Tenant Filed For Cares Act Once Finding out Eviction was Filed??

[William Lemmon]

Hey there! My brother and I purchased a property in Akron recently on March 18th, through a portfolio sale. For this single-family home, we found out right before closing that this tenant was a section 8 tenant, so just had to keep the property in the deal as is.

After the deal closed, all went well! HUD paid their portion of rent on time, (all of the other tenants on time no hassle!) but, this particular section 8 tenant has been nothing but problems for us right out of the gate.

The first issue is: Of course, in the very first month of April, the tenant does not pay their portion of the rent, or return phone calls... To the point that we posted a 3-day notice to quit that very first month.

Second: HUD did an inspection in April and it failed... (All of the problems, appear to be damaged by the tenant ((Broken cabinets, toilet seats, missing smoke detectors, etc.))

Third: So the tenant ended up paying their portion of the rent for April, which was received on April 29th... We haven't cashed it, and they have yet to pay their portion of May's rent.

So, we go through the process again of posting a 3 day notice to quit, this time going to evict for real, for real. Not funny anymore and no room given due to the damage seen on the property and that this tenant has been nothing but problematic over the phone, on top of not paying rent. So we get all of the documents together to file the eviction and send it to the attorney to file, and a few days later after filing (I think?), get a call and email from the Summit County Cares act, stating that the tenant has filed for emergency Covid rent assistance. 

Does anyone know what this entails and how best to approach this??? (If you've read this far, thank you!)

Any questions, just let me know! Now we're in this weird predicament... Not sure really where to go with this. I think the tenant filed when they received the court date for the eviction/lawful detainment.