Virginia’s rent relief program is providing real relief to public housing tenants in Richmond who have fallen months behind in paying rent due to the pandemic.

The state program already has provided nearly $3.4 million in rental relief to 2,300 households, according to the public housing landlord, the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

The average payment to bring rent current has run more than $1,400 per household, figures show.

The RRHA Board of Commissioners also has been notified that an additional $600,000 is being sought from the program on behalf of about 600 additional households.

The $4 million represents a significant share of the $10.5 million to $11 million RRHA reports collecting annually in tenant rents.

According to the internal RRHA report, that leaves only about 300 households that remain one month or more in arrears who have responded to pleas from RRHA’s staff, led by interim Chief Executive Officer Stacey Daniels-Fayson, to make payment arrangements.

The board was informed that staff is continuing to reach out to those families in a bid to prevent potential eviction down the road.

The improved outlook for tenants represents good news for board members and others concerned that families could face eviction. The new numbers represent a significant reduction from the 1,300 families that RRHA reported in September as being in arrears on rent.

The stream of rent relief money is flowing from the program operated by the state Department of Housing and Community Development, or DHCD. The payoffs of past due rent for so many families appears to have enabled RRHA to extend its two-year-old moratorium on evictions until December.

The board was told renters who remain in arrears as of Dec. 1 would begin facing enforcement action. That includes 30-day notices that court action would be taken if past-due rent remained and no payment arrangements were created.

In its most recent notice that the eviction moratorium is be- ing extended from Oct. 31 to Nov. 30, RRHA warned there will be no additional extensions and indicated that its requests to a Richmond General District Court judge for authority to evict would resume in January.

RRHA is just one of many landlords benefitting from the state program that seeks to reduce evictions of people whose finances were so disrupted by COVID-19 that they are in arrears on housing payments.

According to DHCD’s most recent data, $386 million has been provided in rent relief since the federally funded program launched in June 2020, three months after the pandemic began in Virginia. While huge, that amount is still less than half of the $1 billion the program has available from the infusion of funding from the federal CARES Act and the American Res- cue Plan created under former President Trump and President Biden.