If you are a tenant, a landlord, or even a property manager that's watching this video,
right now the COVID relief package has finally been passed a few days ago
which includes 25 billion dollars of funding towards rental assistance! Now in this video
I'm gonna break down what you have to do to get the rental assistance that you need
and how you qualify in a simple and easy to understand fashion
hey everybody my name is Sam Kwak, one of the Kwak Brothers as a landlord myself and also a tenant
this is a huge break that all tenants and landlords were waiting for oh my gosh so so
again if you're a tenant share this with your landlord if you're watching this as a landlord
or a property manager this is gonna help you your tenants so please watch very very carefully now
also share this video with your friends and family who need help with rental assistance
so with the 25 billion dollars of funding towards rental assistance the eviction moratorium has also
been extended to January 31st, 2021 previously the eviction moratorium was set to expire on
December 31st of 2020 so what this allows many states and local governments to do is to spend
some time building up the infrastructure for the rental assistance which i'll cover
more details very very soon so the eviction moratorium has been extended to January 31st,
2021. so here's how the rental assistance works and how you can get qualified and how you get paid
for your rental assistance the money for the rental assistance from the federal government
is now being sent to local and state housing agencies which then they will start administering
the payments to the landlords or the tenants now depending on how the application process goes
now how fast you can get the rental assistance ultimately depends on your local and state
government in states like new york or california they already have the infrastructure in place to
start making the payments to the landlords and also the tenants so i imagine that these states
california and new york will probably start first some of the other states that were kind of caught
off guard or they might not be prepared it may take some time for them to set up the the system
and the infrastructure for them to start making these payments out so again it all depends on
the state and local government how well they're equipped to prepare for this but here's what i'm
going to suggest if you want to be in front of the line or at least close to being first to receive
the assistance you guys ready this is kind of like black friday right you want to be in front of
the line to get the best deal now whether you're you're a tenant landlord or a property management
company here's a very good suggestion from our good friend over at me kevin started gathering
records like your lease any contracts put together a list of all the months you missed on rent
any late fees late utility payments statements from the utility payments and all the bills
related to your housing now like what kevin was suggesting and what he mentioned i have a feeling
that your local housing authority may request these information as part of the application so
what i strongly suggest you guys do is to start putting a packet or a folder together with all
the information i just talked about if you are a landlord start downloading all the reports
from your rental property management software or other payment processing services so these are
any records of payment any balances that are due copy of the lease and all the relevant information
about your tenants start collecting right away now back to the tenants real quick if you are
a tenant and you pay your own utilities start sending these copies of your utility statements
to your landlords because your landlords are gonna need them to get the rental assistance
right away now the question is who gets the money right that's the grand question who does the state
and local government send the money to is it to the tenants is it to the landlord well according
to the text it says the landlord and the utility companies can be paid directly by the state and
the local government first but in order for the landlords to receive the rental assistance payment
the application has to be signed off by the tenant so basically what this means is that
if you're a landlord you need to contact your tenants to let them know hey listen
i'm applying for the rental assistance i need you to know that and i need your signature right here
down below so the money ultimately goes to the landlord but i imagine there's gonna be some kind
of government enforcement to make sure that the tenant doesn't have to pay the rent in exchange
for the rental assistance received by the landlord that way the landlord just doesn't take the money
and run right that's not what we want we want the tenants to also feel safe about this as well
but if the landlord does not apply for the rental assistance or the landlord refuses to take the aid
then tenants can apply and receive the funds and ultimately the tenants can make the rental
payment as well now most renters will probably be eligible for 12 months of assistance which
gives a lot of breathing room for tenants and landlords so that's 12 months and that's an entire
year's worth of rental payment that you can receive with the rental assistance program
now once the funds have been received they can be used for any background payment and also utility
payments such as water gas or even electricity now let's go and pause this video real quick and we're
going to go and take a huge sigh of relief let's go and do all that together right now
right we all needed that break we all needed that i mean i'm a landlord and a tenant myself so i
can kind of see both perspectives right now so i'm really glad that this rental assistance provision
is part of the bill because this is gonna help a lot of tenants and landlords alike to make
sure that of course no tenants go homeless and no tenants have to fear for their life that they're
gonna lose their housing same thing with their landlords the landlords were afraid that their
mortgage may default and may have to go into foreclosure that was a big concern
uh over the last 12 months with this whole coven 19 situation but one question remains and that
is who ultimately qualifies i mean this can't be for everybody is it so here are the qualification
process for the rental assistance tenants are eligible for the rental assistance program
if their household income is below 80 of the area median income so what does that ultimately mean
well if you go into your county's website they have the median income dollar amount published
so let me go and show you how to access your account information on this i'll share my screen
and walk you through on how to access your account information all right everybody so i
flipped my screen around so you guys can see what i'm doing on my computer now i'm on google so what
i'm going to do is i'm going to go and search my dupage county so this is my local county i live in
illinois so you can go put dupage county median income that's what i'm gonna search okay so it
says the medium income is ninety three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars for uh to page
county now eighty percent of ninety three thousand seven fifty i'm gonna go and pull up a calculator
okay i put point eight times ninety three thousand seven hundred fifty equals seventy five thousand
so if you are making less than seventy five thousand dollars in a year uh according to my
county okay so your county is gonna be different everywhere is gonna be different if you live in my
county of dupage if you make less than seventy five thousand dollars a year you would qualify
for the rental assistance so there you go if your medium income is fifty thousand dollars
um and eighty percent of that is forty right so if you make less than forty thousand dollars
uh from your county's median income then you will qualify for the rental uh assistance as
well so every county has this information you gotta go to their county website
uh so if you go to the county website they'll tell exactly what the immediate income is and
the latest data that they have so that's how that's how you go and look up the information
for your county's median income and also this applies to other household members of the tenants
that live there as well so if you have anyone in your household that qualified for unemployment
benefit has lost part of their income or has experienced financial hardship because of kobe 19
or ultimately can show that they are at risk of losing their home so right there alone folks
start documenting again start gathering all the documents from the unemployment benefits find
proof that you've lost your job or your income because of cover 19. so so document document
document half the battle in getting first in line is to make sure that you have enough proof and
documents to support your case very very important so right now there's no centralized place where
you can go apply for this there's no federal government website you'll need to contact your
local and state government's housing services to get the latest information and application
apply so if you are a tenant i highly recommend that you share this video with your landlord
or even share with your friends or family members who desperately need
the rental assistance right now the best thing to do is help each other share information as
much as possible i'm a landlord myself i'm also tenant i'll be letting my tenants know about this
local and state housing authorities to see whether they have the funding or the infrastructure ready
to start making the rental assistance payments so guys i hope this video was very helpful and if it
was please do subscribe to our channel and hit the like button at very least share this video
with someone that you dearly do to care about and they might be at risk of losing your home
so i appreciate you guys watching this thank you so much and i'll see you in the next video