Podcasts about emergency rental assistance program

 Santi: Hi, this is a special episode of Statecraft. I've got a wonderful guest host with me today. Kyla Scanlon: Hey, I'm Kyla Scanlon! I'm the author of a book called In This Economy and an economic commentator. Santi: Kyla has joined me today for a couple reasons. One, I'm a big fan of her newsletter: it's about economics, among many other things. She had a great piece recently on what we can learn from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, which is a favorite book of mine.Kyla's also on today because we're interviewing Wally Adeyemo, who was the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Biden administration. We figured we each had questions we wanted answered.Kyla: Yeah, I've had the opportunity to interview Wally a couple times during the Biden administration, and I wanted to see where he thinks things are at now. He played a key role in implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, financial sanctions on Russia, and a whole bunch of other things.Santi: For my part, I'm stuck on Wally's role in setting up the IRS's Direct File program, where you can file your taxes for free directly through the IRS instead of paying TurboTax a hundred bucks to do it. “Good governance types” tend to love Direct File, but the current admin is thinking of killing it. I wanted to understand how the program got rolled out, how Wally would respond to criticisms of the program, and what he learned from building something in government, which now may disappear.Kyla, you've talked to Wally before. How did that conversation go? Kyla: I actually was able to go to his office in D.C., and I talked to a couple of key people in the Biden administration: Jared Bernstein, the former chair of the CEA, and Daniel Hornung, who was at the National Economic Council.We're talking to Wally on the day that the House passed the one big beautiful bill. There's also so much happening financially, like the bond market is totally rebelling against the US government right now. I'm really curious how he thinks things are, as a key player in the last administration.Santi: Wally, you've spent most of your career in Democratic Party institutions. You worked on the Kerry presidential campaign in 2004. You served in the Obama admin. You were the first chief of staff to the CFPB, the president of the Obama Foundation, and, most recently, Deputy Treasury Secretary in the Biden admin.30,000ft question: How do you see the Democratic Party today?My view is that we continue to be the party that cares deeply about working-class people, but we haven't done a good job of communicating that to people, especially when it comes to the things that matter most to them. From my standpoint, it's costs: things in America cost too much for a working-class family.I want to make sure I define working class: I think about people who make under $100,000 a year, many of whom don't own homes on the coast or don't own a significant amount of stocks (which means they haven't seen the asset appreciation that's led to a great deal of wealth creation over the last several decades). When you define it that way, 81% of Americans sit in that category of people. Despite the fact that they've seen their median incomes rise 5-10% over the last five years, they've seen the cost of the things they care about rise even faster.We haven't had a clear-cut agenda focused on the standard of living, which I think is the thing that matters most to Americans today.Santi: There are folks who would say the problem for Democrats wasn't that they couldn't communicate clearly, or that they didn't have a governing agenda, but that they couldn't execute their agenda the way they hoped to in the time available to them. Would you say there's truth to that claim?Most people talk about a communications issue, but I don't think it's a communications issue. There are two issues. One is an implementation issue, and the second is an issue of the actual substance and policy at the Treasury Department. I was the deputy secretary, but I was also the Chief Operating Officer, which meant that I was in charge of execution. The two most significant domestic things I had to execute were the American Rescue Plan, where $1.9 trillion flowed through the Treasury Department, and the Inflation Reduction Act. The challenge with execution in the government is that we don't spend a lot on our systems, on making execution as easy as possible.For example, the Advanced Child Tax Credit was intended to give people money to help with each of their children during the pandemic. What Congress called on us to do was to pay people on a monthly basis. In the IRS system, you pay your taxes mostly on an annual basis, which meant that most of our systems weren't set up to pay a monthly check to Americans. It took us a great deal of work to figure out a way to recreate a system just to do that.We've underinvested in the systems that the IRS works on. The last time we made a significant investment in the IRS's digital infrastructure was the 1960s; before we had an ATM machine, before we sent a man to the moon, before we had a personal computer. So that meant that everything was coded in a language called COBOL.So execution was quite hard in the American Rescue Plan. People were left out and felt that the government wasn't working for them. If you called the IRS, only 13% of your calls were being answered. We got that back up to 85% before we left. Ultimately, I think part of this is an execution challenge. In government we want to spend money coming up with new policies, but we don't want to pay for execution, which then means that when you get the policy passed, implementation isn't great.When Jen Pahlka was on your show, she talked about the need to focus on identifying the enablers to implementation. Direct File was one of the best examples of us taking implementation very seriously.But also, on some policy issues that mattered most to Americans, we weren't advancing the types of strategies that would've helped lower the cost of housing and lowering the cost of medicine. We did some things there, but there's clearly more that we could have done, and more we need to do going forward to demonstrate that we're fighting to bring down those costs. It's everything from permitting reform — not just at the federal level, but what can we do to incentivize it at the state and local level — to thinking about what we can do on drug costs. Why does it cost so much more to get a medicine in America than in Canada? That is something that we can solve. We've just chosen not to at the federal level.At the end of the year, we were going to take action to go after some of the middlemen in the pharmacy industry who were taking out rents and large amounts of money. It dropped out of the bill because of the negotiations between the Republican Congress and then President-elect Trump. But there are a lot of things that we can do both on implementation, which will mean that Americans feel the programs that we're passing in a more effective way, and policy solutions that we need to advance as a party that will help us as well.Kyla: Some people think Americans tend to vote against their own self-interest. How can your party message to people that these sorts of policies are really important for them?Ultimately, what I found is that most people just understand their self-interest differently, and for them, a big part of this was, “Who's fighting for me on the issues that I care most about?”From my standpoint, part of the problem we had with Direct File, which I think was an innovative solution, was that we got to implementing it so late in the administration that we didn't have the ability for it to show the impact. I'm hoping future administrations will think through how to start their implementation journey on things like Direct File sooner in the administration, when you have a great deal of political capital, so people can actually feel the impact over time.To your question, it's not just about the messaging, it's about the messenger. People tend to trust people who look like them, who come from the places they come from. When it came to the Child Tax Credit and also to Direct File, the biggest innovation wasn't the technology: the technology for Direct File has been used by the Australians, the British, and other countries for decades.The biggest innovation was us joining that technology with trusted people in communities who were going out to talk to people about those programs and building those relationships. That was something that the IRS hadn't done a great deal of. We invested a great deal in those community navigators who were helping us get people to trust the things the government was doing again, like the Child Tax Credit, like Direct File, so that they could use it.We often think that Washington is going to be able to give messages to the country that people are going to hear. But we're both in a more complicated media environment, where people are far more skeptical of things that come from people in Washington. So the best people to advocate for and celebrate the things that we're doing are people who are closer to the communities we're trying to reach. In product advertising today, more companies are looking to influencers to advertise things, rather than putting an ad on television, because people trust the people that they follow. The same is true for the things that we do in government.Santi: I've talked to colleagues of yours in the last administration who say things like, “In the White House, we did not have a good enough sense of the shot clock.” They point to various reasons, including COVID, as a reason the admin didn't do a good enough job of prioritization.Do you think that's true, that across the administration, there was a missing sense of the shot clock or a missing sense of prioritization? No, because I'm a Lakers fan. These are professionals. We're professionals. This is not our first rodeo. We know how much time is on the shot clock; we played this game. The challenge wasn't just COVID. For me at Treasury — and I think this is the coolest part of being Deputy Secretary of the Treasury — I had responsibilities domestic and international. As I'm trying to modernize the IRS, to invest all my time in making the system work better for customers and to collect more taxes from the people who owe money, Russia invades Ukraine. I had to turn a bunch of my attention to thinking about what we were going to do there. Then you have Hamas attacking Israel.There was more we should have done on the domestic end, but we have to remember that part of the presidency is: you get to do the things you want to do, but you also have to do the things you have to do. We had a lot of things we had to do that we weren't planning for which required all-of-the-administration responses.I think the most important lesson I've learned about that is that it comes down to both being focused on the things that matter, and being willing to communicate to the American people why your priorities have to change in light of things that happen in the world.But the people I'm sure you've talked to, most of them work on domestic policy alone, and they probably never have been in a National Security Council meeting, where you're thinking about the risks to the country. The president has to do both of those things. So I get how difficult it is to do that, just given where I sat at the Treasury Department.Santi: Looking back from an implementation perspective, are there things you would've done differently during your time at Treasury?The most important thing that I would've done differently was to immediately set up a permanent implementation and delivery unit in the Treasury Department. We always like to pretend like the Treasury Department