The City of Tucson launched a Rental Assistance program on March 19, with a goal of helping residents to keep their housing and avoid homelessness.
The $175,000 fund is administered by the Tucson Pima Collaboration To End Homelessness. Kat Davis from TPCH said the goal with the fund is to serve people who cannot be served by other available community resources.
“The people that would benefit from this funding are people who are in need of short term financial support to prevent their homelessness,” said Davis. “So people who are, generally speaking, currently housed, but may have encountered a financial hardship or something like that, and need funding to keep their housing.”
People in need can only apply for the rental assistance through their case managers.
“The hope is that they will also be receiving other case management, navigating them to other resources as needed, like eviction, legal support and things like that,” Davis said. “We are working with the case managers to ensure that they're getting more support than just a check and are really having their needs met.”
Davis emphasized that while the amount of money one can request is flexible, funds are limited.
“We're expecting the money to go quite quickly. We think it will only last a few weeks,” she said, adding that in the past, the average support per person was $1,800.
