East Baton Rouge Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP)

Franklin assisted in program strategy development and initiation for EBR’s ERAP, and deployed person-to-person engagement throughout the process via our inhouse call center. The U.S. Department of the Treasury ERAP made available $25 billion to assist households unable to pay rent and utilities due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its ongoing aftermath.

The first round of ERAP, running from March 2021 to January 2022, provided emergency rental grants to income-eligible individuals and families residing in EBRP and economically impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic through job loss, furlough, or reduction in hours or pay. The second (December 2022 – January 2023) and third (June 2023 – Present) rounds, funded from remaining COVID allocations, continues to help people with rental assistance, no matter the origin of their hardship; the current round, opened in June 2023, only assists applicants who were not helped through the program in either earlier round. Call CenterHGA(Hunt, Gillot and Associates) has a contract with Franklin Associates as a sub-contractor.

Franklin’s ERAP Call Center Agents provide full time customer service support for the program with a dedicated hotline phone number as well as text and email capacities. At the beginning of the program, the customer service team developed key talking points and processes to escalate and handle eviction-endangered residents’ issues swiftly to avoid increased homelessness in our region.

Franklin agents continue to manage applicant intake processes, assess, and provide applicants with information regarding eligibility documents, and assist the case management team with applicant relations as well as provide case status updates and help renters complete and upload documents to receive assistance. The agents work with applicants and case managers, providing communications about ERAP process and coordination between case managers and applicants; whenever ERAP program updates or changes are announced, the agents disseminate the information.

Part of the agents’ daily tasks are fielding in- and out-bound calls; inputting data from each call; uploading documents; and recording in specific program software every action taken or needing to be taken for each call. UREC (Urban Restoration Enhancement Corporation) and YWCA are the two non-profit community partners who have been tasked to process Rental Assistance Applications. Once one of the two non-profit providers complete the necessary paperwork to process payments, HGA (Hunt, Guillot and Associates) packages it and sends to WFG (Work Force Group) for Payment.

WFG has a contract with the City of Baton Rouge to disperse ERAP Funds. Tentatively, the contract with Case worthy (The application processing portal) is set to end on 1/31/2024 in addition to the rental assistance portal closing on the same day. ERA2 Funds are set to return to the City Parish to be utilized for other housing projects and needs. Goodwood Library Document Drop-offBeginning in ERAP’s second round, Franklin worked with the East Baton Rouge Parish Library’s main branch at Goodwood to set up a document drop-off area for residents without internet access or technological abilities.

This also functions as a space for renters, by appointment or on a case-by-case basis, to meet face-to-face with staff to complete documents together. Call center staff retrieve the documents, upload them, and inform the case managers and applicants once done. Accomplishments: At the height of our support for the EBR ERAP, we employed 17 full time Call Center Agents capable of fielding up to 765 calls daily. Over a period of 11 months, our Call Center Agents fielded 192,793 calls, of which 137,182 were inbound and 54,951 were outbound.

As of January 2023, 10,460 residents have received emergency rental assistance to avoid eviction. The total amount of Rental Assistance Approved for eligible families is $53,658,568. To date: we have received and uploaded 1,405 documents since working with the East Baton Rouge Parish Library on Goodwood Blvd to assist applicants without internet access or technological capabilities. Every six(6) weeks, the call team does in-house training/follow-ups to ensure team cohesiveness