is just a policy department where we make policy, we collect taxes. But in any crisis the country ever has, a great deal of responsibility — for execution or implementation of whatever the response is — falls to the Treasury Department. Think about the financial crisis, which is clearly something that's in the Treasury's domain. The vast majority of money for COVID flowed through the Treasury Department. You think about the IRA, a climate bill: the vast majority of that money flows through the Treasury Department.And Treasury doesn't have a dedicated staff that's just focused on implementation: How do we do this well? How do we make sure the right people are served? How do we make sure that we communicate this well? We did this to a degree by a team that was focused on the American Rescue Plan. But it was only focused on the American Rescue Plan. If I could start again, I would have said, “I want a permanent implementation structure within the Treasury Department of people who are cross-cutting, who only think about how we execute the policies that we pass through Congress and that we put together through an executive order. How do we do that extremely well?”Kyla: What you're talking about is very people-centric: How do we get an implementation team, and how do we make sure that the right people are doing the right jobs? Now we have DOGE, which is less people-centric. How do you reconcile what Doge is doing relative to what you would've done differently in this role that you had?As you would suspect, I wasn't excited about the fact we had lost the election, but initially I thought DOGE could be helpful with technology. I think marrying technology with people — that's the key to success for the government. We've never really been great at doing technology in the government.Part of the reason for that is a procurement process that is very slow because of how the federal acquisition rules work. What we are trying to do is prevent corruption and also waste, fraud, and abuse. But what that does is, it leads to slowness in our ability to get the technology on board that we need, and in getting the right people.I was hoping DOGE would bring in people who knew a great deal about technology and put us in a position where we could use that to build better products for the American people. I thought they would love Direct File, and that they would find ways to improve Direct File and expand it to more Americans.My view is that any American in the working class or middle class should not have to pay a company to file their taxes. We have the ability in this country, and I think Direct File was proving that. My goal, if we'd had more time, was to expand this to almost any American being able to use it. I thought they'd be able to accelerate that by bringing in the right people, but also the right technology. We were on that path before they took those two things apart.My sense is that you have to reform the way that we hire people because it's too hard to hire the right people. In some cases, you don't need some of the people you have today because technology is going to require different skills to do different things. It's easier to break something, I found, than it is to build something. I think that's what they're finding today as well.Santi: When I talk to left-of-center folks about the DOGE push, they tend to be skeptical about the idea that AI or modern technology can replace existing federal workers. I think some of that is a natural backlash to the extreme partisan coding of DOGE, and the fact that they're firing a lot of people very quickly. But what's your view? After DOGE, what kinds of roles would you like to see automated?Let me say: I disagree with the view that DOGE and technology can't replace some of the things that federal workers do today. My view is that “productivity enhancing” tech — it's not that it is going to make employees who are currently doing the job more productive. It is going to mean you need fewer employees. We have to be honest about that.Go to the IRS, for example. When I got there, we had a huge paper backlog at the IRS because, despite what most people think, millions of people still file their taxes by paper, and they send them to the IRS. And during the pandemic, the commissioner, who was then working for President Trump, decided to shut down the IRS for public health reasons — to make sure employees did not have to risk getting COVID.There were piles of paper backing up, so much so that they had filled cafeterias at the IRS facilities with huge piles of paper. The problem, of course, is that, unlike modern systems, you could not just machine-read those papers and put them into our systems. Much of that required humans to code those papers into the system by hand. There is no need in the 21st century for that to happen, so one of the things that we started to do was introduce this simple thing called scanning, where you would scan the papers — I know it sounds like a novel idea. That would help you get people's tax returns faster into the system, but also get checks out quickly, and allow us to see if people are underpaying their taxes, because we can use that data with a modern system. But over time, what would that mean? We'd need fewer people to enter the data from those forms.When we get money for the IRS from Congress, it is actually seen as revenue-raising because they expect it to bring down the debt and deficit, which is completely true. But the model Congress uses to do that is reliant on the number of full-time employees we hire. One challenge we have with the IRS — and in government systems in general — is that you don't get credit for technology investments that should improve your return on investment.So whenever we did the ROI calculations for the IRS, the Congressional Budget Office would calculate how much revenue we'd bring in, and it was always based on the number of people you had doing enforcement work that would lead to certain dollars coming in. So we got no credit for the technology investments. Which was absolutely the opposite of what we knew would be true: the more you invested in technology, the more likely you were to bring in more revenue, and you would be able to cut the cost of employees.Santi: If the CBO changed the way it scored technology improvements, would more Congresspeople be interested in funding technology?It is just a CBO issue. It's one we've tried to talk to them about over the last several years, but one where they've been unwilling to move. My view is that unlocking this will unlock greater investment in technology in a place like the IRS, because every dollar you invest in technology — I think — would earn back $10 in additional tax revenue we'd be able to collect from people who are skipping out on their taxes today. It's far more valuable to invest in that technology than to grow the number of employees working in enforcement at the IRS. You need both, but you can't say that a person is worth 5x their salary in revenue and that technology is worth 0. That makes no sense.Kyla: When we spoke about Direct File many months ago, people in my comment section were super excited and saying things like, “I just want the government to tell me how much money I owe.” When you think about the implementation of Direct File, what went right, and how do you think it has evolved?The thing that went right was that we proved that we could build something quite easily, and we built it ourselves, unlike many technology projects in government. We didn't go out and hire a bunch of consultants and contractors to do it. We did it with people at the IRS, but also with people from 18F and from GSA who worked in the government. We did it in partnership with a number of stakeholders outside the government who gave us advice, but the build was done by us.The reason that was important — and the reason it's important to build more things internally rather than hiring consulting firms or other people to build it — is that you then have the intellectual capital from building that, and that can be used to build other things. This was one product, but my view is that I want the IRS home page to one day look a lot more like the screen on your iPhone, so that you can click on the app on the IRS homepage that can help you, depending on what you need — if it's a Direct File, or if it's a tax transcript.By building Direct File internally, we were getting closer to that, and the user scores on the effectiveness of the tool and the ability to use it were through the roof. Even for a private sector company, it would've been seen as a great success. In the first year, we launched late in the filing season, mostly just to test the product, but also to build stakeholder support for it. In the limited release, 140,000 people used it. The average user said that before Direct File, it took them about 13 hours to file their taxes, and with Direct File, it took them just over an hour to file their taxes.But you also have to think about how much money the average American spends filing their taxes: about $200. That's $200 that a family making under $100,000 could invest in their kids, in paying some bills, rather than in filing their taxes.Even this year, with no advertising by the Trump administration of Direct File, we had more than 300,000 people use it. The user scores for the product were above 85%. The challenge, of course, is that instead of DOGE investing in improving the product — which was a place where you could have seen real intellectual capital go to work and make something that works for all Americans — they've decided to discontinue Direct File. [NB: There has been widespread reporting that the administration plans to discontinue Direct File. The GOP tax bill passed by the House would end Direct File if it becomes law. At the time of publication, the Direct File has not been discontinued.]The sad part is that when you think about where we are as a country, this is a tool that could both save people money, save people time, improve our ability to collect taxes, and is something that exists in almost every other developed economy. It makes no sense to me why you would end something like this rather than continue to develop it.Santi: People remember the failure of healthcare.gov, which crashed when it was rolled out all at once to everyone in the country. It was an embarrassing episode for the Obama administration, and political actors in that administration learned they had to pilot things and roll them out in phases.Is there a tension between that instinct — to test things slowly, to roll them out to a select group of users, and then to add users in following cycles — Is there a tension between that and trying to implement quickly, so that people see the benefit of the work you're doing?One of my bosses in the Obama administration was Jeff Zients, the person who was brought in to fix healthcare.gov. He relentlessly focused on execution. He always made the point that it's easy to come up with a strategy to some degree: you can figure out what the policy solution is. But the difference between good and great is how you execute against it. I think there is some tension there, but not as much as you would think.Once we were able to show that the pilot was a success, I got invited to states all over the country, like Maryland, to announce that they were joining Direct File the next year. These members of Congress wanted to do Direct File events telling people in their state, “This product that's worked so well elsewhere is coming to us next.” It gave us the ability to celebrate the success.I learned the lesson not just from Zients, but also from then-professor Elizabeth Warren, whom I worked for as chief of staff at the CFPB. One challenge we had at the CFPB was to build a complaint hotline, at that point mostly