Applicant seeking housing aid told Brevard County's housing credit cards are 'maxed out'
An email from a county worker sent out last week to one desperate applicant for rental assistance said that Brevard County was unable to help her because its program that provides emergency funds to people facing homelessness because of COVID-19 had "maxed out" it's credit cards.
"The problem is not the funding of the program," Richard Van Esselstyn, a county housing department case worker, wrote to Cheryl Dailey on Thursday in email with a county address reviewed by FLORIDA TODAY. “The problem is the county credit cards assigned to this program are maxed out," the email said.
Van Esselstyn told Dailey, who was hoping the program could pay for her stay at the Suburban Extended Stay in Melbourne, that she would have to wait until June 5, when the program would pay its credit card bill.
Rent increases: Cocoa moves forward with proposal to require notice on rent increases
Housing affordability: No shelter from this housing affordability storm | Opinion
But the county's director of communications, Don Walker, denied that the county had maxed out its credit cards, saying the Emergency Rental Assistance program has five credit cards it can use. He said it mainly uses three of the cards — with a combined $70,000 limit — but has two cards as back up in case the other three are near their limits or have issues.
Walker suggested that the problem in this case was that Dailey's application for assistance had not been fully approved yet.
But according to the Stacey Patel of Mutual Aid of Brevard, a loose-knit group of volunteers working to help members of the community in need, at least one other person who has been approved for the program also reported that they had been told by a county official that they too had to wait for assistance because the program's credit cards had exceeded their limits.
"I am not sure where the disconnect is — but a program applicant and program participant separately told us that county employees had communicated to them that their credit cards had been maxed out," Patel said, noting that Mutual Aid of Brevard ended up paying for hotel rooms for both people over the weekend, "because they had nowhere else to go."
The contradictory explanation is the latest administrative problem that applicants and participants in the emergency rental assistance program have complained about. The Emergency Rental Assistance Program is run through the U.S. Department of Housing and Human Services. The program aims to provide qualifying applicants who have been impacted by COVID-19 with rental support funds, which can include paying for hotel stays.
But for many months now, applicants and participants have complained about the cumbersome nature of the program's application process, and a lack of transparency. Washington wants local governments to do whatever it has to do in order to get money out the door and into the hands of needy peoples who have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Brevard County has been reluctant to loosen requirements for fear of fraud and abuse.
Dailey told FLORIDA TODAY that she was unable to pay rent after losing her temp job in a lab in February because of COVID-19. So, she applied to the emergency assistance rental program run by the county in May so she could get out of a friend's place in Vero Beach and into an extended stay hotel in the Melbourne area, while she looked for more permanent housing.
A week after submitting her application, Dailey reached out to the Brevard's Department of Housing and Human Services about her application status and was put in touch with Van Esselstyn, a temp employee — according to the county — who became Dailey’s case worker. Dailey said Van Esselstyn called her about two weeks ago to inform her that she had been approved for the program.
But according to Walker, "Ms. Dailey’s application has not been approved yet...we have several levels of review...and she needed to fill out another form to complete the process and meet program guidelines." Walker added that, "I didn’t see anywhere that Ms. Dailey’s application had been denied, but it is still in processing."
Dailey told FLORIDA TODAY that after initially telling her that her application had been approved, Van Esselstyn emailed her on Monday, saying that her application was still being processed.
That was not stated in earlier emails. In his email to Dailey on June 9, Van Esselstyn told Dailey that the county was working on getting around the credit card problem problem to find a way to pay hotel bills.
"We were previously waiting for a payment on the cards to go through on the 5th. Hotels will not wait the 3-4 weeks to process a check in order to check someone in now. It is a problem that is being addressed but an agreeable solution has not been implemented yet,” Van Esselstyn said in the June 9 email.
Walker said he did not know why Van Esselstyn told Dailey that the credit cards were maxed out. He said he did not think the conflicting signals were a trust issue for the county. "It’s a misinformation issue," he said.
Walker said there is still three million dollars left in the first batch of funding the county received for the program.
Dailey had to leave her hotel at 12 pm on Tuesday because funds still hadn’t been paid and now with the addition of a secondary review process, Dailey is not sure when she’ll be back in a hotel but has filled out the requested information Van Esselstyn had asked for.
After sending two emails and a phone call to check on the status of her secondary review, Dailey said Van Esselstyn finally called her back today to tell her that she was approved and the program would now be paying for her hotel stay for the next month.
Patel said that situation is both confusing and unacceptable.
"When there's millions in federal funds specifically for this purpose, its frustrating to have to go to friends and neighbors for donations because of bureaucratic delays and hurdles in accessing those funds," Patel said.
She added: "I'm grateful for this program as it's helped many people in our community with nowhere else to turn — but many folks who qualify are in truly desperate circumstances, so any administrative issues that make this process more burdensome can leave our neighbors literally wandering the streets with nowhere to go. That's unacceptable to me," she said.
Amira Sweilem is the data reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Sweilem at 386-406-5648 or asweilem@floridatoday.com.
Support local journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Brevard County employee says credit cards to aid homeless 'maxed out'
