Racial Disparities in Emergency Rental Assistance: Application Timing and Review Time

• In Event: Racial inequality in housing market processes

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented financial and housing crisis across the United States. This crisis intersected with pre-existing racial inequities, disproportionately burdening communities of color. In response, scholars and policymakers commonly agreed that racial equity should be a priority in the distribution of Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program funds designed to protect low-income renter households at risk of eviction.

However, ERA programs were implemented at an unprecedented scale with an overwhelming number of applicants, which severely limited their practical capacity to achieve racial equity goals. The Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program (OERAP), for instance, was implemented under a strong policy commitment to racial equity by the State of Oregon and the City of Portland. Nevertheless, insufficient processing capacity ultimately led the program to operate under a first-come, first-reviewed, and first-served structure.

In this context, evaluating whether racial equity was achieved in the implementation and outcomes of ERA programs is important for an assessment of past programs as well as an insight for designing and administering more equitable ERA programs in the future. This study aims to answer the following research question: Do racial and ethnic disparities in ERA receipt exist, and if so, are they explained by differences in application timing or by differential treatment during the review process? In particular, this study disaggregates "time", the variable most crucial to determining ERA fund receipt, into two distinct dimensions: how quickly applicants submitted their applications relative to the program's portal opening date, and how long the review process took once applications were submitted.

We focus on the OERAP and Portland's tri-county area (Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington Counties), where the OERAP was implemented. We use household-level OERAP application data, including  63,094 applicants’ information on race/ethnicity of the household head, application date, receipt date, receipt status, household income level, household size, and presence of children. We first employ OLS regression to examine whether race/ethnicity predicts application timing. We then conduct causal mediation analysis to decompose the total effect of race/ethnicity on ERA receipt into the indirect effect via application timing and the residual direct effect, which can be interpreted as a potential indicator of differential treatment during the review process.

Our findings indicate that ERA receipt rates showed little racial disparity overall. Notably, Black, Hispanic, and Asian applicants applied statistically significantly earlier than White applicants, and this earlier timing contributed to their receipt rates comparable to those of White households. Although OERAP operated under a first-come, first-reviewed, and first-served structure, the program's active outreach efforts targeting historically and currently underserved communities may have facilitated earlier application submissions among non-White populations.

Author

• Minji Cho, Portland State University
  Presenting Author