THE DEPUTY SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 

WASHINGTON 

October 4, 2021 

Dear Emergency Rental Assistance Program Grantee: 

Today, the Treasury Department published new guidance outlining the process for reallocating 

Emergency Rental Assistance funds. Treasury's reallocation approach is designed to maximize 

the amount of assistance delivered and the number of households served with the funds Congress

has appropriated to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on renters and landlords. 

Treasury will carry out the statutory requirement to reallocate funds to accomplish this goal in 

three ways: (1) make more resources available to high-performing grantees based on need, 

(2) incentivize adoption of best practices among grantees to help them streamline and improve 

their processes, and (3) work to ensure funds do not go unused by programs unable to assist 

struggling renters and landlords.

In December 2020, Congress passed the Emergency Rental Assistance Program under the 

Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (ERAI) to keep renters in their homes and to limit the

long-term economic scarring caused by evictions. Congress initially allocated funds based on 

population. However, Congress also anticipated the need to respond to the pandemic's evolving 

conditions through the reallocation of funds to jurisdictions with the greatest needs and capacity 

to deploy funding. 

From the beginning of this program, Treasury has provided technical assistance to grantees, 

released new guidance to reduce barriers to access, published best practices, and spoken with

hundreds of program administrators to support their efforts to expedite assistance to tenants. 

Many grantees have embraced Treasury's recommendations and were able to quickly disburse 

funds; others that initially struggled to build the necessary program infrastructure are now seeing 

increased progress after adopting Treasury's recommendations to speed up assistance. Still, some

grantees have not demonstrated sufficient progress or intent to make changes in their programs to 

get resources into the hands of eligible tenants and landlords. There are even some grantees that 

received more funding in their initial allocation than will realistically be needed in their 

jurisdiction in the next year. 

Treasury's approach to reallocation addresses each of these types of grantees by redirecting 

resources to top-performing grantees serving high-needs areas, providing grantees an opportunity 

to present a program improvement plan in order to keep their existing funds, and recapturing 

dollars from the lowest performers that have been unable or unwilling to speed up assistance. In 

addition, Treasury is working with grantees that may seek to voluntarily reallocate funds to other 

jurisdictions-for example, states seeking to send money to cities or counties within their 

jurisdiction-to maximize the program's impact.

Grantees that have not obligated at least 65 percent of their ERAl funding by September 30, will 

be required to submit a program improvement plan. As part of this plan, the grantees will report 

whether they have implemented the best practices described in Treasury's guidance, including