D.C. will receive more than $17 million in unused federal pandemic rental assistance — a lifeboat for the city’s STAY DC program, which ran out of funding last year. 

The city’s $17,784,484 comes from a Treasury Department reallocation of more than 1.1 billion rental assistance dollars that went unused by other states and localities. Politico first reported the news.

Launched in April 2021, the STAY DC program used $352 million in federally allocated pandemic relief funds to help qualifying residents cover rent and utility costs accrued during the pandemic. Residents could apply online and receive money for upcoming rent payments, or put the funds towards missed payments dating back to April 2020. When D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced in October that applications for the program would close on Oct. 27, as the city rapidly depleted its pool of funding, $155 million in rental and utility assistance had been distributed to more than 23,000 residents, with an additional $105 million still in the application process. The city was one of the country’s leading distributors of pandemic rental relief funds, according to data from the Treasury Department in September.

In the last months of the year, Bowser and D.C. councilmembers searched for new funding streams to continue the program. When the city set the Oct. 27 application deadline, Bowser asked the Treasury Department to expedite the reallocation of rental assistance funds from states and localities that had leftover money. Councilmembers, meanwhile, called on the mayor to fund the program using local dollars (like the city’s contingency cash reserves) and housing advocates pressed her administration to pull from D.C.’s own funds instead of waiting on federal action.

In a written statement to DCist/WAMU, John Falcicchio, the deputy mayor for planning and economic development, thanked the Biden administration for “the next opportunity for reallocation which we will pursue.”

The new pot of rent funding comes as advocates warn of an impending wave of evictions in the new year. While officials celebrated the successes of the city’s STAY DC program, by late December some residents were still waiting on the assistance they’d applied for months ago, and entered the new year facing the possibility of eviction.

Over the summer, the Council adopted a plan to gradually phase out the city’s eviction moratorium through February of this year — creating a “soft landing” for tenants. Starting on Oct. 12, landlords could begin filing nonpayment of rent cases, so long as they had applied for relief through STAY DC, and the tenant had not applied or had been denied assistance. The gradual phase-out also granted an eviction exemption to tenants who had received STAY DC benefits or who were in the process of applying for funds. But starting on Jan. 1 this year, landlords could resume filing evictions for lease breaches. According to the city’s Office of the Tenant Advocate, more than 40 evictions were scheduled between Jan. 4 and Feb. 2, 2022.