phone-operated, for people who were suffering. They said it would take us at least a year to build out all the product functions we need. We decided to take a modular approach and say, “How long would it take for us to build the system for one product? Let's try that and see how that works. We'll do a test.”It was successful, and we were able to use that to tell the story about the CFPB and what it would do, not just for mortgages, but for all these other products. We built user interest in the complaint hotline, in a way that we couldn't have if we'd waited to build the whole thing at once. While I think you're right that there is some tension between getting everyone to feel it right away and piloting; if the pilot is successful, it also gives you the opportunity to go out and sell this thing to people and say, “Here's what people who did the pilot are saying about this product.”I remember someone in Texas who was willing to do a direct-to-camera and talk about the ways that Direct File was so easy for them to use. It gets back to my point on message and messenger. Deputy Secretary Adeyemo telling you about this great thing the government did is one thing. But an American who looks like you, who's a nurse, who's a mom of two kids, telling you that this product actually worked for her: That's something that more people identify with.Healthcare.gov taught us the lesson of piloting and doing things in a modular way. This is what companies have been doing for decades. If it's worked for them, I think it can work for the government too.Santi: I'm a fan of Direct File, personally. I don't want this administration to kill it. But I was looking through some of the criticism that Direct File got: for instance, there's criticism about it rivaling the IRS Free File program, which is another IRS program that partners with nonprofits to help some folks file their taxes for free.Then there's this broader philosophical criticism: “I don't want the feds telling me how much I owe them.” The idea is that the government is incentivized to squeeze every last dollar out of you.I'm curious what you make of that, in part because I spoke recently to an American who worked on building e-government systems for Estonia. One of the things that has allowed Estonia to build cutting-edge digital systems in the government is that Estonia is a small and very high-trust society. Everybody's one degree of separation from everybody else.We're a much bigger and more diverse country. How do you think that affects the federal government's ability to build tools like Direct File?I think it affects it a lot, and it gets back to my point: not just the message but the messenger. I saw this not just with Direct File, but with the Advanced Child Tax Credit, which was intended to help kids who were living in poverty, but also families overall. What we found initially in the data was that, among families that didn't have to file taxes because they made too little, many of them were unwilling to take advantage of Direct File and the Advanced Child Tax Credit because they couldn't believe the government was doing something to just help them. I spent a lot of time with priests, pastors, and other community leaders in many of the communities where people were under-filing to try and get them to talk about this program and why it was something that they should apply for.One of the challenges we suffer from right now in America, overall, is a lack of trust in institutions. You have to really go local and try to rebuild that trust.That also speaks to taking a pilot approach that goes slower in some cases. Some of the criticism we got was, “Why don't you just fill out this form for us and then just send it to us, so that Direct File is just me pressing a button so I can pay my taxes?”Part of the challenge for us in doing that is a technology challenge: we are not there technologically. But the other problem is a trust problem. If I were to just fill out your taxes for you and send them to you, I think people, at this stage, would distrust the government and distrust the technology.Direct File had to be on a journey with people, showing people, “If I put in this information, it accurately sends me back my check.” As people develop more trust, we can also add more features to it that I think people will trust. But the key has to be: how do you earn that trust over time?We can't expect that if we put out a product that looks like something the Estonian government or Australia would put out, that people would trust it at this point. We have to realize that we are on a journey to regain the trust of the American people.The government can and will work for them, and Direct File was a part of that. We started to demonstrate that with that product because the people who used it in these communities became the spokespeople for it in a better way than I ever could be, than the Secretary or the President could be.Everyone knows that they need to pay their taxes because it's part of their responsibility living in this country. The things that make people the most upset is the fact that there are people who don't pay their taxes. We committed that we were going to go after them.The second frustration was: “Why do you make it so hard for me to pay my taxes? Why can't I get through to you on the phone line? Why do I have to pay somebody else to do my taxes?” Our goal was to solve those two problems by investing money and going after the people who just decided they weren't going to pay, but also by making it as easy as possible for you to pay your taxes and for most people, to get that tax refund as quickly as possible.But doing that was about going on a journey with people, about regaining their trust in an institution that mattered to them a great deal because 90 something-percent of the money that funds our government comes in through the IRS.Kyla: You have a piece out in Foreign Affairs called “Make Moscow Pay,” and what I found most interesting about that essay is that you said Europe needs to step it up because the United States won't. Talk through the role of Treasury in financial sanctions, and your reasons for writing this piece.People often think about the Treasury Department as doing a few things. One is working with Wall Street; another one is collecting your taxes. Most people don't think about the fact that the Treasury Department is a major part of the National Security Committee, because we have these tools called financial sections.They use the power of the dollar to try and change the behavior of foreign actors who are taking steps that aren't consistent with our national security interests. A great example of this is what we did with regard to Russia — saying that we're going to cut off Russian banks from the US financial system, which means that you can't transact in US dollars.The problem for any bank that can transact in dollars is that the backbone of most of the financial world is built on the US dollar. It increases their cost, it makes it more difficult for them to transact, and makes it harder for them to be part of the global economy, nearly impossible.And that's what we've done in lots of cases when it comes to Russia. We have financial sanction programs that touch all over the world, from Venezuela to Afghanistan. The US government, since 9/11, has used sanctions as one of its primary tools of impacting foreign policy. Some of them have gone well, some of them I think haven't gone as well, and there's a need for us to think through how we use those policies.Santi: What makes sanctions an effective tool? Positions on sanctions don't line up neatly on partisan lines. Sanctions have a mixed track record, and you'll have Republicans who say sanctions have failed, and you'll have Democrats say sanctions have been an effective tool, and vice versa.The way I think about sanctions is that they are intended to bring change, and the only way that they work is that they're part of an overarching foreign policy strategy. That type of behavior change was what we saw when Iran came to the table and wanted to negotiate a way to reduce sanctions in exchange for limits on their nuclear program. That's the type of behavior change we're trying to accomplish with sanctions, but you can't do it with sanctions alone. You need a foreign policy strategy. We didn't do it by the United States confronting Iran; we got our allies and partners to work together with us. When I came into office in 2021, Secretary Yellen asked me to do a review of our sanctions policies — what's worked, what hasn't — because it had been 20 years since the 9/11 attacks.And the most important lesson I learned was that the sanctions programs that were the most effective were the ones we did on a multilateral basis — so we did it with our friends and allies. Part of the reason for this is that while the dollar is the most dominant currency around the world, oftentimes if you can't do something in dollars, you do it in a euro, or you do it in a Japanese yen, or pound sterling.The benefit of having allies all over the world is that the dominant, convertible currencies in the world are controlled by allies and partners. When we acted together with them, we were more effective in curtailing the economic activity of our adversary, and our pressure is more likely to lead to them changing their behavior.We had to be very cautious about collateral damage. You might be targeting an individual, but by targeting that individual, you might make it harder for a company they're affiliated with to continue doing business, or for a country that they're in to get access to banking services. Let's say that you're a huge bank in America, and you're worried about sanctions risk in a small country where you do little business. Why not pull out, rather than having to put in place a huge compliance program? One of the challenges that we have is that the people who make the decisions about whether to extend sanctions don't necessarily spend a lot of time thinking about some of these economic consequences of the sanctions approach.Whenever I was around the table and we were making a decision about using weapons, there was a process that was very elaborate that ended up with something going to the president. You'd often think about kinetic force very seriously, because you were going to have to get the president to make a decision. We didn't always take that kind of rigor when it came to thinking about using our sanctions policy, but the impact on the lives of people in these countries was just as significant for their access to not only money, but to food and to the resources they needed to live.Santi: What do you make of the effectiveness of the initial sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine? I've heard mixed reviews from folks inside and outside the Biden administration.Sanctions, again, to my point, are only a tool. They've had to be part of a larger strategy, and I think those sanctions were quite effective. I think the saving grace for the Russians has been the fact that China has largely been able and willing to give them access to the things they need to continue to perpetuate.There was a choice for Ukraine, but when you think about Russia's economy today vs. Russia's economy before the sanctions were put in place, it's vastly different. Inflation in Russia still runs far higher than inflation anywhere else in the world. If you were a Russian citizen, you would feel the impacts of sanctions.The challenge, of course, is that it hasn't changed Vladimir Putin's behavior or the behavior of the Kremlin, largely because they've had access to the goods and supplies they need from China, Iran, and North Korea. But over time, it means Russia's economy is becoming less competitive. They have less access to resources; they're going to struggle.I think