Memo to Members

NLIHC Releases Annual Report 2023

Sep 09, 2024

NLIHC released our 2023 Annual Report on August 22. The report provides a comprehensive picture of NLIHC’s advocacy activities, campaigns, research and publications, media accomplishments, and other achievements in 2023, as well as financial information and a list of members, partners, and donors. Read the 2023 Annual Report.

The report details NLIHC’s major achievements in 2023, including those of efforts like our End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) project. Launched in 2021, the ERASE project continued throughout 2023 to help state and local ERA programs around the country improve by providing implementation recommendations and models, leading to improvements in ERA disbursal. By the time the ERASE project officially concluded in December, $39.9 billion in ERA had been issued to renters in need, and the ERA program had made nearly 11.6 million payments to households. U.S. Treasury data indicate that 62% of beneficiaries were extremely low-income households. The ERASE project also hosted a three-part webinar series during the summer of 2023 highlighting the successes of members of the 2022-2023 ERASE cohort in supporting local tenant organizing efforts to increase housing stability. In addition to releasing a set of case studies highlighting the successes of five 2021-2022 cohort members, the project released six other publications in 2023:

In all, the ERASE project’s work with state and local partners throughout the country resulted in more than 280 new state and local tenant protections being passed or implemented between 2021 and 2023, resulting in increased housing stability for millions of renter households.

NLIHC advocacy led to new federal support for the creation of tenant protections in 2023. In January, for example, the Biden-Harris administration released a Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights aiming to strengthen and enforce critical renter protections and announced new actions for federal agencies implementing housing assistance. NLIHC applauded the administration’s actions and engaged various agencies to ensure tenant perspectives were heard.

Advocacy by NLIHC and our partners resulted in Congress passing and President Biden signing into law a final fiscal year (FY) 2024 spending package that funded HUD’s affordable housing and homelessness assistance programs at $70 billion – an $8.3 billion increase over FY23. In a major win for NLIHC’s HoUSed campaign amid a challenging political climate, the final spending bill provided significant resources for the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, which was funded at $32.4 billion, resulting in a $2.1 billion increase over FY23-enacted levels. Other programs – including Homeless Assistance Grants, the Public Housing Capital Fund, the Public Housing Operating Fund, and the Native American Housing Block Grant program – also received significant funding increases in the FY24 bill, contrary to expectations.

To support congressional advocacy efforts in 2023, NLIHC released two resources: Advancing Housing Justice in the 118th Congress, a memorandum addressed to the new Congress outlining the ongoing need for federal investments in affordable, accessible housing and the long-term solutions required to end the nation’s affordable housing and homelessness crises; and a Congressional Recess Toolkit, which offered comprehensive information about how to host site visits and in-district meetings with members of Congress and provided ideas about ways to advocate for increased federal funding for affordable housing and homelessness assistance programs and for evidence-based solutions to homelessness.

NLIHC’s Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH) campaign welcomed three new state grantees in 2023: the Low Income Housing Coalition of Alabama, the Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, and the Maryland Center on Economic Policy. The three new organizations joined a cohort of 26 state partners working to build a cross-sector movement to generate widespread support for federal policies that correct long-standing racial inequities and economic injustices by ensuring quality and affordable housing for people with the lowest incomes. With the help of technical and financial assistance from the OSAH campaign, the new grantees will broaden their states’ housing coalitions to include organizations from diverse sectors that can engage in federal advocacy. The OSAH campaign also announced a new grant opportunity for state-level organizations interested in expanding multi-sector partnerships and influencing federal housing policy. The new grant supports such involvement by providing selected state-based organizations with financial assistance for one year, as well as formal recognition as state affiliates of the OSAH national campaign.

Efforts by the HoUSed and OSAH campaigns led to the introduction in Congress of a raft of major housing-related bills as well as the creation of two important new caucuses in the House of Representatives: the Congressional Caucus on Homelessness, which was reestablished by Representatives Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-CA), Cori Bush (D-MO), and Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) in February; and the Congressional Renters Caucus, which was created by Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) of the U.S. House of Representatives, along with Representatives Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and 10 other representatives.

NLIHC, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities continued their jointly hosted webinar series on homelessness and Housing First throughout most of 2023. The monthly calls shared critical information about solutions to homelessness and amplified the work of advocates and people with lived experience of homelessness. The calls, which ended in September, drew as many as 13,400 participants.

NLIHC and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) released new updates in 2023 to the Rental Housing Programs Database (RHPD), a publicly available collection of information on state and locally funded programs that create, preserve, or increase access to affordable rental housing. NLIHC and CBPP also released an accompanying report, State and Local Investments in Rental Housing: A Summary of Findings from the 2023 Rental Housing Programs Database, offering a comprehensive overview of rental housing programs included in the updated RHPD.

NLIHC and the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation (PAHRC) also released a joint report analyzing the risks that natural hazards pose to federally assisted housing and its residents. The report, Natural Hazards and Federally Assisted Housing, found that nearly a quarter of federally assisted homes are in census tracts with the greatest risk of negative impacts from natural hazards and that heat waves pose the greatest threat to residents of federally assisted housing.

NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel provided testimony at three congressional hearings in 2023:

  • “Building Consensus to Address Housing Challenges,” a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in April.
  • “Examining Competition and Consumer Rights in Housing Markets,” a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Committee Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights in October.
  • “Housing Affordability: Governmental Barriers and Market-Based Solutions,” a hearing held by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services in December.

NLIHC also received the largest gift of our history in 2023: a $15 million donation from MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving. The gift was an extraordinary testament to NLIHC’s reach and impact and will provide transformative stability and resources for NLIHC to further expand both. Combined with the ongoing, critical support of other key foundations, donors, and partners, the gift allows NLIHC to develop our capacity, deepen and expand our collective partnerships and campaigns, and build the political will needed to advance our long-term policy solutions and achieve housing justice.

NLIHC made big strides in our IDEAS (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-racism, and Systems-thinking) work in 2023. IDEAS is a major, organization-wide initiative to advance racial equity, inclusion, and diversity in our policy analysis and strategy, internal operations and relationships, and work with external partners. In 2023, we continued to pursue racial equity, inclusion, and diversity by:

  • Submitting or signing on to comment letters supporting a new proposed Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, including one letter submitted by NLIHC’s Tenant Leader Cohort, a group made up of people with lived experience of housing insecurity who are leading voices and advocates in their communities in the fight for housing justice.
  • Publishing a series of briefs supporting adoption and improvement of the new proposed AFFH rule.
  • Mobilizing advocates to pursue racial equity through our Racial Equity Cohort, a group of 16 NLIHC state and tribal partner organizations actively working to incorporate racial equity policies, tools, and practices into their organizations. After hosting 10 months of meetings, trainings, and workshops with housing advocates from across the country, NLIHC wrapped up the first Racial Equity Cohort in June. We initiated our second Racial Equity Cohort in November.
  • Convening the second annual Collective Retreat (previously known as the Tenant and Community Leader Retreat) in October in Albany, Georgia, where members of our 2023-24 Collective (previously known as the Tenant Leader Cohort) gathered to discuss their shared goals for achieving housing justice and to engage in community healing in preparation for their upcoming work.
  • Holding a convening of state and tribal partners in November in Washington, D.C. at which more than 30 people representing 22 of NLIHC’s partner organizations, along with all NLIHC staff and many board members, gathered for two days of networking, strategizing about advocacy initiatives, and deepening their commitment to racial equity.

Throughout 2023, NLIHC had frequent contact with Congress and the administration and achieved great success reaching audiences through media and social media engagement. Among other achievements, we:

  • Made 560 contacts with congressional offices.
  • Made 111 contacts with administration departments and offices.
  • Conducted 185 meetings/convenings/webinars/forums attended by 12,269 participants.
  • Participated in 25 sign-on or comment letters to federal decision makers.
  • Issued 212 calls to action and updates to our network of 145,000 advocates.
  • Presented at 101 events and forums attended by 5,667 people.
  • Participated in 251 media interviews
  • Offered research and expertise featured in 15,156 stories by media around the country.

At the same time, our website had approximately 1.77 million unique web visitors, and we had over 72,300 Twitter followers and 2.2 million Twitter impressions.

NLIHC published two new editions of Tenant Talk in 2023 – Advancing Tenant Protections: Building Tenant Power to Achieve Renter Equity and Taking Pride into Our Work – 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 tenant protections, emergency rental assistance, tenant empowerment, federal advocacy, racial justice, and other topics.

NLIHC also released a series of annual flagship publications, including:

  • The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes, which found that extremely low-income renters in the U.S. were facing a shortage of nearly 7.3 million affordable and available rental homes. Between 2019 and 2021, this shortage increased by more than 500,000 rental homes, as the number of renters with extremely low incomes increased while the supply of housing affordable to them declined. The report called for greater federal investment in the preservation and expansion of the affordable housing stock, more Housing Choice Vouchers, a national housing stabilization fund for renters who experience an unexpected short-term financial shock, and federal tenant protections.
  • Advocates’ Guide 2023, which included new sections on tenant protections and eviction prevention efforts, including chapters on just cause eviction, right to counsel for tenants, and eviction diversion. The 2023 Guide also included new chapters on community land trusts, as well as the latest information on the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule and updates on a range of HUD regulations and housing-related legislation.
  • Out of Reach 2023: The High Cost of Housing, which showed 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 $28.58 per hour for a modest two-bedroom home at fair market rent and $23.67 per hour for a modest one-bedroom rental home. The 2023 report showed how high rents had combined with the expiration of many pandemic-era benefit programs to exacerbate the financial insecurity of low-income renters, leading to higher eviction filing rates and increased homelessness.

