Kansas City Council resolution designed to speed up distribution of rental assistance

With millions of federal dollars yet to reach those in need, Kansas City Council on Thursday passed a resolution to speed up the process.

“We need those funds expedited,” Councilwoman Melissa Robinson, District 3, said during Wednesday’s Finance, Governance, and Public Safety Committee meeting. “It’s really critical that we spend the funds that we have.”

Missouri Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II said during the meeting that the rental assistance program was “put in place so that we can prevent people from going on the street.” It has to be used and spent quickly, he said.

Cleaver said he hopes the city will do everything it can to get the word out to the public.

He joined the resolution’s sponsors, Robinson and Mayor Quinton Lucas, “in urging the City to increase public access to emergency rental assistance funds and mitigate the bureaucratic barriers preventing this substantial federal funding from expeditiously reaching the hands of those in need.”

The ordinance helps get the money out the door.

It directs City Manager Brian Platt to do three tasks:

• Hire or reassign staff to assist in distributing the funds

• Create a one-stop processing and call center to expedite the process

• Ensure agencies the city has contracted with to distribute the funds are moving quickly

Jennifer Tidwell, housing and community development division manager, said during the meeting that they have 10 current staff who will be helping distribute the funds, all trained by the week’s end. As of Wednesday, she said, about 57% of the first round of money has gone out to residents in need — about $8.5 million that served nearly 2,000 households. The city received $14.8 million.

Those funds, she said, help people stay in their homes and prevent evictions.

The Centers for Disease Control issued an eviction moratorium earlier this month. The order is set to cover tenants in communities with substantial and high transmission of COVID-19 until Oct. 3, though it may not last that long.

President Joe Biden’s administration has called on states and cities to speed up the distribution.

Currently, the department is doing contracts for the second round of ERA funds, Tidwell said. Once those contracts are ready, they’ll be able to open up the application portal. It currently has a scheduled reopen date of Sept. 1.

Missourians in the area can apply for assistance through the state’s portal, State Assistance for Housing Relief, in the meantime.

“Right now this is probably the most important thing that all of us can focus on,” Councilwoman Katheryn Shields, District 4 at-large, said. “We have families with children in this city and we need to get this money processed and out to them so that they do not join the ranks of the homeless in Kansas City.”

Also on Thursday, Lucas joined several other mayors from across the country in a press conference to discuss the infrastructure bill and budget reconciliation plan moving through Congress. The Senate approved the roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation plan this week. They now go to the House of Representatives.

The plan, Lucas said, would give Kansas City the funds to build affordable housing.

“Now we can really fulfill our promise when I became mayor in Kansas City to build 5,000 new housing units,” Lucas said.

He said the “significant funds” could also further develop Kansas City’s own housing department.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.