Central Ohio is suddenly swimming in a pool of emergency rental assistance cash due to the Biden administration's reallocation of unused federal COVID-19 relief funds to fight evictions.
Since the U.S. Treasury began the reallocation in late January, Columbus and Franklin County received over $120 million combined — a windfall so large that officials are quietly scrambling to figure out what to do with it all.
"It's huge; it's just monumental," said Carlie J. Boos, executive director of the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio. "The amount of resources that Columbus and Franklin County got combined is more than anywhere else in the country. Our central Ohio region got more resources than all of California put together and all of New York (state) put together."