NLIHC also hosted a series of major events in 2023. These included our 2023 Housing Policy Forum, “Onward to Housing Justice,” the first Forum held in person since 2019. Hosted at the Hilton Capitol Hill Hotel in Washington, D.C., the forum featured conversations with and presentations by key leaders in Congress and the Biden administration, including HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge, Representatives Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), U.S. Department of the Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo, and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Sandra Thompson. The Forum featured a keynote address by sociologist Matthew Desmond, as well as a book launch for Professor Desmond’s book, Poverty, by America, and a conversation with Ms. Shirley Sherrod, co-founder of New Communities Land Trust. The Forum also offered numerous plenary panels, breakout sessions, and other opportunities for advocates to engage with and learn from thought-leaders, tenant and community leaders, policy experts, researchers, and affordable housing practitioners about the fight for housing justice.

During the Housing Policy Forum, NLIHC also held our 41st Annual Housing Leadership Awards Reception. At the ceremony, NLIHC presented the Edward W. Brooke Housing Leadership Award to Representative Cori Bush (D-MO) for leading a movement to guarantee housing for all; the Sheila Crowley Housing Justice Award to Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico for its persistent efforts to ensure a just recovery – including access to safe and affordable housing – in the aftermath of numerous disasters; and the Cushing Niles Dolbeare Lifetime Service Award to John Parvensky for his longstanding leadership in the fight for housing and health care justice and equity as an advocate, a supportive housing developer, and a provider of health care for the homeless.

Advocacy by NLIHC and our partners resulted in a number of administrative victories in 2023:

  • HUD issued a proposed Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule meant to restore and improve upon the agency’s 2015 AFFH rule, which had been abruptly removed by the previous administration. The new proposed rule – meant to implement one of the provisions of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 – included six overarching features broadly supported by NLIHC.
  • HUD published a final rule implementing the National Standards for Physical Inspection of Real Estate (NSPIRE) in the Federal Register. NLIHC submitted letters regarding the rule and released a brief on the NSPIRE regulations, Summary of Key Provisions of the Final National Standards for Physical Inspection (NSPIRE) Regulations.
  • The Biden-Harris administration announced in July actions to “crack down on junk fees” in rental housing. The actions followed advocacy by NLIHC and an open call issued by HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge for rental housing providers to create a more fair and transparent rental market.
  • HUD launched ALL INside, a first-of-its-kind initiative to tackle unsheltered homelessness across the country. Through the ALL INside initiative, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) and its 19 federal member agencies partner with state and local governments to strengthen and accelerate local efforts to move individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness into homes in five cities and the State of California.
  • HUD issued a final rule restoring a 2013 discriminatory effects rule following efforts by NLIHC and our partners. The final rule recodifies the 2013 rule’s discriminatory effects three-step burden shifting standard.
  • The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released a request for information (RFI)– and NLIHC helped mobilize thousands of organizations and people to submit comments – in support of renter protections.
  • After devastating summer wildfires in Hawaii, HUD provided Rapid Unsheltered Survivor Housing (RUSH) funding to disaster survivors in Maui who were experiencing homelessness prior to the disaster. HUD’s action followed advocacy by NLIHC and the Coalition’s release of a report on the RUSH program offering recommendations for improvements.
  • FEMA released its first-ever Post-Disaster Equity Guide for Local Officials Rebuilding Communities. The publication provided guidance for local officials working to understand and prepare for disaster recovery efforts, with an emphasis on promoting equity and accountability.

NLIHC and our Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC) – a group of more than 900 local, state, and national organizations working to ensure that all disaster survivors receive the assistance they need to fully recover – also achieved a series of major wins in 2023:

  • The “Reforming Disaster Recovery Act” was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Susan Collins (R-ME), along with bipartisan sponsorship from 12 additional senators, following advocacy by NLIHC and the DHRC. The bipartisan bill contains critical reforms proposed by DHRC members to help ensure that the federal government’s long-term disaster recovery program, the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery program, better serves disaster survivors who have lowest incomes and their communities.
  • NLIHC and the National Housing Law Project released a report exploring the implementation of HUD’s Rapid Unsheltered Survivor Housing (RUSH) program, a new initiative designed to fill gaps in federal assistance by addressing homelessness in communities impacted by disasters. The report, Plugging the Gaps: Recommendations for HUD’s RUSH Program, finds that while RUSH offers vital support to disaster-impacted communities, initial implementation of the program in Florida was hampered by challenges that must be remedied before future deployments.
  • The DHRC released a Resource Guide for 2023 Hurricane Season to provide resources, information, and links regarding hurricane preparedness, response, and recovery, as well as a sovereignty resource guide authored by members of its Hawaiʻi Fires Working Group.
  • NLIHC and the DHRC submitted comments in response to a proposed rule issued by HUD in the Federal Register regarding the establishment of a new Federal Flood Risk Management Standard (FFRMS) detailing how HUD takes flood risk into account when evaluating proposed uses of agency funding.
  • NLIHC submitted in July comments on behalf of the DHRC regarding a request by FEMA for information regarding the Community Disaster Resilience Zone program and the National Risk Index.
  • The DHRC sent or signed on to six letters to congressional leaders and administration officials.

Read the 2023 Annual Report.

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