Health Department: ERA tranche 3 served 717 households but will return unspent federal funds

The Anchorage Health Department reported on Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) tranche 3 during the Assembly’s Housing and Homeless Committee meeting Dec. 17, saying the municipality received about $4,000,000 for that tranche, spent about $3,200,000 and served 717 unique households.

Jed Drollet, community systems program manager for the Anchorage Health Department, told the committee that a hard federal deadline of Sept. 30 for ERA spending and the short window after the municipality gained access to tranche 3 constrained operations and left some funds unspent that will be returned to the U.S. Treasury. “We will be returning some money to the treasury,” he said, adding that the compressed timeframe was a major constraint on how the program was set up.

The nut graf: the department said the program nevertheless exceeded its client‑service projection for tranche 3 and spent most of the allocation, while flagging process issues — mostly a fragmented intake across multiple grantees and a centralized eligibility check — that slowed distribution and led to underspending.

Drollet described the grantee structure and…