There is an abject lesson in the failure to successfully get federal help to renters and landlords in a timely fashion. And I'm not talking about how Congress and President Joe Biden couldn't manage to extend the eviction moratorium deadline, either. That was a preventable tragedy, but what's even more instructive is the fact that of the billions earmarked for rental assistance, only a tiny fraction of the money actually made it to the people it was intended to help. Compared to how the direct COVID-19 pandemic aid payments were distributed, it's pretty easy to see there's a right way and a wrong way to deliver federal aid. With Bernie Sanders now putting the finishing touches on a vast expansion of federal programs to make people's lives better, one certainly hopes this lesson has been learned so that future programs won't get so bogged down in red tape or bureaucracy that they wind up being both ineffective and frustrating.

The rental assistance track record so far is not a good one:

The [eviction moratorium] expiration was a humbling setback for President Biden, whose team has tried for months to fix a dysfunctional emergency rent relief program to help struggling renters and landlords. Running out of time and desperate to head off a possible wave of evictions, the White House abruptly shifted course on Thursday, throwing responsibility to Congress and prompting a frenzied -- and ultimately unsuccessful -- rescue operation by Democrats in the House on Friday.

The collapse of those efforts reflected the culmination of months of frustration, as the White House pushed hard on states to speed housing assistance to tenants -- with mixed results -- before the moratorium expired. Hampered by a lack of action by the Trump administration, which left no real plan to carry out the program, Mr. Biden's team has struggled to build a viable federal-local funding pipeline, hindered by state governments that view the initiative as a burden and the ambivalence of many landlords.

As a result, the $47 billion Emergency Rental Assistance program, to date, disbursed only $3 billion -- about 7 percent of what was supposed to be a crisis-averting infusion of cash.

. . .

The moratorium had been set to expire on June 30, but the White House and C.D.C., under pressure from tenants groups, extended the freeze until July 31, in the hopes of using the time to accelerate the flow of rental assistance.

A crash effort followed, led by Gene Sperling, who was appointed in March to oversee Mr. Biden's pandemic relief efforts, including emergency rental assistance programs created by coronavirus aid laws enacted in 2020 and 2021.

Mr. Sperling, working with officials in the Treasury Department, moved to loosen application requirements and increase coordination among the state governments, legal aid lawyers, housing court officials and local nonprofits with expertise in mediating landlord-tenant disputes.

In June, 290,000 tenants received $1.5 billion in pandemic relief, according to Treasury Department statistics released last week. To date, about 600,000 tenants have been helped under the program.

Elsewhere, this article points out: "An estimated 11 million adult renters are considered seriously delinquent on their rent payment," so 600,000 isn't really all that impressive a figure.

So what is the problem, according to those trying to navigate the system?

Emily A. Benfer, a professor at Wake Forest University who specializes in health and housing law, said many local governments had to build their rental assistance programs from scratch.

It has also been difficult to gain buy-in from landlords, who are required to fill out complex financial forms and follow strict eligibility rules. Some simply do not want to, especially if they have more informal arrangements with tenants. In addition, many landlords and tenants do not even know the aid program exists.

. . .

If there is one point both tenants and landlords agree on, it is that gaining access to the money remains difficult, and the process must be streamlined.

"These applications are just a bear," said Zach Neumann, a lawyer who runs the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project in Denver, which has received dozens of calls and emails from renters panicked by the end of the freeze. "It adds a ton of time onto the process and that increases the risk for tenants."

Red tape and all the hurdles mean delays, frustration, and inefficiency. That's pretty easy to understand. Also, allowing state and local governments a role in the process means politics can interfere in a major way. Case in point -- one of the slowest states to disburse aid is Florida, whose Republican governor is already ramping up his 2024 presidential bid.

So the lesson is a simple one, really: Keep it simple, stupid. The easier and more streamlined a federal program is, the more effective it will be. When Americans got emergency checks during the pandemic, they went out from the I.R.S., not state governments. As a result, the program was wildly successful, even if some did get left out (mostly people who didn't file federal taxes and had to sign up on their own). Most of the people who were eligible for the money got it, though -- not a paltry seven percent of them. And most of them got it automatically -- they didn't have to apply for it at all, the money just appeared. Currently, the Child Tax Credit is also being disbursed in the same fashion -- parents are getting checks in the mail every month now, and there is nothing a Republican governor or statehouse can do to halt it.

One can almost predict the outcome of each of the new programs that Bernie's reconciliation bill will contain by how it will be dispersed, in fact. If Sanders puts his beloved expansion of Medicare into the bill (adding vision, hearing, and dental services), it will be administered through the already-existing system, not adding an entirely new process. And it's a federal system, so one assumes it will be rolled out with minimal fuss and maximum impact. There may be bugs and glitches to work out, but there won't be the added burden of politics putting its thumb on the scale.

Other items reportedly to be included in the reconciliation bill may not have such a smooth path, though. Payments to help families with childcare or eldercare will assumably flow through state governments. Free preschool and free community college will likewise almost certainly be a partnership with state and local governments.

This could mean citizens in different states seeing wildly different outcomes. It could even lead entire states to decide to opt out of the whole thing, as happened with the Medicaid expansion Obamacare was supposed to provide to everyone. Even now, a decade later, one-fourth of the states have still not opted in to the expansion. That could happen with (for instance) free community college. If you live in a blue state, community college will be tuition-free. If you live in a red state, this might not wind up being true.

This may be unavoidable, but at the very least Bernie and the wonks drafting the bill should try to make these benefits either universal or as close to it as possible. Means-testing any government benefit means it will forever remain a political question where to draw the line. Some programs, such as Pell grants, really only go to the poorest students. The bar is drawn at a very low income level, meaning most middle-class families don't qualify. However, the bar for the COVID-19 aid was drawn a lot higher, so couples making up to $150,000 a year did actually see some benefits. And the more of the middle class you include, the more popular the program will be with the general public (almost by definition, since more of them will see the benefits), and the harder it is for Republicans to attack as some sort of handout to the unworthy poor.

The last thing Bernie should be striving for is removing as much of the red tape from any of these processes as possible. People should be able to easily apply online, the forms should not be insanely complicated, and enough people to quickly process the paperwork need to be hired by the relevant departments. Let's not have a repeat of the Obamacare website rollout fiasco, in other words.

Bernie's bill will be a sea-change in federal government programs. After the pandemic, the public seems to be in the mood to give government a chance to help people in tangible ways again. This mood could either grow, if the programs are successfully and quickly adopted, or the mood could shift darkly if the programs are handled the way the rent assistance program was.

I sincerely hope Bernie Sanders and the other drafters of the budget reconciliation bill have been paying attention to the shortcomings of the rental assistance program, and I also hope they are working proactively to avoid such problems in the new programs as well.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant