Rental Counseling

By MECU Team on April 10, 2025 Home Buying

When it comes to budgeting, prioritizing monthly rent payments is critical for a household’s health and safety. There are few feelings worse than not being able to pay your rent when it comes due. If you are struggling to keep up with your rent payments, there are steps you can take to protect yourself from eviction.

Helpful Resources

While our partner, the trusted national nonprofit GreenPath Financial Wellness, does not offer direct renters’ assistance, they suggest people use the following resources to research rental assistance options.

Find rental assistance programs in your state.
U.S. Treasury directory of rental assistance by state, county.
HUD directory of resources.
Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) renter and utility assistance look up directory.
Check your landlord’s website for the most up to date information and how to reach out for assistance.
Just Shelter, where you can search over 600 organizations across the U.S. working to prevent eviction and reduce family homelessness.

Renters Counseling

Financial counseling serving renters is available to you as well. Caring, HUD-certified counselors from GreenPath can help you manage unexpected circumstances, including budgeting through challenges like lost or reduced monthly income, which can cause changes in our ability to keep up with rent. Financial counseling can be helpful to get a handle on your options when prioritizing monthly rent against other bills.

GreenPath’s certified HUD counselors are ready to help you:

Know where to apply for help and assistance
Explore options to take in the face of financial hardship
Develop a plan for action that addresses your full financial picture

Susan’s Situation:

Susan’s story illustrates how rental counseling can provide options. Susan experienced reduced hours from her healthcare employer. This unexpected income loss made it more difficult for Susan and her family to meet already challenging financial obligations each month. With the monthly income loss, making rent payments was now in jeopardy and causing the household undue stress. Susan felt she had to choose between making payments on her credit cards and making rent payments. Compounding the situation is the fact that the family was in a rent-to-own arrangement with their housing, so the priority was to keep those monthly housing payments up to support their long-term financial goals and dreams.

Counseling Services Provided to Susan:

Susan sought housing counseling to help manage rent and monthly expenses including excessive credit card debt incurred to help offset income losses. The GreenPath housing counselor looked at her entire financial picture to develop an actionable budget so she could handle not only the debt payments, but also monthly housing costs for the rent-to-own obligations. Through the housing counselor’s guidance, Susan had a plan to reduce monthly credit card payments to make them more affordable while keeping current with monthly rent-to-own payments. GreenPath’s counseling services helped Susan stay housed because she knew the exact steps to take to balance all her monthly financial obligations, even with the income loss. Susan got the advice and an action plan she needed to get on track to pay off debt, keep current with monthly rental payments, and build a healthy financial life.