This article comes from our Q3 2025 EDDP report, which you can view here.

The third quarter of 2025 marked the end of federal Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) funding at Tenant Resource Center. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dane County received substantial amounts of financial assistance targeted towards renters impacted by the pandemic and the financial hardships that ensued. These funds provided many renters a much-needed reprieve during a time of economic struggle.

For Dane County, emergency federal relief from COVID-19 for renters came in two major waves. The first was the federal CARES act, which funded the Dane CARES program. Under the CARES program, TRC provided more than $9.5 million in short-term rental assistance to Dane County renters in a relatively brief span of time in 2020.

The second wave of funding was from federal ERA funds. Beginning in March of 2021, the City of Madison and Dane County partnered with TRC to disburse rental and utility assistance payments to landlords, on behalf of tenants, through the original CORE program (also known as “Dane CORE 1.0”). The City and County relaunched the program in September 2021 as “Dane CORE 2.0,” partnering with TRC and other local organizations to distribute federal ERA funds. At TRC, this relaunched partnership took the form of the Eviction Diversion and Defense Partnership (EDDP).

ERA funds came with a final expiration date of September 30th, 2025. The Dane CORE 2.0 program stopped accepting new applications through its online portal on May 31, 2025. However, the EDDP continued to process applications and issue rental and utility assistance payments right up until funding expired, with our last checks issued on September 30th. In total, TRC paid out more than $51 million in rental and utility assistance under both CORE programs. Of this amount, more than 96% was paid out to landlords as rental assistance, with the remainder being paid to utility companies on behalf of tenants.

Here is a breakdown of how much rental and utility assistance TRC provided under the CARES and CORE programs:

In future quarterly reports we will break down the data on financial assistance payments made throughout the life of these programs, including taking a closer look at the demographics, income levels, and zip codes of households receiving assistance; the average amount paid per household; and the landlords who received the most assistance under these programs.