Low-income tenants are struggling to pay their monthly rent can apply now To get help from the city. Austin has about $3.6 million to distribute after council members approved a new budget earlier this year.

Applications open at 8am on Friday and will remain open for approximately a week, closing at 5pm on November 7th.

To qualify, households must earn less than the local median family income. For a four-person household, that’s no more than $97,800 a year. Tenants also need to prove they are having difficulty paying rent, including a copy of the eviction notice or proof of a recent job loss. Tenants must live in the city of Austin.

Qualifying tenants will be selected through a lottery system and each household can receive up to $6,000. The tenant’s landlords must also be willing to participate in the program, as the money will be paid directly to the landlord.

Partnering with nonprofit El Buen Samaritano, the city expects to help 480 households pay their rent with this latest round of funding.

The money is available as rent in the city I was falling for more than a year. However, despite this decline, many tenants still live in housing They have difficulty meeting it.

Earlier this year, the city completed distributing nearly $12 million in rental assistance to approximately 1,900 households. But the city received more than 7,000 applications for aid and was eventually forced to close its application portal in February.

The city launched a rental assistance program at the beginning of the pandemic, when thousands of people in Austin were suddenly unemployed and struggling to pay for housing. At the time, the city’s coffers were backed by federal funds, so they could be made available. much larger pots of money.

Speaking to KUT News, a spokesperson said that those who applied for money in the past but did not receive their money will not remain in the system and are encouraged to re-apply.