Last month the Washington, D.C. city agency, Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), was overwhelmed and closed its online application process after the first day, so this month the city government required applicants to obtain an appointment and come to the city offices in person. This month the phone system crashed from the volume of calls and the line of people applying for rental assistance went out the door, down the sidewalk, and into the parking lot. People began to line up at 6 a.m., and city officials estimated that at one point 900 people were standing in line.
This program is not designed to address all housing problems in the city, just to give one-time assistance to a family facing a sudden emergency, such as a loss of a job or hospitalization. One man interviewed by the Washington Post said that he has a PhD and had moved to Washington from Dallas early this year, when he took a job at the National Institutes of Health, but lost the job during the mass layoffs. A woman said that she had a steady income, but had to quit her job due to complications in her pregnancy. Another woman had a full-time job at Amazon, but could not survive on that income, so she took a second full-time job as a nurse’s assistant, but still can’t pay her rent. Washington is surrounded by 5 of the top 7 wealthiest counties in America, but this line reveals the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots.
