South West Illinois News

A bill that would expand pandemic-related rental assistance programs passed the Senate late last month. 

House Bill 2877 creates the COVID-19 Federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program Act, which will use federal Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) dollars to assist renters who continue to struggle in the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The program will give priority to renters who have a documented history of housing instability or homelessness, have accumulated a significant amount of rent debt or live within a disproportionately impacted area based on positive COVID-19 cases. 

State Sen. Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro) questioned the methods for choosing the renters to prioritize in the bill, which passed 39-13 on April 29 on the Senate floor. 

Bryant asked state Sen. Omar Aquino (D-Chicago) what metrics are used to determine a "disproportionately affected area."  

Aquino responded that it uses data for number of cases, population and zip code determined by the local health department. He added that it is not specified in the bill if the metric is based on the number of positive cases or the percentage of positive cases. 

"So it could be a county that was put into mitigation because their percentage was extremely high, but now they're not considered disproportionately affected?" Bryant asked. "Maybe it's a county that has a number of 5,000. I'm trying to figure out if the COVID numbers are used in percentage in one case but in another it's per person instead."

Aquino said the bill was written with wiggle room in the language for the Illinois Development Authority, which will be administering the program, to work with Illinois Department of Public Health. 

"The prioritization in this isn't one thing AND something else," Aquino said. "It's an OR. Again, it's not a requirement in the language. They make their best effort to be as specific as possible."