The CDC’s limit on some kinds of evictions is in place through March and Arizona’s 211 information hotline recently launched a web tool to help users understand that protection and to connect Arizonans with local resources for housing needs.
T.J. Reed, director of 211, said a year into the pandemic, more than half the calls coming into the hotline are Arizonans with questions about housing or utility assistance.
“We’re getting tons and tons of calls and we realized it could be a really great option to provide something that is self-service," Reed said.
The automated chat tool is on 211Arizona.org in English and Spanish. Reed said it can provide users with individualized assistance within two minutes.
More than 200,000 Arizonans are currently out of work, according to the Department of Economic Security. And Reed said even many Arizonans with jobs are struggling.
"We see this every day with people calling in," Reed said. "They have either lost a job in the past and have regained employment but are trying to catch up, or they're still unemployed trying to find jobs."
While several housing assistance programs are available in Arizona, they can be difficult to navigate.
"In many cases, tenants are at such high levels of stress and despair that anything too complicated causes them to simply give up,” Judge Leonore Driggs of the Arcadia-Biltmore Justice Court said in a press release.
Reed said the goal of the Eviction Prevention App is to make the CDC eviction moratorium and other protections easier to understand.
“It will kind of give you really practical things to do and information to take away, versus ‘hey here’s this big thing you have to try to figure out on your own,’” he said.