everyone hoped that sanctions would immediately change the calculus of the Kremlin, but we've never seen that to be the case. When sanctions are effective, they take time, because the economic consequences continue to compound over time, and they have to be part of a larger strategy for the behavior of the individual. That's why I wrote the article, because while the Kremlin and Russia are under pressure, their view is that ultimately the West is going to get tired of supporting Ukraine, financially and politically, because the economic consequences for us — while not as significant as for Moscow or for Kiev — have been quite significant, when you think about the cost of living issues in Europe.I think it's important to write this now, when it appears that Russia is stalling on negotiations, because ultimately, US financial support is waning. We just know that the Trump administration is not willing to put more money into Ukraine, so Europe is going to have to do more, at a time when their economic situation is quite complicated as well.They've got a lot to do to build up their economy and their military-industrial base. Asking them to also increase their support for Ukraine at the same time is going to be quite difficult. So using this money that Russia owes to Ukraine — because they owe them compensation at this moment — can be quite influential in helping support the Ukrainians, but also changing Russia's calculus with regard to the ability of Ukraine to sustain itself.Kyla: On CNBC about a month ago, you said if we ever have a recession over the next couple of months or so, it would be a self-inflicted one. Do you still resonate with that idea? To build on the point I was making, the economy has done quite well over the course of the first few months of the year, largely because of the strength of the consumer, where our balance sheets are still quite strong. Companies in America have done well. The biggest headwind the US economy faces has been self-inflicted by the tariffs the president has put on. Part of what I still do is talk to CEOs of companies, big and small. Small businesses feel the impact of this even more than the big businesses. What they tell me is that it's not just the tariffs and the fact that they are making it more expensive for them to get the goods that they need, but it's the uncertainty created by the off-again, on-again, nature of those tariffs that makes it impossible for them to plan for what supplies they're going to get the next quarter. How are they going to fulfill their orders? What employees are they going to need? It's having a real impact on the performance of these companies, but also their ability to hire people and plan for the future.If you go to the grocery store, you're going to start seeing — and you're starting to see already — price increases. The thing that Americans care most about is, the cost of living is just too high. You're at the grocery store, as you're shopping for your kids for the summer, you're going to see costs go up because of a self-imposed tax we've put in place. So I still do think that if we do find ourselves in a recession, it's going to be because of the tariffs we've put in place.Even if we don't enter a technical recession, what we're seeing now is that those tariffs are going to raise the cost for people when they go out to buy things. It's going to raise the cost of building homes, which is going to make it harder for people to get houses, which is ultimately going to have an impact on the economy that isn't what I think the president or anyone wants at this point.Kyla: Is there anything else we haven't asked about? I think the place where we continue, as a country, to struggle is that, given the federal system we have, many of these problems aren't just in Washington — they're in state and local governments as well. When you think about the challenges to building more housing in this country, you can't just solve it by doing things at the federal level. You have to get state and local governments unified in taking a proactive approach. Part of this has to be not just financial or regulatory from the federal government, but we have to do more things that force state and local governments to get out of the way of people being able to build more housing. I think that the conversations that you've had on your show, and the conversations we're having in government, need to move past our regular policy conversations of: “Should we do more on LIHTC? Should we try to fix NEPA?” Those, to me, are table stakes, and we're in the middle of what I'd say is a generational crisis when it comes to housing. We have to be willing to treat it like a crisis, rather than what I think we've done so far, which is take incremental steps at different levels to try and solve this. That's one thing that I wanted to make sure that I said, because I think it's the most important thing that we can do at the moment.Kyla: Absolutely. During your time there, the Treasury was doing so much with zoning reform, with financial incentives. What I really liked about our last conversation was how much you talked about how important it is that workers can live close to work. Are you optimistic that we will be able to address the problem, or do you think we are sinking into quicksand?I'd say a little bit of both, and the thing that I'm doing now is getting hyperlocal. One of the projects I'm working on in my post-administration life is I'm working with 15 churches in D.C., where they have vacant land and want to use it to build affordable housing as quickly as possible.I'm learning that even when you have the land donated for free and you're willing to work as quickly as possible, it's still quite hard because you have regulations and financial issues that often get in the way of building things. Part of what we have to do now is just launch as many natural experiments as possible to see what works.What I've learned already from this lived experience is that even cities that are trying to get out of the way and make it easier to build housing struggle because of what you all know to be true, which is that the local politics of this is quite complicated. Oftentimes, the way that you get them over the line is by creating incentives or disincentives.In the past, I talked a lot about incentives in terms of “giving people money to do things.” I'm now in favor of “not giving money to people who don't do things” — if you don't take steps to fix your zoning, some of the federal money that you regularly get is not coming to your jurisdiction. I'm going to reallocate that money to places that are doing this activity. I think we have to take those types of radical steps.It's similar to what we did with the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, where if you didn't spend your money, we could take your money back and reallocate it to people who were giving away emergency rental assistance money.That motivates people a lot — when they feel like something's going to be taken away from them. I'm of the view that we have to find more radical things that we can do to get housing built. If we don't, costs will continue to rise faster than people's incomes.Santi: Wally, I have to ask after that point you just made: did you read the paper by my colleague Chris Elmendorf on using LIHTC funds? The idea is to re-allocate those federal funds away from big, expensive cities and into other places in a state, if the cities don't commit to basic zoning reforms.I completely agree with him, and I think I would go even further than just LIHTC money. I would reallocate non-housing money as well, because from my standpoint, if you think about the most important issue for a family, it's being able to find housing that is affordable near their place of work and where their kids go to school. I said that on purpose. I didn't say “affordable housing.” I said “housing that is affordable,” because affordable housing is, in lots of ways, targeted towards a population of people who need it the most. But for even people who are middle income in this country, it crowds out their ability to pay for other things when housing costs continue to creep higher.The only way we solve that problem is if you get rid of restrictive zoning covenants and fix permitting. The natural thing that every city and state is thinking about right now is throwing more money at the problem. There's going to need to be money here, just in light of some of the headwinds, but it's going to be more costly and less effective if we don't fix the underlying issues that are making it hard to build housing where we want it.Right now in California, we're having a huge debate over what we do with infill housing in urban areas. A simple solution — you don't have to do another environmental review if one was already done in this area— is taking months to work through the California legislature, which demonstrates that we're going too slow. California's seeing an exodus of people. I just talked to a CEO who said, “I'm moving my business because the people who work for me can't afford to live in California anymore.” This is the kind of problem that you can solve. State legislatures, Congress, and executives have to get together and take some radical steps to make it easier to build housing.I appreciate what you said about what we were doing at Treasury, but from my standpoint, I wish we had done more earlier to focus on this issue. We had a lot going on, but fundamentally, the most important thing on housing is taking a step to try and build housing today, which is going to have an impact on the economy 10, 20, 30 years from now. We just have to start doing that as soon as possible.Thanks to Emma Hilbert for her transcript and audio edits. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Mike Ferguson in the Morning 12-02-24 (7:05am) We discuss crime in St. Louis City after the heartbreaking death of 16-year-old Colin Brown following a random highway shooting on I-55 near Loughborough in South St. Louis.   (7:20am) St. Louis City launches a $3 million Emergency Rental Assistance Program to help residents catch up on payments and stop evictions. Story here: https://www.firstalert4.com/2024/11/28/behind-rent-st-louis-city-rolls-out-3-million-emergency-help-program-struggling-tenants/   (7:35am) Tony Kinnett from The Daily Signal talks about Hunter Biden's pardon and Kash Patel's nomination to head up the FBI. Check out Tony's columns here: https://www.dailysignal.com/author/tony-kinnett/ (@TheTonus)   (7:50am) What kind of Christmas shopper are you? Can you handle Costco OK? We discuss the Christmas shopping season, which is shorter this year because Thanksgiving was late. With just 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, which is five days fewer than last year, retail executives are not very optimistic in their outlook. Story here: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-survey-from-landmark-credit-union-reveals-holiday-season-stressors-302313253.html     NewsTalkSTL website: https://newstalkstl.com/ Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/NewsTalkSTL Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NewsTalkSTL Livestream 24/7: bit.ly/NEWSTALKSTLSTREAMSSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Councilmember Zachary Parker and Communications Director Melissa Littlepage sit down to talk about all the latest happenings in the Ward 5 Council Office, including the street designation ceremony for Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee Way in Bloomingdale, a proposed bus on 1st St NW from WMATA, updates on the South Dakota Safety Study, the re-opening of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program application portal, and more. Read the latest Ward 5 news at ward5.us/news, and subscribe at ward5.us/newsletter.

