How Emergency Rental Assistance Might Protect Households With Children From Food Insufficiency

The COVID-19 pandemic took a severe toll on the U.S. economy as the public health crisis triggered steep job losses, business and school closures, supply backlogs, and rising inflation and rent. Households with low incomes were already rent-burdened before the pandemic and the pandemic’s economic fallout further exacerbated existing conditions. Higher rent and income loss mean that households may have fewer resources for food. Indeed, renter households with low incomes experienced sharp pandemic-era increases in material hardships, including food insecurity.

The federal government responded to the mounting crisis in 2020-2022 by allocating an unprecedented $46 billion in emergency rental assistance (ERA). To better understand the potential role of ERA in addressing material hardships, this study examines how general receipt of ERA (i.e., both local and federal) is associated with food and housing hardships among renter households with low incomes (i.e., having incomes less than 50 percent of the local median family income) that include children. Since housing costs constitute a major share of household budgets, we hypothesize that ERA may have also mitigated food insecurity by increasing disposable income for food. Indeed, recent studies suggest that ERA was effective in reducing housing insecurity during the pandemic.

This brief is organized as follows: First, we summarize key findings and their implications for research and policy. Second, we describe our data, sample, and methods. Third, we provide a detailed description of the characteristics of the full sample and subsamples, including how these characteristics vary by ERA status (receipt, waiting, benefit denial, and nonapplication). Next, we show how ERA status is associated with food and housing hardships based on multivariate regressions. Fourth, we summarize qualitative findings about the experiences of families who received rental assistance in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Finally, we discuss the broader implications of our research and acknowledge its limitations.

Key Findings

Renter households with children and low incomes who applied for ERA experienced high levels of economic hardships. These households showed high rates of household food insufficiency (52%), being behind on rent payments (48%), and loss of employment income (41%). In contrast, a lower share of households that did not apply for ERA experienced these hardships (food insufficiency: 34%; being behind on rent payments: 20%; losing employment income: 25%).

Compared to those waiting for ERA, households that received ERA reported lower rates of hardships. Among renter households with low incomes and children, those that received ERA were statistically less likely to report household food insufficiency (46%), child food insufficiency (34%), and being behind on rent payments (28%), relative to households that applied for ERA and were waiting for a response from the program (49%, 37%, and 63%, respectively).