to tenants who have been impacted by COVID-19, and extend the amount of notice tenants must be given before eviction from five days to fourteen. The tenant protections enacted through the state budget did not prevent evictions from continuing in Virginia for reasons other than failure to pay rent, nor did they prevent landlords in the state from denying lease renewals to tenants eligible for rental assistance. Although many of the protections from the state budget expired at the end of June 2021, they were renewed in August through June 2022. About one-fifth as many evictions were filed in Virginia throughout the first half of 2021 as had been normal for the state before the pandemic. At the start of Northam's term, Virginia had one of the nation's highest eviction rates, and efforts to reduce that rate had already begun under Northam prior to the pandemic. The rent relief program that Virginia established in response to the pandemic was among the first in the nation. Initially funded by the state alone, the program received additional funding from the federal government in January 2021. Since then, Virginia's rent relief program has distributed a higher percentage of its federal funding than has been distributed by any other state for this purpose and is second only to Texas in the total amount of federal funding that it has distributed. The policy that Northam enacted through the state budget requiring that landlords apply for rent relief on behalf of their tenants before they can file evictions for nonpayment was credited by The Virginian-Pilot as a primary reason for Virginia's effective distribution of rent relief and was credited by The Washington Post as a primary reason for the state's achievement of a low eviction rate in 2021. The Christian Science Monitor wrote that during Northam's tenure in office, Virginia became a "national model" for tenant protections. Utility assistance In September 2020, Northam asked the State Corporation Commission to extend its moratorium on utility cutoffs, which had first been implemented in March. The commission agreed to extend the moratorium until October 5. Northam then asked for a further extension in October, which the commission denied. On November 18, Northam reimplemented the moratorium through an amendment to the state budget. Although when implemented by the commission, the moratorium had applied only to private utility companies, the version implemented through the state budget applied to all utilities, including