NLIHC Releases Annual Report 2021

NLIHC released its 2021 Annual Report on August 11. The report provides a comprehensive picture of the organization’s advocacy activities, campaigns, research and publications, media accomplishments, and other achievements in 2021, as well as financial information and a list of members, partners, and donors. Read the 2021 Annual Report here.

In a letter to members and partners introducing the report, NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel celebrates the many triumphs of NLIHC’s partners and allies, especially in countering the impact of the pandemic on the housing stability of the lowest-income renters. “The pandemic has shown in profound and unforgettable ways who we are as a country and just how much we can accomplish when we work together,” writes Diane. “In 2021, we fought for – and won – a series of extensions of the national moratorium on evictions, keeping it in place for almost a year. We secured $46.5 billion in emergency rental assistance (ERA) for low-income renters and worked together to build a national infrastructure to disburse these vital resources to those most in need. We advocated successfully for the enactment or implementation of more than 130 new tenant protections by state and local governments around the country. And we launched the “End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE)” project to gather information about ERA programs and expedite assistance to renters in need to stop evictions. These achievements helped keep millions of families safely housed during the pandemic.”

The report highlights additional ways in which NLIHC responded to the challenges posed by the pandemic in 2021. These included:

• Helping ensure that, as of December 2021, $20.6 billion in ERA had been disbursed by state and local emergency rental assistance programs, keeping nearly 8 million renters in 3.2 million households stably housed. Treasury data indicate that 66% of beneficiaries were extremely low-income households, over 40% were Black households, and 20% were Latinos.
• Launching an Emergency Rental Assistance Resource Hub, Dashboard, and Program Table to monitor trends, facilitate resource sharing, and help renters access ERA.
• Releasing a State and Local ERA Tenant Protections Database, with information about the more than 130 ERA tenant protections enacted over the past year in response to advocacy by ERASE cohort members.
• Testifying at two hearings devoted to ERA: “Oversight of Pandemic Evictions: Assessing Abuses by Corporate Landlords and Federal Efforts to Keep Americans in their Homes” (July 27); and “Protecting Renters During the Pandemic: Reviewing Reforms to Expedite Emergency Rental Assistance” (September 10).
• Releasing nine reports and briefs – several with our partners at the Housing Initiative at Penn and the NYU Furman Center – examining the development and implementation of ERA programs.

NLIHC also launched its new “HoUSed” campaign in March 2021 to advance anti-racist policies and achieve the large-scale, sustained investments and reforms necessary to ensure renters with the lowest incomes have affordable and accessible places to call home. With more than 1,800 organizational partners, the campaign advocates for solutions to America’s housing crisis, including by expanding rental assistance to every eligible household, increasing the supply of affordable housing for people with the lowest incomes, providing emergency housing assistance to help stabilize families in a crisis, and strengthening and enforcing robust renter protections.

The report overviews NLIHC’s work advancing racial equity, diversity, and inclusion in 2021. Among other achievements, NLIHC developed new vision and mission statements to express its commitment to racial equity. NLIHC also created and filled a new senior vice president for racial equity, diversity, and inclusion position. NLIHC’s efforts to advance racial equity resulted in a range of other accomplishments, including:

• Publishing two study briefs on racial equity and ERA program design, as well as a report on the racial inequity of the mortgage interest deduction and a brief on advancing racial equity in ERA programs issued jointly with the Penn Housing Initiative.
• Releasing a special edition of Tenant Talk, “Fighting for Racial and Housing Justice.”
• Collaborating on the creation and release of Dot’s Home, a video game that gives players a chance to explore the harmful systems dictating our relationships to race and place. (The game received the Game of the Year Award at the Games for Change Festival’s awards ceremony in NYC on July 8 of this year.)
• Issuing resources on gender and racial justice in collaboration with the National Women’s Law Center.
• Updating the Opportunity Starts at Home multi-sector affordable homes campaign’s national policy agenda to reflect racial equity more strongly in the campaign’s policy priorities.

In 2021, NLIHC continued to distinguish itself in the arena of advocacy, as the Annual Report makes clear. The organization:

• Made more than 13,600 contacts with congressional offices.
• Made 455 contacts with administration departments and offices.
• Conducted 319 meetings/convenings/webinars/forums attended by 46,000 participants.
• Participated in 20 sign-on or comment letters to federal decision makers.
• Issued 270 calls to action and updates to our network of 145,000 advocates.
• Presented at 217 events and forums attended by 30,655 people.
• Testified at six congressional hearings.
• Participated in 457 media interviews
• Offered research and expertise featured in 17,055 stories by media around the country – up from 11,006 stories in 2020, 6,137 in 2018, and 2,295 in 2016.

