Eye On Illinois: Cutting homelessness by helping landlords, tenants avoid evictions

What can you buy for $75 million these days? Illinois lawmakers have put that much into helping thousands of families avoid eviction.

Known as CBRAP, the Court-Based Rental Assistance Program aims to serve tenants at risk of eviction by covering up to $15,000 in past-due rent, $500 for court expenses and up to two months of future rent.

The program builds off a September 2021 effort for people experiencing pandemic-related financial hardship, developed at the expiration of an eviction moratorium. The current version, funded for the current fiscal year, just began taking applications. To be eligible, renters and landlords must already have a case pending in eviction court with each party obligated to provide several forms of documentation attesting to their specific circumstances. Tenants with landlords who want to proceed with the eviction can get some assistance toward finding a new accommodation.

In one light, this is good business for the government. Landlords get paid, which maintains their cash flow toward insurers and property tax obligations, among other expenses, while helping people to stay in their homes, keeps them out of shelters and promotes continuity in the workplace and at school as well as general health and safety. Care for all those concerns tends to be more expensive – and a further strain on public safety nets – than just cutting the rent check to keep everyone in place.

But it’s also easily argued that rental assistance treats symptoms and not the underlying problem of a lack of affordable housing. No one wants to have to skip writing a rent or mortgage check, just as landlords would prefer tenants who pay in full and on time. And what help are we providing people who earn just enough to miss qualification limits? An income maximum, broken down by county and household size, is available at tinyurl.com/CBRAPlimits.

Pragmatists will acknowledge the larger context: Other government programs are intended as affordable housing solutions while this one effort is plausibly connected to House Bill 2831 and Gov. JB Pritzker’s stated goal of functionally eliminating homelessness.

In August, when bill sponsor and state Rep. Lindsey LaPointe spoke at the signing, the Chicago Democrat estimated 4,500 Illinoisans are without a home each evening. The wait time to get housing services was an average 802 days. In fiscal 2022, emergency shelters turned away 9,800 people. Simply put, the state can’t drive down those numbers if evictions increase.

Helping people in the short term is a compassionate, reasonable response. Yet evaluating this program’s strategic success will include understanding how many tenants returned to making regular rent payments and for what percentage state aid merely delayed the inevitable – as well as remembering it’s but one piece of a large, complex puzzle.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.