North Carolina's moratorium on evictions is set to expire on June 30. Gov. Roy Cooper says he will decide before then whether to extend the ban.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has banned evictions until June 30 for people who have been unable to pay rent because they lost jobs or income during the coronavirus pandemic. Tenant advocates worry that a wave of evictions could be ahead.
A spokesperson says the governor is analyzing the impact of the moratorium, reviewing guidance from the CDC and studying the positive effects of the state's rental assistance program, known as HOPE, for Housing Opportunities and Prevention of Evictions.
"The administration created the HOPE program to help landlords keep tenants in their homes with the lights on and it has already helped thousands of landlords and tenants with direct funding," Cooper spokesperson Ford Porter said in an email. "The governor will make a decision before June 30 on whether to extend the moratorium."
State officials say they've awarded $180 million so far to help landlords and tenants with rent and utility payments through the HOPE program, which covers 88 mostly rural counties. The other 12 counties run their own rental assistance programs using federal COVID-19 relief dollars. They are Mecklenburg, Union, Gaston, Cabarrus, Wake, Durham, Johnston, Buncombe and New Hanover.
The HOPE program handed out $133 million in rent and utility assistance to 36,402 families across North Carolina last spring.
A second application for HOPE assistance opened in May. As of Tuesday, the state had received nearly 20,000 applications and approved grants of more than $47 million to nearly 15,000 households.
Residents in the Charlotte area can find out about rental assistance at rampclt.com.
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