At the same time, NLIHC saw continuing growth in its social media presence, with 4.02 million unique web visitors, approximately 65,500 Twitter followers, and almost 20 million Twitter impressions.

NLIHC published two new editions of Tenant Talk – “The Enduring Crisis: Fighting for Racial and Housing Justice” and “The Intersections of Housing and Disability Rights” – and continued to organize and host monthly Tenant Talk Live webinars with tenants and tenant leaders from across the country to address the issues and concerns of tenants related to COVID-19 tenant protections, emergency rental assistance, tenant empowerment, federal advocacy, racial justice, and other topics.

NLIHC released a series of annual flagship publications, according to the report, including:

• The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes, finding that extremely low-income renters in the U.S. were facing a shortage of nearly 7 million affordable and available rental homes. The report showed that only 37 affordable and available homes existed for every 100 extremely low-income renter households, and nearly 8 million extremely low-income households spend more than half of their limited incomes on housing.
• Advocates’ Guide 2021, which included new information about COVID-19 housing and homelessness response programs; NLIHC’s HoUSed campaign for racial housing justice and universal, stable, and affordable housing; and actions taken by the Biden administration to advance fair housing and strengthen protections for immigrant households and LBGTQ individuals, among other topics.
• Out of Reach 2021: The High Cost of Housing, showing that millions of low-wage renters were struggling to afford their homes before the pandemic and would remain in economically precarious positions without significant congressional action. According to the report, the national “housing wage” needed to afford rental housing was $24.90 per hour for a modest two-bedroom home at fair market rent and $20.40 per hour for a modest one-bedroom rental home. In no county in America could a renter earning a fulltime prevailing minimum wage afford a modest two-bedroom apartment, and in only 7% of U.S. counties could they afford a modest one-bedroom rental.
• The Road Ahead for Low-Income Renters, a research note summarizing research on how renters had fared during the pandemic and their likely needs in the future. Based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey and other sources, the report showed that approximately 6.5 million renter households were behind on rent as of early July 2021.
• Picture of Preservation 2021, a joint report released with the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation (PAHRC) that characterized the nearly 5 million homes constituting the nation’s federally assisted housing stock, analyzed the preservation risks faced by these homes, and identified policy priorities to support their preservation. The report estimated that 176,760 federally assisted homes could be lost from the affordable housing stock over the next five years if preservation efforts are not expanded.

The 2021 Annual Report also summarizes major events hosted by NLIHC in 2021. These included the Virtual Housing Policy Forum, which was attended by more than 1,100 people and featured an appearance by HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge – her first at a housing conference in her new role – and special presentations by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Rob Portman (R-OH), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Brian Schatz (D-HI), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Representatives Joyce Beatty (D-OH), Jesús “Chuy” García (DIL), and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL). NLIHC also hosted its annual Housing Leadership Awards Reception, during which it presented awards to Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA); Joy Johnson, a former NLIHC board member and the founder of Charlottesville’s Public Housing Association of Residents; and the National Housing Law Project’s Housing Justice Network.

The report lists additional achievements, including regulatory triumphs such as the withdrawal by HUD of a proposed mixed-status rule after opposition by NLIHC and our partners; the withdrawal by HUD of an equal access rule following an NLIHC-led week of action; and the publication by HUD of a proposed rule to reinstate the 2013 disparate impact rule following advocacy by NLIHC and our allies. In the area of disaster recovery, NLIHC successfully pushed FEMA to announce improvements to help low-income disaster survivors access assistance; published along with PAHRC a report examining the locations of project-based federally assisted properties in relation to risks for 18 types of natural hazards; and testified twice before Congress in support of disaster housing recovery.

NLIHC also received a number of notable recognitions, highlighted in the  report, including a recognition from the Corporation for Supportive Housing for NLIHC’s role in developing the Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Response to Homelessness, an “Exceptional Community Partner” award from the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, a “Best National Advocacy Group” award from Beyond Chron, and an “Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Exemplary Practice Award” from the American Society for Public Administration.

Read the 2021 Annual Report here.