Techniques are provided to accelerate the redistribution of the holes in connection with an erase operation, so that there will be a reduced amount of redistribution of the holes after programming. As a result, short-term charge loss after programming is reduced. In one aspect, a positive control gate voltage is applied to a set of memory cells after erase and before programming. The positive control gate voltage has a relatively low amplitude and a long duration, compared to a programming voltage. The positive control gate voltage can be adjusted based on the erase depth of the memory cells and factors such as a count of program-erase cycles, a count of erase-verify iterations, sensing of a position of the lower tail, and a cross-sectional width of a vertical pillar of a memory hole.