• By Victor Isler
• Posted Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Social Services working to set up emergency rental assistance program

The City of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County are working in partnership to set up the emergency rental assistance program funded by U.S. Department of Treasury. The City was awarded $7,478,359.00 and $4,052,179.00 to the County totaling 11,530,538.00. We desire to create one access point for our residents to promote efficiency. We are currently reviewing proposals based on a competitive bidding process to select a vendor to assist in the application process, eligibility determination and issuance of funds. We project to announce how residents can access our emergency rental assistance program by the end of this month.

The Federal Government requires a community needs assessment before program deployment to determine eligibility guidelines based on the area median income, fair housing market rate and the number of households at or below 80% of the area median income. Based on U.S. Census data, we project 39,340 households are 80% or below the area median income. We also project 2,478 households to have a primary wage earner unemployed for more than 90 days. We are working diligently to use this information to develop allocation limits for utilities and rent to best support the following priority areas:

1. Households with eviction notifications
2. Households at or below 50% of the area median income and
3. Household with Unemployment for more the 90 days