The New Jersey State Policy Lab at Rutgers University released a study of challenges faced by local governments seeking to quickly distribute emergency rental assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic, citing the city of Newark as a success story. Although housing shortages and evictions were a problem before March of 2020, they became a crisis when lockdowns and shuttered businesses resulted in job and income loss, an impact that has been especially severe in urban communities. “The pandemic revealed what is an ongoing emergency for far too many New Jerseyans,” said David Troutt, founding director of the Newark-based Rutgers Center of Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME), and lead author of this study. To read the full story.