More than a month after Broward County started to take applications online for rental assistance, no one who applied through the website has received any money, and none of the online applicants have been approved.

A total of 5,738 applications have been initiated, and 2,605 of those have been submitted, according to data provided Tuesday morning by Broward County’s Family Success Administration Division, which is overseeing the program. But only 70 tenants who applied through a court mediation program prior to the portal’s opening have been approved for funds.

Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties have already distributed millions of dollars.

“Unbelievable,” said Ross Fischer, a Davie resident who is still waiting to resume his career selling Caribbean vacation packages. “It’s been a month. We submitted everything they asked for, and it was a lot of stuff.”

“I don’t particularly find it acceptable that no money has gone out yet,” Broward County Mayor Steve Geller said by phone on Tuesday. “I’d think it would be reasonable if they said they only approved 600 out of several thousand applications. None seems problematic.”

Geller said he would need more information about the reasons for the lag before commenting further.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. With millions of past-due renters fearing the looming expiration of a federal eviction moratorium in late December, Congress and former President Trump approved $25 billion in emergency rental assistance funding.

Applicants who have been unable to pay their rent since March 2020, and whose landlords were barred from evicting them, could apply to receive up to a year’s worth of past-due rent, plus another three months of future rent as they get themselves back on their feet.

The Treasury Department sent the money to states, counties, large cities and tribal governments by late January, and those governments were left to figure out how to get the money into landlords’ hands to prevent renters from becoming homeless, and more likely to contract and spread the virus.

Knowing that red tape slowed distribution of similar federal aid last year, Congress tried to simplify eligibility requirements to just a few criteria. Applicants had to show their income was reduced or their expenses had increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, that their household income was 80% or below their area’s median household income, and that they were at risk of losing their home.

But guidance from the U.S. Treasury Department on required documentation was confusing, overly restrictive according to some advocates, and then loosened after the Biden administration took over.

Each state, local and tribal government that signed up to distribute the money was allowed to impose stricter criteria, and many did. Further extensions of the eviction moratorium, most recently through June 30, bought the government and renters more time but did not satisfy landlords who found loopholes allowing them to proceed with evictions.

Broward County, to reduce the potential for fraud, hired a vendor to set up its application website, review documentation for accuracy and truthfulness, and then submit verified applications to county officials for another verification review.

Those reviews take time, county spokesman Greg Meyer said. A statement relayed by Meyer from the vendor, Pasadena-based Tetra Tech Disaster Recovery, indicates that verifying applications has taken more time than expected.

“Ramping up a new grant program takes more time than any of us would like,” the statement said. “Our goal is to get funds in the hands of those in need as quickly as possible. In a county as large and culturally diverse as Broward, there are additional challenges of establishing and communicating processes and procedures in a variety of languages. Broward County has those steps in place now, and our first payments are going out this week.”

Fischer said he submitted his application and all of the required documentation two days after the portal opened on April 23. The document showed what he earned before the pandemic, how much he owes in past-due rent, and his current risk of homelessness or housing instability. A week later, his landlord submitted required documentation supporting Fischer’s claim.

Since then, every time either of them call the customer service number on the site, they are told to check their status on the website. When they check their status on the website, it says, “Pending vendor approval.”

No one has contacted either Fischer or his landlord to tell them that their applications were incomplete or incorrect, Fischer said.

Fischer’s application is likely one of just 123 completed applications currently being reviewed by Tetra Tech, said Natalie Beasley, assistant director of Broward County’s Family Success program. Many of those applications will be approved and payments will be sent by the end of the week, she said.

Currently, 2,327 applications are pending documentation from the tenant or landlord or are waiting to be reviewed to ensure that documentation was provided. Ten have been denied, and 145 are duplicate applications, she said.

Applications deemed incomplete because the tenant’s landlord declined to participate or was unresponsive will be reviewed again. That’s because on May 7, the Treasury Department issued guidance requiring otherwise eligible tenants to be paid directly if landlords don’t cooperate, Beasley said.

A program set up earlier in the year to help landlords and tenants with evictions pending in the court system has resulted in financial assistance approved for 70 renters while applications for 555 were denied, mostly because landlords declined to participate, Beasley said.

Whether those tenants will be eligible to reapply was not yet clear on Tuesday.

Broward County was the last of South Florida’s three counties to open its application portal to members of the public. On April 28, Beasley said money would start flowing as soon as applications are reviewed and approved.

Miami-Dade opened its portal March 1 and shut it down 15 days later after receiving 17,000 applications. Through Tuesday, 2,145 applicants have received $8.5 million and 3,751 were disqualified, according to statistics provided by a county official. Another 70 applicants have been approved and are awaiting funds.

Palm Beach County opened its portal on March 10 and reopens it early each month for just 10 days so employees aren’t overwhelmed. So far, 3,903 renters have applied and the county has distributed about $8 million to 1,470 approved applicants.

Another 1,308 were rejected as incomplete, but applicants were invited to reapply. Reviews are continuing for 953 while 398 await balance statements from applicants’ landlords. Just 167 have been rejected outright, figures from the county show. The county plans to reopen its portal on June 7.

The state of Florida, meanwhile, opened its application portal to renters across the state earlier this month after contracting a disaster preparedness firm, Tidal Basin, to create the website and review applications. A subsidiary of Rising Phoenix Holdings Corp., Tidal Basin was founded in 2007 by Daniel Craig, who headed FEMA’s Recovery Division under former President George W. Bush.

Officials with the Department of Children and Families, which is overseeing the $800 million statewide program, have not responded to repeated requests for numbers of applicants, numbers of approvals and rejections and how much money has been awarded so far.