More than half of the 3,084 households currently living in public housing in Richmond are still $51 or more in arrears on rent, according to the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

Still, RRHA is reporting progress in securing payments from the state Rent Relief Program, with hundreds of households still safe from eviction.

On April 14, Sheila Hill Christian, interim RRHA chief executive officer, and Kenyatta Green, interim RRHA chief operating officer, told City Council’s Education and Human Services Committee that the total number of households in arrears has dropped from 1,700 in February to the current level of 1,597.

In addition, Ms. Green reported that another 597 households have applied with RRHA support for rent relief. Of those, 324 have applications in with the state and 273 have applications that need to be processed by the authority, she said.

Based on state rules, such households could not be placed in the eviction process until a decision is made on whether their application for relief has been accepted or denied.

Still, around 950 households are at risk for eviction, Ms. Green indicated, or about one-third of current RRHA residents.

That includes more than 600 house- holds with incomplete applications for rent relief, Ms. Green indicated. She said those applications have been filed, but still need signatures from tenants on several forms. In addition, 344 households have not responded at all, she said.

The timing is critical as the state is closing the door to new applications on Sunday, May 15, as the original pool of more than $1 billion dries up. Through March 31, the state had paid out $713 million to enable 105,000 households to come current and avoid eviction.

Ms. Hill-Christian said RRHA would soon distribute letters to households in arrears asking them to come in to their property offices to complete or file forms. Though Ms. Hill-Christian was not specific, it appears that RRHA is preparing for a June start for court action for eviction, based on her information.

“We have many steps we need to go through,” she told the City Council committee, but she said there is a limit.

RRHA has been a major benefactor of the state’s now dwindling rent relief program. The authority has collected about $4 million of the $62 million the program has distributed to Richmond landlords, but still is carrying about $1.7 million in unpaid rent on its books.

Ms. Hill-Christian told the committee that under the regulations of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Devel- opment, which owns the public housing properties, RRHA has to take action given that it has a waiting list of more than 2,000 households seeking to rent.

Currently, there are only 51 vacancies, Ms. Green said.

Councilwoman Stephanie A. Lynch, 5th District, said that “several hundred families” in RRHA housing could lose their homes “sometime in the summer.” She noted that those families would only add to other households that could become homeless during the summer.

A state-supported shelter operation that provided 115 rooms for families, seniors and the medically fragile at the Days Inn in South Side closed April 22. Jay Brown of Commonwealth Catholic Charities told the committee that only 34 families remained before the closing, and he said housing arrangements had been put in place for each family prior to the closing deadline.

His report ended any council effort to come up with the $450,000 needed monthly to keep the shelter open, despite Ms. Lynch’s concern about the need.

Richmond already is feeling the impact of the April 15 closure of a separate city-supported inclement weather shelter at the Quality Inn in North Side that served single adults. Most of the 110 people who used that shelter remain unhoused, Mr. Brown acknowledged.

Their plight has been worsened by a city policy of barring people from camping on city property, according to Rhonda Sneed, founder and head of the nonprofit homeless support group Blessing Warriors.

She photographed police posting signs on the tents of people camping on Arthur Ashe Boulevard under the Interstate 95 bridge stating that they are barred from doing so and that “any items or belongings remaining on city property will be considered abandoned property and disposed of.”

Calls come in “during the night asking for suggestions on where to sleep,” she stated in a Facebook post. “Unfortunately, I have no answers. Pray for our unsheltered.”