Prism Health North Texas announced it has been awarded a $10,000 emergency housing and rent assistance North Texas Cares Grant through the Communities Foundation of North Texas.
The temporary halt in residential evictions by the Centers for Disease Control to prevent the spread of COVID-19 remains in place, but many Texans are still at risk of losing safe, stable housing because the state has not released specific moratorium measures for Texas renters.
“Many of our patients are frontline workers and were already struggling to make ends meet before the pandemic,” PHNTX case manager Fernie Sanchez said. “The layoffs, dismissals, and/or reduction of hours resulted in the inability to pay rent and other household expenses for many in our community. Though our patients are not being evicted, many are accumulating three or four months of past due rent, which becomes very difficult to catch up and could lead to them being evicted once the moratorium is lifted. We step in to assist financially and sometimes legally to make sure this does not happen.”
The funding will be used to provide rental assistance to PHNTX patients and also to assist previously homeless patients with emergency housing
“Housing has always been a major issue for many of our patients, and in our line of work, nothing is more important than patients having stable housing as it can make the difference between treatment failure and treatment success,” Sanchez said.
— David Taffet
