Emergency assistance to help people with unpaid rent and utilities is on its way; this article reviews how you can help clients gather information for their applications. There’s nothing like a government program to generate paperwork. Ironically, since the Paperwork Reduction Act passed 40 years ago the documentation needed for housing assistance programs seems to increase regularly. And there’s no getting out of it. Housing agencies must collect all of this information as a condition of their grants. This burden rolls downhill. The good news is that you and your client can gather this documentation in advance and create a “housing portfolio” to simplify the application process. You may have to apply for housing at multiple organizations. Having a portfolio will prevent many headaches for you, your clients and housing providers. Casebook has functions to track information your client needs in their housing portfolio, as I will describe later in this post. Billions in Emergency Assistance are Pending The American Rescue Plan of 2021 (Plan) added billions of dollars in rental assistance. Most of it is temporary to help people pay off rent arrearages and stabilize their housing. Emergency rental assistance: $21.5 billion to help households remain in their homes. Emergency housing vouchers: $5 billion for people who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of it. Homelessness assistance and supportive services: $5 billion to create new housing and services for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Housing assistance for Native Americans and Native Hawaiians: $750 million to reduce housing-related health risks Emergency assistance for rural housing:$100 million to help people in rural communities keep their homes during the pandemic. That adds up to $32 billion dollars, on top of rental assistance funds included in the December 2020 CARES act. That is a lot of money. But it has to go a very long way. At the end of February 2021 over 13.5 million people said they were behind on their rent -- nearly 1 in 5 of all renters -- according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis . Renters owe an estimated $57 billion in back rent. These numbers show the need is greater than the emergency help available. Your clients need to apply for the money early to get what they need. If you have the documents in hand your client can start applications as soon as housing agencies can accept them. The rules and regulations governing these programs were not yet issued at the time of this writing. This article reviews typical documents clients will need to provide, based on my 16 years of experience leading an affordable housing agency. They were created for permanent affordable housing such as Housing Choice Vouchers, meaning your client’s housing portfolio is valuable long after the Plan funding is exhausted. For now, it is likely your client will need this documentation plus proof the pandemic caused their housing emergency.