State’s housing assistance program posts big gains

The state’s emergency housing assistance program is upping its game, pushing more money out the door and helping more people struggling to avoid eviction.

As of January 13, the program had dispensed only $22.6 million of the $100 million available. But now that figure has more than doubled to $48.4 million. The number of households helped is also rising, although that data isn’t as current. The program helped 2,676 households in January, a big boost over the 1,267 helped in December….

… Andrea Park, a staff attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, said efforts to improve the RAFT program seem to be working. “Overall it seems RAFT processing times are improving, though there are still challenges in various regions,” she said. “Unfortunately, evictions were allowed to resume long before these systems were ready.”

Read more in CommonWealth Magazine.