Reforming RAFT to Work As Intended
Rental Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) is a longstanding Massachusetts program designed to prevent families experiencing temporary economic distress from being evicted. Awash with federal funding during the pandemic and sustained increased state-level funding, RAFT plays a much larger role today than it has in the past.
Unfortunately, although RAFT was designed with good intentions, flaws in how it is administered harm tenants acting in good faith and enable abuse by tenants looking to take advantage of the system, harming all renters and property owners in the process.
Currently, RAFT applications submitted by tenants take roughly 35 days for review/processing by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC), the state agency responsible for overseeing the program. Why it takes this long now, whereas previously it was much faster, is unclear. Over this time period, another month of rent comes due, putting tenants further behind on payments. Once applications are approved, landlords have reported being told that RAFT checks are “in the mail”, but these checks often fail to arrive for 14+ days. These baseline delays, coupled with the time costs of participating in the application process, are a significant burden on landlords and put more stress on renters who are in need of assistance.
For tenants acting in good faith, the situation is suboptimal. For tenants looking to take advantage of the system, it creates an untenable scenario for the property owner and opens an “infinite loop” in the system that bad actors take advantage of. Here’s how it works:
A pandemic-era protection forbade evictions while a RAFT application was pending. This temporary measure, like so many “temporary” expansions of the government’s role in private business, has become permanent.
A RAFT application can be resubmitted an unlimited number of times.
A non-paying tenant, who has no intention of paying, can submit a RAFT application, not complete it, pause the eviction process, and then, when the RAFT application times out (after 35+ days), just resubmit and start over again.
This can go on an arbitrary number of times, creating an indefinite period of nonpayment.
The courts have no answer to this problem. And it is important to highlight that bad actors inflict costs on the whole ecosystem. One reason why rental housing is in short supply and costs are high is that these few bad actors inflict massive costs on operators; because many of those bad actors will never pay, that loss is amortized across everyone else in the form of higher rents.
A related problem is the legal ambiguity regarding landlords’ responsibilities in connection with RAFT. The Attorney General’s office has stated that landlords cannot discriminate against tenants because they plan to use rental assistance programs like RAFT. They have also stated landlords cannot refuse to participate in these rental assistance programs because they prefer cash, are concerned with long approval processes, or don’t want to fill out the required paperwork or otherwise abide by program requirements (see attached document).
These statements may be valid, but they should not be read to imply that landlords have an obligation to accept RAFT in all cases; they are only required not to treat RAFT payments differently from other sources of funds. For instance, if a tenant stops paying rent for multiple months, receives a notice to quit from their landlord, and then applies for RAFT, the landlord still has a contractually and legally valid reason to evict the tenant: their nonpayment of rent. They could choose to engage in RAFT or not just like they could choose to accept extremely late payments to cure the violation or not and simply proceed with the non-payment eviction. This principle is especially salient in cases in which RAFT payments would not cover the amount of rent due.
This additional layer of complexity adds significant legal risk, ambiguity, and confusion to operating properties in Massachusetts–an effect that, in turn, is one of the reasons that fewer apartments are being built and that many operators are leaving for states with saner regulatory environments.
Despite these numerous and serious problems with RAFT, most landlords would still be happy to use RAFT in the intended way–to provide speedy and temporary financial relief for struggling tenants–but the program clearly requires substantial reform to effectively serve this purpose. We suggest the following changes:
Cut down RAFT application processing to 7 days. Property operators have an obligation to speedy responses to residents in many cases; the government should meet the same standards.
Prohibit RAFT applicants from submitting an application more than twice to prevent abuse. We also propose speedier processing on the second submission.
These changes would protect landlords and deter malicious submissions while preserving RAFT’s ability to serve its intended purpose: supporting renters who are experiencing temporary financial challenges. In fact, they may enhance its ability to do so by making landlords less likely to seek eviction for non-paying tenants, and providing faster support to those who need it.
We hope that the EOHLC and all other involved parties will take these suggestions to heart for the good of all participants in Massachusetts’s housing system.
by Chris Lehman
