We will not forget about our vulnerable communities," Ellis said in a July 1 Tweet.
As of June 30, the program has helped more than 30,000 families struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic.
First issued in December by the CDC, the moratorium on evictions was ruled to continue in a 5-2 vote by the courts, denying a request from a group of realtors and landlords to have it lifted, CBS News reported.
"I agree with the district court and the applicants that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its existing statutory authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium," Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, according to CBS News. "Because the CDC plans to end the moratorium in only a few weeks, on July 31, and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental assistance funds, I vote at this time to deny the application to vacate the district court's stay of its order."
The ERAP has provided nearly $120 million in rental relief as of July 1.
A release from the Office of the Mayor said that "COVID’s toll on people’s finances is far from over" and "nobody benefits from Houstonians losing their homes – not the families, not their landlords and certainly not our communities."