I want to use the rent to help me build up a larger emergency fund, to the tune of $20k more than I have right now.

Likely you want to keep that for emergencies. 

Hi Everyone! Me and my spouse wanted to briefly introduce ourselves, our company, and share our ambitions with the BP community with hopes of learning more about how to achieve our short term and long term goals as we...

She applied for ULA Emergency Rental Assistance Program with the contract that I've never signed.

If you survey the landscape of coaching program graduates, a consistent theme emerges: those that "make it" tend to have the drive, curiosity, passion, grit, relience and focus to weather the journey... 

Occupants need a means to escape in an emergency.

Save up excess capital from working until you have at least a down payment on a house and a reasonable cash cushion for emergencies;2.

So if you have need for a liquid emergency fund for your health, I don’t think you should play with that portion by buying properties. 

Entrata, which is a solution for larger PM's, has a service where tenants can call a 24 hour US based call center, the live agent determines the severity of the service request and then adds it to their portal, or if its an emergency, calls on-call maintenance and coordinates their response.

This adjustment leaves me uncomfortable, as it would deplete my emergency funds.