[Rewind Episode] Cindy Zuniga-Sanchez, Esq. is a money coach, speaker, and the founder of Zero-Based Budget Coaching LLC. After graduating law school in 2015 with $215,000 of debt, Cindy documented her debt payoff journey on social media, while sharing the personal finance knowledge that she was learning in a simple and relatable way. She has spoken to thousands and coached hundreds on budgeting, saving, debt payoff, investing, credit, building generational wealth, and more. She is committed to helping millennial women create a realistic money plan to achieve financial freedom. She has partnered with the White House's National Economic Council to raise awareness on the American Rescue Plan and the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.In this episode you'll learn: The strategy Cindy used to pay off debt Why you should include family in your budgetThe importance of not inflating your lifestyle Connect with Cindy: Website: http://www.zero-basedbudget.com/ Social Media:https://www.instagram.com/zerobasedbudget/https://www.tiktok.com/@zerobasedbudgetConnect with us: Instagram: @richbyintention Twitter: @richbyintention Check out our website: Richbyintention.com

From the Henssler Financial Studio Welcome to the Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast Today is Wednesday September 5th, and happy 65th birthday to comedian Jeff Foxworthy ****Foxworthy**** I'm Bruce Jenkins and here are your top stories presented by Mall of Georgia Chrysler Dodge Jeep Gwinnett police ID 5 teens who died in crash involving three cars on I-85 Gwinnett will distribute $18 million to promote affordable housing efforts And Gwinnett eyes more federal funding for infrastructure Plus, Leah McGrath of Ingles Markets is here to talk about probiotics All of this and more is coming up on the Gwinnett Daily Post podcast, and if you are looking for community news, we encourage you to listen daily and subscribe!    Break 1 : M.O.G.          Story 1. crash Five teenagers tragically lost their lives in an early morning car crash on State Road 316 near the I-85 entrance. Two vehicles collided, with one falling off the flyover lane into the I-85 southbound Collector-Distributor lane. Another vehicle subsequently struck the fallen car. The accident occurred around 4 a.m. Three more individuals were transported to local hospitals, and multiple people were ejected from the vehicles. The deceased victims have been identified as Katy Gaitan, Ashley Gaitan, Coral Lorenzo, Hung Nyugen, and Abner Santana. The cause of the collision remains under investigation, and witnesses are encouraged to provide information to the Gwinnett County Police Department. ..………….. read more at gwinnettdailypost.com   STORY 2: 18 million Gwinnett County officials are allocating up to $18 million from the Affordable Housing Development Fund to support affordable housing initiatives. The funds come from various sources, including the American Rescue Plan Act, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, and state and local fiscal recovery funds. The goal is to expand affordable housing opportunities for families earning less than 65% of the area median income. The deadline for project applications is October 30, with funding decisions expected by year-end. Eligible projects include new construction, land or building acquisition, rehabilitation of existing buildings, preservation of existing affordable housing units, and adaptive reuse of nonresidential buildings. Story 3: infrastructure White House Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator Mitch Landrieu visited Curiosity Lab in Peachtree Corners to discuss the impact of federal infrastructure funding available to the community during the Biden administration. Landrieu highlighted various funding opportunities from hundreds of federal programs, emphasizing that local communities need to apply for them. He stated that ongoing grant opportunities would continue for a long time. Gwinnett County has already received federal funding for various projects, including the Gwinnett Place Transit Center overhaul, Western Gwinnett Pathway walking trail, smart corridor improvements on Singleton Road, and a feasibility study to eliminate railroad crossings. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill created a $1.2 trillion fund for various projects, with 375 programs across 14 federal agencies to support infrastructure projects. We have opportunities for sponsors to get great engagement on these shows. Call 770.874.3200 for more info. We'll be right back   Break 2:   Slappey- Tom Wages -  Obits   Story 4: office Gwinnett County police are seeking the public's help in identifying two suspects who allegedly stole over $800 worth of merchandise, including two office printers, from an Office Depot in unincorporated Lawrenceville. The theft occurred around 1 p.m. on August 22. One suspect is described as a slim Black man with tattoos on his arms, neck, and face, wearing a black tank top, black shorts, and black Nike shoes. The other suspect is described as a Black woman wearing a white T-shirt, black pants, and black and white sneakers. Anyone with information on their identities or whereabouts is urged to contact detectives at 770-513-5300 or Crime Stoppers at 404-577-8477, or visit www.stopcrimeATL.com, with the possibility of receiving a cash reward for information leading to an arrest and indictment. Story 5: Dacula Gwinnett County experienced a night of violence with a quadruple shooting in Lawrenceville followed by a separate homicide in Dacula. In the Lawrenceville incident, two men were killed, while another man was found dead in Dacula after a "person shot" call around 11:15 p.m. The Dacula shooting appears to have resulted from a confrontation between two males. Gwinnett police are actively investigating both cases, interviewing witnesses and collecting evidence to determine the circumstances surrounding the incidents. Authorities are urging anyone with information to contact GCPD detectives at 770-513-5300 or reach out to Crime Stoppers at 404-577-TIPS (8477) or visit www.stopcrimeATL.com, with the potential for a cash reward leading to an arrest and indictment.   Story 6: 97   Gwinnett County police successfully located a missing 97-year-old Hall County man, demonstrating the effectiveness of their Situational Awareness Crime Response Center's technology. Hall County authorities notified Gwinnett police about the missing man, believing he might be in Gwinnett County. Analysts in the Situational Awareness Crime Response Center utilized Flock cameras situated throughout the county to locate the man in his vehicle, showcasing how technology contributes to community safety. The center facilitates collaboration between police and community stakeholders, providing access to tools like Flock cameras to respond to crimes and locate missing individuals. A police officer was able to catch up with the elderly man, who explained he was lost, and stayed with him until his family arrived to ensure his safe return home.   We'll be back in a moment   Break 3:  ESOG – Ingles 9 - Cumming   Story 7: LEAH   And now, Leah McGrath of Ingles Markets talks with us about probiotics   ***LEAH***   We'll have final thoughts after this And now, Leah McGrath, corporate dietician at Ingles markets talks with us about foods that help with swollen feet Break 4:  Henssler 60 Thanks again for hanging out with us on today's Gwinnett Daily Post podcast. If you enjoy these shows, we encourage you to check out our other offerings, like the Cherokee Tribune Ledger Podcast, the Marietta Daily Journal, the Community Podcast for Rockdale Newton and Morgan Counties, or the Paulding County News Podcast. Read more about all our stories, and get other great content at Gwinnettdailypost.com. Did you know over 50% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly? Giving you important news about our community and telling great stories are what we do. Make sure you join us for our next episode and be sure to share this podcast on social media with your friends and family. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home Briefing and be sure to like, follow, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. www.wagesfuneralhome.com  www.psponline.com  www.mallofgeorgiachryslerdodgejeep.com  www.esogrepair.com  www.henssler.com  www.ingles-markets.com  www.downtownlawrencevillega.com  www.gcpsk12.org  www.cummingfair.netSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Department of Human Services announced the application deadline for D.C.'s Emergency Rental Assistance Program is tomorrow, March 10.

The Montana Emergency Rental Assistance program is coming to an end. The Department of Commerce says that they will stop accepting new applications after Jan. 20th due to diminishing federal funding.

