NORFOLK, Va. — Following an increasing number of financial assistance requests through the Norfolk Eviction Prevention Center, city leaders have decided to temporarily pause new applications through the NEPC to allow the program to reset before moving forward.
“We’re challenged with more renters coming to us for assistance, and many are months behind," Kim Pierce said, who is the Director of the Department of Neighborhood Services.
According to a city manager's update, the number of requests for assistance is "overwhelming" since housing protections in Virginia from the COVID-19 pandemic expired on June 30, 2022.
Pierce said the number of people in the "queue" waiting for their situation to be accessed is more than 200, which does not include the pool of people who are added to a separate waitlist if they applied for assistance after February 3.
“Since then [July], landlords without payment have become much more consistent about going and filing eviction paperwork for their tenants behind in rent. A steady increase since July of landlords putting in eviction papers, less likely to work on a payment plan," Pierce said.
Since the start of this effort, NEPC has allotted roughly $1.9 million over time, and currently has roughly $1 million available to assist households, but that figure does not account for the more than 200 already in the queue, Pierce said.
"We came up with this strategy of, 'Hey, let's suspend this request for new applications until we can handle what we already have and processed,'" she said.
“In comparison to population, Norfolk has the highest percentage of call volume [relative to population] for the hotline, so there’s a real housing issue in Norfolk, but really, across the region," Thaler McCormick said, the CEO of non-profit ForKids.
Call data provided by ForKids shows a drastic uptick in the number of calls to their Housing Crisis Hotline following the expired protections. There are more than 35,000 calls between July and December of 2022, which McCormick said reached record call volume numbers for five of those six months.
“In January we had 6,000 calls in the hotline. Every month has been higher than the previous year and year before," she said.
McCormick also cited more than 900 eviction cases in Norfolk for the month of December 2022 alone.
The temporary pause of requests through the NEPC is expected to end by March 2.