Health department: ERA period ended; staff estimate about 600 clients served, Henning awarded $260,000

Health-department staff reported that the Treasury Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) period ended the day before and that some unspent ERA funds will be returned to the Treasury. "The period for Treasury ERA ended yesterday," a health-department staff member said during the commission meeting.

Staff said final reporting from grantees is still being collected and that the department expects the final client count to be "somewhere around 600," roughly the figure projected when the program launched. "We expect that the final number of clients can be somewhere around 600," the staff member said.

The staff member said the department added an additional $260,000 to one grantee, Henning, to provide continuing rental assistance to high-need clients who need support beyond Sept. 30. "We did add a small amount of additional funding to 1 of the grantees to provide some, continuing rental assistance to, high need clients ... That grantee is Henning that has an additional $260,000," the presenter said.

Staff also said the department plans to provide a roughly comparable amount (~$250,000) of ongoing tenant-based rental assistance through its regular programs.

Commissioners and staff discussed reporting and evaluation. The presenter said grantees will provide reporting in the coming weeks that will allow the department to calculate final spending and the number of clients served. Staff noted that HUD requires certain analyses and that the department included funding for program evaluation in its 2025 action plan to assess outcomes and cost-efficiency.

On the federal government shutdown, health-department staff said most HUD grants operate on a reimbursement basis and that the department's reimbursement draws system and HUD's contingency plan should allow routine draws that do not require extra HUD review to continue. "We are open for business even if the federal government is not," the staff member said. Staff cautioned, however, that HUD will not sign new grant agreements until the government reopens, which could delay next year's funding that the department had not expected to receive for several weeks regardless.

The department said it will follow up with grantees to collect outcome data so it can evaluate which approaches most effectively help people stay housed and allocate future funding accordingly. Final numbers and a full accounting of returned ERA funds were not yet available at the meeting and were described as "not specified" pending grantee reports.