The Department of Treasury launched its Emergency Rental Assistance Program in March of 2021 with Texas receiving $2.4 billion dollars to aid with families and individuals struggling to stay housed during the pandemic. Now nearly 18 months later, Texas Housers has observed the manner in which the State of Texas and 37 localities within have distributed this essential rental assistance and closely reviewed 10 major programs in our latest report ‘Emergency Rental Assistance in Texas: How it went and what happens now.' On today's Buzz Session of A Little Louder, we hear from the report's author, research analyst Erin Hahn, to ask her how the ERA program was seen in different regions of Texas, how the Federal government's hands off approach had pros and cons, and what should be done to prevent displacement and evictions in the future using lessons from this program. You can read the report on our blog and keep posted here on Texas Housers' website for a companion report on evictions in January.

This Day in Maine October 28, 2022

Anyone who's tried to buy a home or even lock down an affordable rental these days knows how tough the market has gotten. This week, Chris and Gabby are diving into New Mexico's affordable housing dilemmas. Donnie Quintana, the Director of the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program, or ERAP, shares details about the state's Home Fund program, and the millions of dollars available to help people pay the bills.  How long will these pandemic-era programs continue? Who qualifies for assistance? How can someone apply? Quintana explains how the money is being spent and safeguards in place to try and prevent fraud.  We want to hear from you, our listeners! Leave us a review, and email the hosts at chris.mckee@krqe.com or gabrielle.burkhart@krqe.com with your story ideas or feedback. You can also catch us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram at @ChrisMcKeeTV and @gburkNM. For more on this episode and all of our prior episodes, visit our website: KRQE.com/podcasts.

Cindy Zuniga-Sanchez, Esq. is a money coach, speaker, and the founder of Zero-Based Budget Coaching LLC. After graduating law school in 2015 with $215,000 of debt, Cindy documented her debt payoff journey on social media, while sharing the personal finance knowledge that she was learning in a simple and relatable way. She has spoken to thousands and coached hundreds on budgeting, saving, debt payoff, investing, credit, building generational wealth, and more. She is committed to helping millennial women create a realistic money plan to achieve financial freedom. She has partnered with the White House's National Economic Council to raise awareness on the American Rescue Plan and the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.In this episode you'll learn: The strategy Cindy used to pay off debt Why you should include family in your budgetThe importance of not inflating your lifestyle Connect with Cindy: Website: http://www.zero-basedbudget.com/ Social Mediahttps://www.instagram.com/zerobasedbudget/https://www.tiktok.com/@zerobasedbudgetConnect with us: Instagram: @richbyintention Twitter: @richbyintention Website: https://www.richbyintention.comGet our FREE Cheat Sheet to Get on the Same Page about Money with Your Partner, Click Here. 

If you own a home in Hamilton County Ohio and need assistance with your property taxes or mortgage, you may be eligible for assistance through one of three programs funded through federal stimulus money. While programs like the Emergency Rental Assistance Program in Hamilton County have been suspended due to Read More Shared by United Resource Connection August 24, 2022

Hamilton County Job & Families Services announced Wednesday July 27th that they are not accepting new Emergency Rental Assistance Program applications (ERAP) due to funding issues. Those who have already submitted applications for the program reportedly will not be affected. JFS said it is still processing those applications and will Read More Shared by United Resource Connection July 27, 2022

Since pandemic eviction moratoriums and other tenant predictions have lapsed, eviction rates have risen to nearly pre-pandemic levels.  Meanwhile, some states and cities have in place "Right to Counsel" laws, guaranteeing legal representation in court to those facing eviction.   We hear from Caroyln Headlam, organizer with the Ithaca Tenants Union in upstate New York, and Lauren Springer, tenant leader with Catholic Migration Services, as well as a member of the Steering Committee of the Right to Counsel New York City Coalition, about what they're seeing in housing courts in their areas. Then, we speak with Marika Dias, Managing Director at the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center in New York City and Ora Prochovnick, Director of Litigation & Policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative in San Francisco, about the importance of Right to Counsel rights for tenants who are facing eviction. Full Rent Stabilization Association statement: After forecasting an eviction tsunami that never materialized, the advocates are at it again – with legal services providers warning that tenants will have to represent themselves because of a shortage of public defenders. The facts tell a different story. Housing Court continues to operate in a limited capacity, with a hybrid of virtual and in-person appearances. Most housing courtrooms are hearing only 25-40 cases per day virtually, compared to about 45-60 pre-pandemic," said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 diverse owners and managers of more than one million apartments that house over 2.5 million New Yorkers in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. "Not all of the pending eviction cases are eligible for free legal services because not all tenants fall at or below 200% of the poverty level ($23,000 annual income for an individual, and $49,000 for a four-person household), and it is still not known how many of these cases will ultimately be discontinued based on tenants having received rental assistance or having otherwise paid the rent," Strasburg continued.   "With Housing Court operating on limited calendars and public defenders representing a fraction of the existing cases – coupled with the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program having stayed eviction for tens of thousands of tenants – why are legal services providers failing to meet their contractual obligation with the City of New York in delivering taxpayer-funded, right-to-counsel services to needy families? Are they manufacturing this crisis to cover up their failures and clog court calendars? Or worse, further delaying proceedings that would enable tenants and owners to resolve problems, and connect families to government-funded rent assistance programs that keep them in their homes and provide owners with the rent-arrears needed to maintain their buildings and pay city property taxes?" Strasburg further stated. "Property owners have been prevented from fully asserting their rights in court for over two years. If legal services providers cannot meet their contractual obligation with New York City and provide these legal services to qualifying tenants, then New York City should reallocate funds and hire private counsel to alleviate the burden from legal services providers and ensure that New York's most financially distressed tenants have representation in court. For decades, the Assigned Counsel Plan – also referred to as 18B Panel attorneys – has provided legal services to indigent persons throughout the city by compensating private attorneys in criminal and family law matters. If legal services providers insist that they are unable to provide the free legal services New York City is paying them to provide, there is no reason why an 18B Panel could not be established for landlord-tenant matters. This would ensure that cases in Housing Court start moving again, while also ensuring that those tenants who qualify get the legal representation as required by law," Strasburg said.

Since pandemic eviction moratoriums and other tenant predictions have lapsed, eviction rates have risen to nearly pre-pandemic levels.  Meanwhile, some states and cities have in place "Right to Counsel" laws, guaranteeing legal representation in court to those facing eviction.   We hear from Caroyln Headlam, organizer with the Ithaca Tenants Union in upstate New York, and Lauren Springer, tenant leader with Catholic Migration Services, as well as a member of the Steering Committee of the Right to Counsel New York City Coalition, about what they're seeing in housing courts in their areas. Then, we speak with Marika Dias, Managing Director at the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center in New York City and Ora Prochovnick, Director of Litigation & Policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative in San Francisco, about the importance of Right to Counsel rights for tenants who are facing eviction. Full Rent Stabilization Association statement: After forecasting an eviction tsunami that never materialized, the advocates are at it again – with legal services providers warning that tenants will have to represent themselves because of a shortage of public defenders. The facts tell a different story. Housing Court continues to operate in a limited capacity, with a hybrid of virtual and in-person appearances. Most housing courtrooms are hearing only 25-40 cases per day virtually, compared to about 45-60 pre-pandemic," said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 diverse owners and managers of more than one million apartments that house over 2.5 million New Yorkers in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. "Not all of the pending eviction cases are eligible for free legal services because not all tenants fall at or below 200% of the poverty level ($23,000 annual income for an individual, and $49,000 for a four-person household), and it is still not known how many of these cases will ultimately be discontinued based on tenants having received rental assistance or having otherwise paid the rent," Strasburg continued.   "With Housing Court operating on limited calendars and public defenders representing a fraction of the existing cases – coupled with the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program having stayed eviction for tens of thousands of tenants – why are legal services providers failing to meet their contractual obligation with the City of New York in delivering taxpayer-funded, right-to-counsel services to needy families? Are they manufacturing this crisis to cover up their failures and clog court calendars? Or worse, further delaying proceedings that would enable tenants and owners to resolve problems, and connect families to government-funded rent assistance programs that keep them in their homes and provide owners with the rent-arrears needed to maintain their buildings and pay city property taxes?" Strasburg further stated. "Property owners have been prevented from fully asserting their rights in court for over two years. If legal services providers cannot meet their contractual obligation with New York City and provide these legal services to qualifying tenants, then New York City should reallocate funds and hire private counsel to alleviate the burden from legal services providers and ensure that New York's most financially distressed tenants have representation in court. For decades, the Assigned Counsel Plan – also referred to as 18B Panel attorneys – has provided legal services to indigent persons throughout the city by compensating private attorneys in criminal and family law matters. If legal services providers insist that they are unable to provide the free legal services New York City is paying them to provide, there is no reason why an 18B Panel could not be established for landlord-tenant matters. This would ensure that cases in Housing Court start moving again, while also ensuring that those tenants who qualify get the legal representation as required by law," Strasburg said.

