Blake Phillips is pretty sure he did everything right, which makes it all the more baffling to the Los Angeles resident that he slowly went broke, lost his restaurant business and was eventually forced to move out of his home and in with friends.
He did all this while waiting for pandemic rental relief from the state of California, which, though promised and approved, has still not arrived.
“I went from being a small business owner, middle class, paying my bills, to being completely wiped out,” Phillips said. “I lost everything because of the rent program.”
The program in question was operated by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), and it was designed specifically to protect both renters and landlords during the worst of the COVID-19 emergency. As businesses were forced to close, rendering many workers jobless and suddenly behind on their payments, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) was created early in 2021 to fill the financial gaps.
