Community Cares Partners Discusses Thousands Of Applications Being Processed

No matter where you live in the state, someone may be struggling to pay their rent and utility bill. A program designed to help our neighbors is experiencing a backlog.

Community Cares Partners said it has distributed $102 million with another $100 million in the bank. Now, they are changing things up to make it more user friendly.

“We’ve helped over 14,000 families in the state of Oklahoma,” Community Cares Partners director of communications Shannon Carr said.

Carr said the applications keep coming as some people live paycheck-to-paycheck.

“As of right now, we have about 15,000 applications that have already been submitted and in the cue to be processed and our team is working as fast as we can and diligently as we can to process those,” Carr said.

They anticipate that those who have applications will hear back in 6-8 weeks.

“In the meantime, if someone receives a cut off notice or something like that, just continue to pay whatever you can until we can get to your application, but we promise we will get to our application,” Carr said.

Carr said the nonprofit recently changed software to make it more user friendly for Oklahomans.

“We also have a new landlord portal now. We are hoping as we move into the new system that wait time, we will be able to speed that up a little bit,” Carr said.

If someone receives an eviction summons while they are waiting, Community Cares urges them to go back into their profile and upload a copy of it to their application.

“Make sure that they show up to their court date. Many Oklahomans don’t show up to their court date and it is an automatic default judgement against them so if they can show up to their court date let their landlord let their judge know that they have applied for assistance, a lot of times we can help them out,” Carr said.

With the new update, those who need help filling out the application can now add another user. 

The new addition would also be able to access any updates to the application.