It's been almost a year since Jefferson County launched its COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program. We talk with Nathan Salter in Workforce Development about what assistance has been provided, what funding is still available and about ERAP 2, which is coming down the road. As a reminder, details can be found on our website at: erap.jccal.org and if you have questions, you can contact one of our partner agencies at Birmingham Urban League at 205-326-0162, Neighborhood Housing Services of Birmingham at 205-328-4292, or Bridge Ministries at 205-930-0309. 

Bryan Barrett talks to John Mitchell and Khristen Kritz with the Salvation Army about supportive housing, LIFNAV, Emergency Rental Assistance Program and more. 

SSVF is a program administered by VA to rapidly rehouse Veterans who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. National director of the SSVF program, John Kuhn, joins this episode of Borne the Battle to speak on the following: How the SSVF operates and what resources eligible Veterans can receive from utilizing it (2:18) An overview of the requirements organizations must meet before becoming a SSVF provider (5:02) How a local nonprofit can become a SSVF partner (6:04)  Additional VA resources available for Veterans needing eviction protections, homelessness avoidance, and rapid rehousing resources (8:00) And unlike many VA-backed programs, enrolling into SSVF does not require any interaction with VA. Instead, an eligible Veteran simply needs to call or email their county's SSVF partnered nonprofit or consumer cooperative to start receiving SSVF assistance. OPEN THIS EXCEL FILE TO FIND YOUR 2022 SSVF PROVIDERThe SSVF Program Office also provides its Shallow Subsidy service. The Shallow Subsidy provides rental assistance to low-income and extremely low-income Veterans who are enrolled in SSVF Rapid Rehousing or Homeless Prevention projects. And the Shallow Subsidy service is designed to incentivize recipients to raise their income by fixing the money they receive for two years. That means SSVF recipients can increase their income or benefits without the fear of losing their subsidies. For Veterans experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness and where SSVF assistance is not sufficient, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-VA Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) Program will be able to help. Check out this Borne the Battle episode featuring HUD-VASH national director Meghan Deal for more details.   Additionally, the U.S. Treasury Department also has funds available to assist households unable to pay rent or utilities through its Emergency Rental Assistance Program.There is a variety of services and programs ready to help Veterans and their families overcome homelessness. However, not enough people know that these programs exist. SSVF aims to close that gap by connecting Veterans with housing support experts in their local communities. These people who can provide relevant and specialized support to meet any eligible Veteran's needs.Of course, they need your help spreading the word about their program as well.Borne the Battle Veteran of the Week:Army Veteran Lawrence BrooksAdditional information: Veterans who are homeless or at risk of homelessness are encouraged to contact National Call Center for Homeless Veterans at (877) 4AID-VET (877-424-3838) for assistance. They can also visit their closest VA medical center without calling in advance. VA seeks feedback to guide new copayment waiver program for Veterans at risk for suicide VA health records now display gender identity VA designates flexible funding to support homeless Veterans

Due to the impact of the pandemic, there have been a lot of programs that we have seen come out over the last couple of years. One that you have heard us talk about before... the PPP, the Paycheck Protection Program, which was set up to help business owners keep their people employed throughout the pandemic. Well, another program that was set up is called ERAP, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which is a Federal Grant intended to assist households who are unable to pay or are having difficulty paying rent and/or utilities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today on the show, we have invited Carrie Saites, a tenant that applied for these funds and has had some trouble with the program to come in and talk about her situation. We have also invited Samantha Gaddis from Contemporary Management Concepts, who is NOT Carrie's landlord, but is a local property management company that has lots of experience with this new Emergency Rental Assistance Program to shed some light on what Landlords have had to deal with as it pertains to the program. Listen in for an incredible episode and if you haven't done so already, please help us reach our goal of 1 THOUSAND subscribers on our YouTube Channel by the end of January! Click here: whoagnv.tv then press the RED "Subscribe" button! - - - - - Subscribe to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW1tLSw2Z5MB6Yebj_2pDJA?sub_confirmation=1 You can purchase custom WHOA GNV gear by visiting us here! - https://www.whoagnv.com/whoa-gnv-shop CHECK OUT OUR LAST EPISODE: E178: Fixing Dead Connections | Sebastian Galindo and Jake Nolan from Jungle | WHOA GNV Podcast https://youtu.be/WKrQub3iSME CONNECT WITH OUR GUEST: Samantha Gaddis of Contemporary Management Concepts Website: https://www.cmcapt.com/?utm_source=GoogleMyBusiness&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=GMB Carrie Saites: https://www.facebook.com/carrie.saites Know someone that would be PERFECT for our show? Nominate them here! https://www.whoagnv.com/nominate-a-guest/ LET'S BE FRIENDS: https://linktr.ee/collinaustin https://linktr.ee/whoagnv --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/whoa-gnv-podcast/support

Episode 12: Homelessness Prevention Programs and Services features advocate Grace Ruiz from CAMBA, a nonprofit organization that provides holistic social services, including homelessness prevention in New York. (https://camba.org). Grace shares information about Homebase, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, Program Parachute, and more, which may be helpful to families at risk of or currently experiencing homelessness. Find additional details on the resources below. About Homebase Provides homeless prevention services to New Yorkers experiencing housing instability and aftercare services for families and individuals exiting the shelter to permanent housing. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hra/help/homebase.page https://access.nyc.gov/programs/homebase/ Homebase Locator - https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hra/help/homebase-locations.page Find assistance and apply for SNAP, cash assistance, housing, employment, and other benefits. https://access.nyc.gov About Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) - https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hpd/index.page HPD Affordable Housing - https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/find-affordable-housing.page Report a Complaint (Safety issue, housing discrimination, tenant harassment) - https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/report-a-housing-complaint.page About Section 8 - https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/about-section-8.page About Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) - https://otda.ny.gov/programs/emergency-rental-assistance/ https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hra/help/new-york-emergency-rental-assistance-program-erap.page About Project Parachute Funds and Services for Tenants Experiencing Need (FASTEN) https://www.projectparachute.nyc HELP USA https://www.helpusa.org Phone: 212-779-3350 718-922-7980 Catholic Charities https://catholiccharitiesny.org/find-help 888-744-7900 Riseboro Housing https://riseboro.org/division/housing/ 718-366-3800 Eviction Hardship Declaration During the COVID-19 Pandemic Form https://nycourts.gov/eefpa/PDF/Residential_Eviction_Hardship_Declaration-English.pdf (ENGLISH) https://nycourts.gov/eefpa/ (Other languages available here)

Podcast guest Desiree Casanova was born and raised in Broward County by a single mother, unsure of whether she would be able to go to college. She talks about putting herself through two degrees through scholarships and working full-time, and the work she is currently doing for Sarasota County on a 1% surtax and the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

Jenn Boenig and Ruby Bean are joined by special guests Melissa Green, CCI's Director of Customer Service and Kate Dumais, CCI's Client Services Manager, to talk about the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.ERA or the rent relief program is overseen by MaineHousing and provides rental and utility relief payments to help eligible renters. To start the application process, you can visit MaineHousing's website.  The program is now accepting applications through September 2022. If you are facing eviction, or fear you might, please contact Pine Tree Legal Assistance or Legal Services for the Elderly. They have funding to help you even if you don't qualify for this program. Pine Tree Legal Assistance is also where you can find the Rights of Maine Renters information that Melissa referred to during the podcast. Just visit the Self-Help Rental Housing tab for a list of resources.    A special thanks to Broadcaster John Williams and the Williams Broadcasting Group for producing this podcast. 

