NLIHC is pleased to announce the launch of its new State and Local Innovation (SLI) project! Building on the success of NLIHC’s End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) initiative, the State and Local Innovation project will support state and local partners in advancing, implementing, and enforcing state and local tenant protections, sustaining emergency rental assistance (ERA) programs, preventing the criminalization of homelessness, and supporting the advancement of other innovations that keep eviction rates down and prevent homelessness. The SLI project will also aim to shape and inform federal policies that address the needs of the lowest-income and most marginalized renters in the U.S.
The SLI project builds on the success of NLIHC’s ERASE project, which ran from January 2021 to December 2023. ERASE worked alongside state and local partners to ensure that the historic $46.5 billion in ERA passed by Congress during the pandemic reached the lowest-income and most marginalized renters. By informing and improving ERA program design, the ERASE project helped create more visible, accessible, and preventative ERA programs that ultimately helped keep millions of renters housed. ERASE also supported state and local partners’ efforts to pass, implement, and enforce tenant protections that ensured renters were able to stay housed once they received rental assistance. Since January 2021, more than 280 such protections have been passed in states and localities around the country.
Now, however, as rents continue to rise, wages remain stagnant, and the affordable housing crisis worsens, the need for action at the state and local levels is more pronounced than ever. To meet this need, NLIHC’s State and Local Innovation project will help state and local partners advance, implement, and enforce state and local tenant protections, sustain ERA programs, oppose the criminalization of homelessness, and develop other innovations.
What to look out for in 2024:
- NLIHC will launch a National Tenant Protections Network bringing together state and local advocacy organizations, tenants, elected officials, legal aid organizations, and other stakeholders to share ideas and lessons learned and support tenant protection advocacy efforts.
- Tenant protections tools and resources – including draft language, frequently asked questions, and briefs – will be made available to support the state and local passage and implementation of key tenant protections like “just cause” eviction standards, rent stabilization ordinances, laws that strengthen code enforcement and habitability standards, and laws that limit “junk fees.”
- The SLI project will maintain efforts to track state and local tenant protections through NLIHC’s State and Local Tenant Protections Database and will also track permanent state and local emergency rental assistance programs while advocating for their passage along with the federal “Eviction Crisis Act.”
- NLIHC will release tools and resources to support state and local solutions to end homelessness, including the Housing First model, and to combat efforts to criminalize homelessness.
Get involved!
- Sign up for NLIHC’s Tenant Protections Network, launching on April 25!
- Let us know what tenant protections have been proposed and/or passed in your community!
- Promote proven solutions to homelessness and fight against efforts to criminalize unhoused individuals by joining or coordinating an event for next week’s National Week of Action (April 22 – April 26).
- Join national leaders, people with lived experience, and allies on the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on April 22 – the day the Court hears Grants Pass v. Johnson – to tell the Court that it is unacceptable to ticket, fine, and arrest unhoused people for sleeping outside when there are no other safe or adequate housing or shelter options available!