SACRAMENTO, CALIF. • After watching scammers make off with more than $20 billion in fraudulent California unemployment benefits during the pandemic, state housing officials were wary of a repeat when the federal government poured money into the state and told them to use it to pay off people’s unpaid rent.

But in the eight months since California’s rental assistance program began, fraud has been virtually nonexistent. The Department of Housing and Community Development has identified 1,800 fraudulent rental assistance applications out of nearly 500,000 statewide — 0.0036% — and none was paid.

Geoff Ross, the agency’s deputy director, said it was “mindful” of California’s unemployment benefits debacle that has become the most expensive government fraud case in state history.

“All of those were detected pretty easily and early,” Ross said of the fraudulent rental assistance applications. “We learned a lot from previous programs.”

Congress approved trillions of dollars in aid during the pandemic — including more generous unemployment benefits and rental assistance — often leaving it up to state and local governments to get money out the door.

For unemployment benefits, many states last year rushed to approve checks for millions of people who suddenly lost jobs because of government shutdown orders. The frenzied approvals made it easy for criminals to file and collect on fraudulent claims in states large and small, even collecting benefits in the names of tens of thousands of prison inmates.