More Orange residents could soon qualify for rental assistance from the city after officials overhauled eligibility criteria to give preference to struggling older residents after staff found the program hasn’t helped anyone since its inception.
The program has been around for over a year, but because of strict criteria to qualify, it failed to make an impact – according to a staff report, the program has received zero qualified applicants since its establishment.
“Since the launch of the TBRA Program in January 2025, the City has not received any applications from households that qualify under the adopted eligibility criteria, resulting in no utilization of the allocated HOME funds. After approximately one year of inactivity, staff conducted a programmatic review to determine whether the lack of utilization was attributable to a lack of community need or to structural barriers within the program design,” reads a staff report…