Congress is already working on a fourth emergency package to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in an effort to provide additional support for individuals and provide greater economic stimulus for businesses. Both the president and members of Congress have expressed interest in including infrastructure investments in the upcoming package. Any additional funding measures responding to the pandemic and/or comprehensive investments in infrastructure must include measures to increase funding and improve policies to ensure the housing stability of people with the lowest incomes.
House Democrats on April 1 released an initial plan, which expands a previous infrastructure proposal to provide additional resources for community health centers, clean water, broadband, and transportation but fails to include additional affordable housing funding. NLIHC and the Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC) have updated their recommendations for the next COVID-19 spending package to include both resources to meet urgent housing needs and major housing infrastructure investments, including funding for the national Housing Trust Fund (HTF), public housing, and rental and emergency assistance. The DHRC has also compiled a list of needed regulatory actions to ensure resources responding to COVID-19 quickly reach communities and people with the greatest needs.
The recently enacted “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act” included $12 billion in housing and homelessness resources to help prevent an outbreak of the virus among people experiencing homelessness and protect low-income renters, an outstanding success secured by NLIHC, the DHRC, and advocates around the country. But Congress must provide more resources to meet the country’s dire and urgent needs. The DHRC urges Congress to include at least $11.5 billion in Emergency Solutions Grants for homelessness response to get to the level of resources independent researchers say is needed. People who are homeless and contract coronavirus are twice as likely to be hospitalized, two to four times as likely to require critical care, and two to three times as likely to die as the general public. If unchecked, as many as 20,000 people experiencing homelessness could require hospitalization and nearly 3,500 could die. This level of hospitalizations and deaths would have grave implications for individuals, their communities, and our already overstretched hospital systems.
Additionally, the DHRC urges a uniform moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, and up to $100 billion for emergency rental assistance and eviction prevention. Uniform eviction and foreclosure policies help ensure that renters will not lose their homes during the pandemic when our collective health depends on each of us staying home. A moratorium on evictions on its own, however, is not enough. Rental assistance is needed both to avoid creating a financial cliff for renters when eviction moratoria are lifted and back-rent is owed and to ensure the continued viability of our country’s essential affordable housing infrastructure.
The DHRC agrees with members of Congress who are calling for major investments in the country’s infrastructure to help communities deal with the pandemic and boost the economy, but any such measure must include resources to address the underlying causes of homelessness that increase the risk of future outbreaks: the severe shortage of rental homes affordable and available to America’s lowest-income households – the only segment of the population for which there is an absolute shortage of affordable homes. Moreover, building 100 affordable rental homes generates $11.7 million in local income, $2.2 million in taxes and other revenue for local governments, and 161 local jobs in the first year.
The DHRC’s updated recommendations for a stimulus or infrastructure spending bill include $45 billion in funding for the national Housing Trust Fund, $70 billion to address the nation’s public housing capital backlog, the expansion of rental assistance through Housing Choice Vouchers and/or the creation of a targeted renters’ tax credit, an emergency assistance eviction-prevention fund like the one proposed by Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Rob Portman (R-OH) in the “Eviction Crisis Act,” and an expansion of and reforms to the Low Income Housing Tax Credit.
The DHRC has also compiled a list of regulatory actions HUD, USDA, the Department of Treasury, and the Small Business Administration should take to provide tenant protections, ensure resources are allocated quickly to communities and people most in need, and allow providers to make necessary adjustments.
View NLIHC and the DHRC’s COVID-19 congressional recommendations at: https://nlihc.org/responding-coronavirus
Read NLIHC and the DHRC’s recommended regulatory actions at: https://bit.ly/39HaAUh