(The Center Square) – In a California city where the school district asked for community members to rent rooms to teachers who they said couldn’t afford housing, a person making $141,550 is eligible for a rent and relief program paid for with taxpayer dollars.
The city of Milpitas is spending $950,000 from the federal American Rescue Plan on its rent and mortgage relief program “to help low- and moderate-income residents who have been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.” The program was launched in December.
Households can receive up to $5,000 in rent relief and up to $15,000 in mortgage relief in the program. To qualify, participants must have suffered an economic hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A household of four people could have an income of up to $202,200 and still qualify.
Milpitas is located in Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley and some of the most expensive home prices in the U.S.
The typical home in Milpitas was valued at $1.4 million as of Nov. 30, 2022, according to Zillow. Just seven miles down the road in Weibel, the median home value was $2.29 million according to Zillow.
The median household income in Milpitas was $149,312 from 2017-2021 according to the U.S. Census.
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Why not raise the salaries to teachers? They are an underpaid group. When the ARPA money dries, the teachers still can’t afford the rent or to purchase a home. This is putting a band aid on a ruptured artery – and a temporary band aid at that.
Per the article “To qualify, participants must have suffered an economic hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Yet, Oxnard gave it’s employees $2M of ARPA funds. Did these employees suffer an economic impact? They still worked albeit in some cases from home. I don’t think any employees lost their jobs and most weren’t even exposed to the virus unless the contracted it from one of their own group of employees or from their home environment. Yes, they did continue to service the community. And so did our doctors and nurses who received NOTHING. Grocery workers received some of the ARPA money only because their union complained. And believe me, doctors and nurses WERE extremely exposed to the virus. Those people on respirators certainly weren’t in the ER and ICU with a head cold. Some of the health care professionals didn’t even go home for fear of taking the virus to their own loved ones.