King County’s Eviction Prevention and Rent Assistance Program was one of the ways the County has helped residents who were behind in rent and utility payments due to COVID-19 hardships. The program provided payments for back rent and even future rent obligations. Households throughout King County who had fallen behind in rent due to unemployment, lost wages, and health crises as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The King County EPRAP program is managed and operated by the Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS).
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"This project was supported by grant awarded by US Department of Treasury. Points of view in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the US Department of the Treasury. Grant funds are administered by the Local Government Coronavirus Relief Fund thru the Washington State Department of Commerce."
EPRAP's first iteration ran from August 2020 to June 2021 and served 11,631 households distributing $49.6 million in rent assistance. The second iteration began in July 2021 to May 2022 distributing $280 million in rent assistance to 25,710 households.
Starting May 25, DCHS has contracted with United Way King County's Homebase program www.uwkc.org/r e nthelp/ for the EPRAP Tenant Pool Program administration and oversight.
UWKS and their partners will continue to process applications for tenants that pre-registered before February 28, 2022, through the tenant portal on our website while rent assistance funding remains.
Each week, King County randomly selects registered tenants from the tenant pool to participate in the program. The number selected varies based on service providers' capacity. Existing applicants can continue to log into the tenant portal to get a status update.
King County EPRAP has limited funding available. Unfortunately, we will not be able to help everyone that has registered.
To ensure resources were distributed to those at the highest risk of eviction, four programs were deployed and designed to distribute rental assistance quickly, efficiently, and equitably.
1. Landlord Program
In April/May 2021, 314 large landlords that represented 1,300 properties agreed early to be part of EPRAP.
Contracted agencies were assigned properties from the landlord pool and then worked directly with tenants to help them gather required documentation.