Take hello and welcome to max politics. This is ben match from gotham because that thanks so much for tuning in for this episode in just a minute. You'll hear my conversation with emma whitford or reporter from law three sixty who has been closely following the developments around. New york's eviction moratorium and the state's emergency rental assistance program. That has had some real hiccups. After being launched in june. Some changes have recently been announced after pressure was put on the cuomo administration to streamline the process improve the process and get some of the more than two billion dollars out the door two renters and landlords to make them whole from the federal aid. They came through to help. People who lost income lost work due to the pandemic. If you've missed any of our recent episodes on max politics we've had some great conversations recently with murad allowed of new york immigration coalition with queensboro president donovan richards with public advocate jimani williams with leaders of the twenty one in twenty one movement that has been part of the success story of leading towards what looks like it will be a majority of women in the city council when the next city council is seated next year and many other great guests in episodes to you could find max politics wherever you get your podcast and of course at the gotham gazette website and there has been a lot happening lately around new york. State's emergency rental assistance program. A lot of changes a bit of drama the looming eviction moratorium ending at the end of august. A lot going on with that many many new york city households at risk of eviction and a whole bunch of state money that has yet to go out the door to its intended purposes so very happy to welcome to max politics. 'em whitford who is a reporter for law three sixty covering real estate among other things. Emma thanks for joining me. Thanks so much for having me ben. So before we get into the changes in the of drama of the last few days here around this This emergency rental assistance program that the state is running take us back to the creation is program Its origins and sort of. What's the big context here share thing. So we're in the middle of a midsummer keep land. But i'm going to bring us back to april and budget season which i know is a gotham gazette favorite but long story short as a result of the pandemic there has been a lot of concern about hundreds of thousands of renters across the country being out of work struggling to cover the rent. So we've had a few big stimulus. Packages passed the federal level. And the ones that are most relevant to this program. are actually former president. Trump's last federal stimulus package which passed in december. And then biden's i such package that has in march and those allocated billions of dollars nationally. The ad is intended to help cover rent arrears accrued during the pandemic on new york state. Because we have a lot of renter households. We got one of the largest allocations of federal money to distribute coming to about two point four billion dollars but i think as with a lot of pandemic related assistance programs. It's very multi step so here we have this two point..