Gov. Charlie Baker speaks to reporters at the State House on June 24, 2020. Photo By Sam Doran/State House News Service

State officials will dedicate $20 million to offer rental and mortgage help to low-income households not covered by the state’s current emergency assistance program, Gov. Charlie Baker announced Tuesday afternoon.

The Emergency Rental and Mortgage Assistance, or ERMA, program will provide direct funding to eligible households who have suffered financial hardship during the state of emergency put in place to combat the spread of COVID-19.

ERMA will expand eligibility for rental and mortgage assistance to more low-income households who have been impacted by the crisis by adjusting the income threshold beyond the state’s traditional Residential Assistance for Families in Transition, or RAFT program. This includes households within the 50-80 percent  range of Area Median Income (AMI). Like the RAFT program, ERMA will provide up to $4,000 for eligible households to pay rent or mortgage payments in arrears going back to payments due April 1. Beginning July 1, applicants can reach out to the 11 agencies that administer RAFT on the state’s behalf, this includes the nine housing consumer education centers, as well as LHAND and the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance.

The state is using $10 million in federal coronavirus relief funds to help pay for the program. This new funding will serve twice as many households as the traditional RAFT program by greatly expanding eligibility to families who would otherwise not qualify for RAFT, the governor’s office said. At the same time, the state is adding $5 million to the RAFT program.

Housing advocates have been calling for a $50 million expansion to the RAFT program to help deal with what’s expected to be a large wave of eviction notices when the state’s moratorium ends Aug. 18. However, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council estimates the state would need $128 million to cover rental obligations, alone.

Housing advocates and some state legislators have pushed Baker to use authority written into the eviction moratorium to unilaterally extend the freeze, and Housing Committee co-chair Rep. Kevin Honan and Rep. Mike Connolly are also working on a bill to extend it for 12 months.

When asked during Tuesday’s press conference if he would consider extending the moratorium, Baker said he wasn’t yet ready to make a decision on the matter.

“A blanket 12-month extension does not solve the problem, [it] just makes the problem worse,” Greater Boston Real Estate Board CEO Greg Vasil told Banker & Tradesman in an email. “If that were to become law, what happens in a year when that date arrives and expires?”

Vasil said the proposed extension would create “an utter disaster of far greater proportions than now.”

“A number of tenants have gone non-responsive to landlords on both the residential and commercial side telling owners the governor says I don’t need to pay rent and you cant do anything about it. Play that out for a year and you can see how that doesn’t work from a business perspective,” Vasil said. “If you have a financed a rental property, you owe payments to the holder of that debt, as well as operating costs, and payment to the government in the form of taxes.  Without positive cash flow owners will find themselves underwater.”

While the Connolly-Honan bill creates a special fund to indemnify landlords – with priority going to owners of 15 units or less – whose tenants are unable to pay rent during the 12-month period, it does not identify a source for the money in the fund beyond “public and private” contributions.

“The Honan-Connolly bill is a half-hearted election year attempt to look like you’re doing something real but actually do nothing,” MassLandlords Executive Director Doug Quattrochi, who is lobbying the legislature to guarantee rents in the state via “surety bonds,”  told Banker & Tradesman in an email. “They’re right to identify the need to create a fund to pay for rental housing. They don’t have any clue how to do it and their bill doesn’t come up with a single dollar.”

Updated 2:23 p.m. 6/30/20: This story has been updated to include comment from MassLandlords Executive Director Doug Quattrochi.