In the Fall of 2020, the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development released a request for proposals for the Virginia Eviction Reduction Pilot (VERP) Program. Intended to inform post-crisis eviction prevention, VERP 1.0 relied on community-serving organizations – both government and nonprofit – to develop context-responsive assistance that stabilized households and reduced eviction rates across the Commonwealth. DHCD selected four organizations for VERP 1.0 in both urban and rural areas across Virginia. The organizations used their funds to help pay critical household bills that impacted budget stability, including transportation-related costs such as car repairs, utility bills and medical bills. These organizations also made critical connections to organizations that addressed a range of needs, including job training and substance abuse assistance. These programs worked as part of the larger ecosystem of emergency rent assistance and tenant protections that were critical to housing stability
during the pandemic.

In 2021, the RVA Eviction Lab was commissioned to evaluate the program’s effectiveness. The VERP program served 1,353 households – more than half of which included children – across the four regions between June 2021 and June 2022. This report finds that overall the program helped families who needed support to address short-term crises that placed their housing in jeopardy. Specifically we found:

1. Eviction filings and judgements were significantly lower between 2019 and 2021 in ZIP
codes where a VERP program was active and the presence of a VERP program was the most influential factor in lowering filings and judgements, after accounting for demographic and housing characteristics;
2. Nearly all families were rent burdened, meaning they paid more than 30% of their incomes for housing, meaning their budgets were precarious;
3. The flexibility of VERP to respond to program participant needs was a critical component in the success of the program;
4. The program facilitated significant capacity building by grantees; and
5. VERP was limited by the larger economic, housing market and legal barriers that, ultimately, made many tenants unstable