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Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) — COVID-19 Response

US Treasury Department / Urban Institute / National Low Income Housing Coalition evaluation · United States (national) · 2021

Summary

The Emergency Rental Assistance Program is the largest single rental-assistance intervention in US history and a natural experiment of enormous scale and policy relevance. ERAP was deployed under extreme time pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic, with implementation varying dramatically across jurisdictions in administrative burden, application speed, and outreach. The resulting variation produced a rare opportunity: a federal program of identical statutory design implemented with measurably different operational approaches, allowing researchers to estimate the causal effect of administrative design on program reach. The findings have been important both substantively (rental assistance prevents evictions when delivered effectively) and methodologically (variation in implementation across grantees can be used as a natural experiment in administrative design). For civic-experiment practitioners, ERAP represents a model for future emergency-response programs: maintain enough operational variation for evaluation, document implementation differences carefully, and treat the rollout itself as a learning opportunity even when the program is not formally designed as a research study.

Research question

"Did the federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program — disbursing approximately $46 billion to at-risk renters during the COVID-19 pandemic — effectively prevent evictions, and what implementation features (administrative burden, eligibility verification, payment routing) most affected program reach?"

Methodology

Intervention

Congress appropriated $46.55 billion in 2021 across two rounds of Emergency Rental Assistance funding (ERA1 and ERA2) to be distributed by state and local grantees to renters at risk of eviction due to COVID-19 hardship. The program covered up to 18 months of rent and utilities, with applicants required to document income loss and housing instability risk. Implementation varied enormously across grantee jurisdictions in eligibility verification, payment timing, and outreach.

Assignment

Quasi-experimental — variation across state and local grantees in administrative design and disbursement speed used to estimate effects on eviction filings, housing stability, and other outcomes; difference-in-differences exploiting timing variation

Sample size

Approximately 5.3 million households received ERAP assistance; analyses used national rental-court data, US Census Household Pulse Survey data, and grantee administrative records

Primary outcome

Eviction filings, eviction judgments, doubling-up, and housing instability indicators among assisted households vs. comparable unassisted renters

Effect estimate

Eviction filings in jurisdictions with effective ERAP implementation dropped substantially — by 35-60% during peak ERAP distribution — relative to historical baselines and to slower-implementing jurisdictions. Effect was largest among Black and Latino households (who had the highest pre-pandemic eviction rates). Persistent housing-instability outcomes (six-months post-assistance) showed smaller but still meaningful improvements. Implementation efficiency varied 10x across jurisdictions.

Decision

ERAP funding has largely been spent down, but the program established several precedents: that federal rental assistance can be deployed at scale in months rather than years; that variation in jurisdictional administrative capacity is the dominant determinant of effective reach; and that direct-to-tenant payment is essential when landlord cooperation cannot be assured. Several states and cities have used ERAP infrastructure as the foundation for ongoing rental-assistance programs.

Result

Positive

Eviction filings in jurisdictions with effective ERAP implementation dropped substantially — by 35-60% during peak ERAP distribution — relative to historical baselines and to slower-implementing jurisdictions. Effect was largest among Black and Latino households (who had the highest pre-pandemic eviction rates). Persistent housing-instability outcomes (six-months post-assistance) showed smaller but still meaningful improvements. Implementation efficiency varied 10x across jurisdictions.

Evidence strength

Moderate

Quasi-experimental design; causal interpretation requires care.

Replication status

Open for replication

Institution

US Treasury Department / Urban Institute / National Low Income Housing Coalition evaluation

Location

United States (national)

Year

2021

Policy area

Housing

Mechanism

Cash transfer

Other trials of this mechanism

Cite this entry

US Treasury Department / Urban Institute / National Low Income Housing Coalition evaluation. (2021). Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) — COVID-19 Response. The Experiment Society Registry. Retrieved from https://www.experimentsociety.org/registry/emergency-rental-assistance-program (primary report: https://www.urban.org/research/publication/erap-implementation-and-impact)

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Open for replication

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