Looking for rental assistance?

Renters and landlords can find out what emergency rental assistance covers, how it works, and who’s eligible on the interagency housing portal hosted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Emergency Rental Assistance Program

Keeping Families in their Homes

Treasury’s Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) programs have collectively provided communities over $46 billion to support housing stability for eligible renters throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Participating governments have leveraged ERA funding to make over 10 million assistance payments to renters facing eviction, and research has shown that ERA assistance has supported low-income renters and renters of color.  Combined with other Administration initiatives, Treasury’s ERA programs have helped to prevent millions of evictions since the onset of the pandemic.  

Two separate ERA programs have been established: the ERA1 program was authorized by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 and provided $25 billion to assist eligible households with financial assistance and housing stability services. The ERA2 program was authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and provides $21.55 billion to assist eligible households with financial assistance, provide housing stability services, and as applicable, to cover the costs for other affordable rental housing and eviction prevention activities. Financial assistance can include the payment of rent, rental arrears, utilities and home energy costs, utilities and home energy costs arrears, and certain other expenses related to housing. ERA funds are provided directly to states, U.S. territories, certain local governments1, and in the case of ERA1, Indian Tribes or their Tribally Designated Housing Entities and the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.       
 

1 In accordance with the ERA1 and ERA2 statutory requirements, only local governments with more than 200,000 residents are eligible to receive an ERA1 and ERA2 award from Treasury. See 15 U.S.C 9058a.(b)(1) and 15 U.S.C 9058c.(b)(1).

Questions?

Program recipients with questions about reporting, technical issues, eligible uses of funds, or other items visit the self-service resources.

Highlighted Program Resources

Treasury offers a variety of guidance and resources to support successful ERA program implementation and increase program transparency such as:

Recent updates

September 2024

August 2024

  • Guidance: On May 30, OMB published the Compliance Supplement. To view the relevant section on the Treasury website please see the 2024 ERA Compliance Supplement.
  • Reporting: August 16, 2024, Treasury released ERA2 Cumulative Program Data: Q2 2021 – Q1 2024.
  • Research: On August 9, Treasury updated the Research and Evaluation webpage with a working paper by economist from Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board that finds that “ERA was largely successful in reaching communities that were most likely to have the highest risk of eviction.”

May 2024

  • Research: On May 24, 2024, Treasury launched a Research and Evaluation webpage that highlights how Treasury is researching the impact of economic recovery programs and how to apply lessons learned to future economic crises.

March 2024

  • FAQs: On March 5, 2024, Treasury updated its FAQs and sent a notice to ERA2 grantees to clarify that grantees may use their ERA2 award funds to cover expenses for the acquisition of real property and predevelopment activities to enable construction, rehabilitation, or preservation of affordable rental housing projects serving very low-income families.

Press releases

October 2024

October 2023

April 2023

March 2023