City Helps 275 Pasadena Households Pay Back Rent With $1 Million Emergency Assistance Program

Pasadena has completed distributing just under $1 million funds to help local residents affected by the COVID-19 pandemic make their rents, officials announced this week.

Pasadena’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program, authorities by the City Council in May, allocated $1 million in CARES Act funds to assist local households with up to $4,500 to help them catch up on back rent. The payments were made directly to the landlords.

As of Thursday, all but $18,925 of the funds had been distributed, according to a statement from the office of Pasadena City Manager Steve Mermell.

“During the 14-day application window from July 15 through July 29, 2020, 768 applications were received,” according to the statement. “The program provided assistance to 275 households with the average check amount of $3,554.”

The most common reasons applications were denied included failure of applicants to notify landlords of inability to pay rent, funding was no longer needed or applicants were located outside of the city, officials said.

Of households that received assistance, 63% were of “extremely low income,” while 26% were designated as “very low income,” 11% were listed as “low income,” and 11% were described as “zero income,” according to the city manager’s report.

District 5 saw the largest number of granted applications at approximately 23%, followed by District 3 at 19%. District 2 accounted for 17% of recipients. District 1 contained 12% of recipients. Districts 7 received 11%, District 6 received 10% and District 4 received 9%.

By race, city data shows 40% of recipient households were Hispanic, while 39% were white, 35% were listed as “other,” 18% were Black and 7% were Asian.

Sixty-five percent of households contained a single income earner, according to the report. About 57% of recipients had lived in the city over five years, 54% of the households were “female-headed” and 49% contained at least one child.

Twelve percent of the households contained four or more people, and 10% contained at least one senior citizen.

The ERA program exceeded initial expectations with respect to how many households would benefit, which were originally estimated at 250 to 270.