Good Morning, Colorado, you're listening to the Daily Sun-Up with the Colorado Sun. It's Thursday September 30th.   Today - Even as the state and federal government works to limit the environmental impacts of coal mining, Colorado has just allowed six coal mining companies to reduce their payments for access to public land.   But before we begin, let's go back in time with some Colorado history adapted from historian Derek R Everett's book “Colorado Day by Day”:   Today, we're going back to September 30th, 1873 when a remarkable visitor achieved her goal of reaching the summit of Longs Peak, one of the most challenging mountains in Colorado. Isabella Bird, a globetrotting Briton, exhausted her vocabulary in lavishing praise on Estes Park and present-day Rocky Mountain National Park.   Now, our feature story.   Colorado is allowing all six companies mining coal in the state to reduce the payments they make to the federal and state government in exchange for access to public land. The annual reduction of royalty payments recently approved by Colorado means coal mining companies are paying less every year, even as both the state and federal government work to limit the impacts of coal mining.    Colorado Sun reporter Michael Booth looked into why state officials approved these smaller payments from coal mining companies.    Read Michael's story at coloradosun dot com.    And Before we go, here are a few stories that you should know about today:   Colorado's Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission late Tuesday approved a new eight-district congressional map. Some Democrats are not pleased, even though incumbents remain in their districts under the proposed map, which now must be approved by the Supreme Court by Nov. 1 or sent back to the commission for revisions.   Telluride's Original Thinkers festival kicks off today, with an array of artists, activists, musicians and movie-makers exploring the world's triumphs and challenges in the last year.    The ACLU team that helped pass a recent slate of sweeping criminal justice reforms in Colorado resigned this month. The nonpartisan civil rights nonprofit is accused of being too aggressive in wielding its new status as one of the most influential groups in the state. Supporters say the ACLU's hard push for the end of the death penalty and police reform led to important change.    Colorado's rental assistance program offering up to 15 months of free rent to residents struggling during the pandemic has paid out only 15% of its available funds. The Emergency Rental Assistance Program is now distributing about $6 million a week and has helped about 18,000 Coloradans. But there are still thousands more applicants waiting to be approved for help with their rent payments.   For more information on all of these stories, visit our website, www.coloradosun.com. And don't forget to tune in again tomorrow for a special holiday episode. Now, a quick message from our editor.   The Colorado Sun is non-partisan and completely independent. We're always dedicated to telling the in-depth stories we need today more than ever. And The Sun is supported by readers and listeners like you.   Right  now you can head to ColoradoSun.com and become a member starting at $5 per month and if you bump it up to $20 per month you'll get access to our politics newsletter, 'The Unaffiliated,' as well as our outdoors newsletter, 'The Outsider,' and our new health and environment newsletter 'The Temperature,' -- All three exclusive newsletters delivered to your inbox every week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John is back in the studio and he is joined by several Housers to talk about rent relief and evictions in Texas. With the CDC moratorium on evictions ending in late August, courtesy of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, many tenants are in danger of becoming unhoused or doubling up with family or friends, further endangering their safety as well as that of others. The sole measure that can protect renters now is the prompt delivery of rent assistance, so they may pay their back rent. Texas Housers has been tracking how quickly and equitably this rent relief has been reaching tenants, in particular low-income households and households of color, and we have released our most recent findings in the report "Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program in Texas Vol.2". Senior researcher Ben Martin, research analyst and report author Erin Hahn, Southeast Texas regional director Julia Orduña, and community navigator Ally Harris all join John on the podcast to talk about how rent relief and other eviction diversion tactics are playing out in local government and in households across the state.

Wednesday, August 25, 2021 Subscribe: Get the Daily Update in your inbox for free 1/ Roughly 89% of the funds from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program have not been distributed, according to the Treasury Department. Just $1.7 billion of the $46.5 billion in funds intended to prevent eviction were disbursed as of July. Meanw... Visit WTF Just Happened Today? for more news and headlines, brought to you by Matt Kiser. The WTFJHT Podcast is narrated and produced by Joe Amditis.

Episode 249: New York's Covid Emergency Rental Assistance Program by Max Politics

Emergency Rental Assistance Program receives boost, Amazon Prime series begins filming in Pittsburgh and more.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Aloha Friends, This episode includes audio from a recent Facebook Live event that I did with Lori Tsuhako and Linda Munsell from Maui County's Department of Housing and Human Concerns regarding Maui's Emergency Rental Assistance Program. To learn more about the program, or to apply for assistance, please visit mauicounty.gov/mauirenthelp, or check out the video on the RAM Facebook page: https://fb.watch/6l-jFrqNCY/ Mahalo, Jason

In this episode we talk to our partners that are helping administer Jefferson County's Emergency Rental Assistance Program. For details visit erap.jccal.org for details and an online application. Can't do it online -- no problem you can call our partners for an appointment to walk through the process. Those numbers are Neighborhood Housing Services, 205-328-4292; Birmingham Urban League, 205-326-0162; and Bridge Ministries, 205-930-0309. This program is federally funded and has different guidelines than our previous program due to those guidelines. 

Over the last few months, two large rescue packages—The Consolidated Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan Act—have been enacted by Congress in order to help the country push through the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode, Paul Mattingly, partner and chair of Seyfarth's Real Estate department, and Thomas Michaelides, Real Estate associate, join hosts James O'Brien and Eric Greenberg to examine measures with direct impact on the real estate industry: the Emergency Rental Assistance Program and the Homeowner Assistance Fund.

Are you a Landlord struggling to collect rent or a Tenant struggling to pay rent? Do you want to know how to apply for California rent assistance? ⁠We will teach you about the CA Emergency Rental Assistance Program!⁠This is Episode #59 of The Morales Group Show. On this Episode our guest Anthony Marinaccio explains how to apply for the emergency rental assistance in California! ⁠Find out how to recoup 80% of unpaid rent!

Community News and Interviews for the Catskills & Northeast Pennsylvania

In this week's Tax Credit Tuesday podcast, Michael J. Novogradac, CPA, discusses the $25 billion Emergency Rental Assistance program with Novogradac multifamily compliance program experts, Mark Shelburne and Stephanie Naquin. They discuss: The genesis of the federal Emergency Rental Assistance program The role of Treasury in getting the dollars out to state and local agencies The role of state and local agencies in distributing the funds How property owners can apply on behalf of tenants Which rental expenses qualify for reimbursement

In this week's Tax Credit Tuesday podcast, Michael J. Novogradac, CPA, discusses the $25 billion Emergency Rental Assistance program with Novogradac multifamily compliance program experts, Mark Shelburne and Stephanie Naquin. They discuss:The genesis of the federal Emergency Rental Assistance programThe role of Treasury in getting the dollars out to state and local agenciesThe role of state and local agencies in distributing the fundsHow property owners can apply on behalf of tenantsWhich rental expenses qualify for reimbursement

The challenge of a Crisis can sometimes lead to extraordinary innovation and unique partnerships. That's exactly what's happening at Temple University with the Temple University COVID Assistance Team (TUCAT). I mean we're seeing engineers collaborating with artists and architects among others who have joined forces to come up with creative solutions for mass producing medical shields for healthcare workers and so much more. I spoke with Michael Kala'i who heads up the Temple Covid-19 Assistance Team. https://tucat.temple.edu/One of the coolest fundraisers is Living Beyond Breast Cancer's Reach and Raise yoga on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of art. Thousands of people gather on the steps to raise money for this organization that provides support and resources for women living with breast cancer. For obvious reasons – this event will now be virtual. LBBC Reach and Raise Team Captain Janet Marie Doherty tells us how you can join in. https://www.lbbc.org/First – let's talk about The COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program which will make rent payments for people who have lost income because of COVID-19 and qualify for assistance. I speak with Gregory Heller, Senior Vice President of PHDC's Community Investment Group.https://phlrentassist.org.

I speak with Einstein Philadelphia President & COO Dixie James, President & and Vice Chair for Emergency Medicine, Dr. Merle Carter about what Einstein Healthcare Network is doing to combat COVID-19, and how the pandemic is hitting the African American community they serve especially hard.https://www.einstein.edu/One of the coolest fundraisers is Living Beyond Breast Cancer's Reach and Raise yoga on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of art. Thousands of people gather on the steps to raise money for this organization that provides support and resources for women living with breast cancer. For obvious reasons – this event will now be virtual. LBBC Reach and Raise Team Captain Janet Marie Doherty tells us how you can join in. https://www.lbbc.org/First – let's talk about The COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program which will make rent payments for people who have lost income because of COVID-19 and qualify for assistance. I speak with Gregory Heller, Senior Vice President of PHDC's Community Investment Group.https://phlrentassist.org