Easing the housing squeeze on low-income renters
Tenants hold a demonstration to call attention to their rent strike during the COVID-19 pandemic on October 28, 2020, in Harlem, New York. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
The State and Local Innovation project will work with policymakers to draft bill language and leverage data and best practices to keep the lowest income renters in stable housing.
For renters, the housing crunch is particularly tight. It’s estimated that there is a shortage of 7.3 million affordable and available rental homes in the U.S., or only 34 viable rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renters. A new initiative from the National Low Income Housing Coalition aims to arm state and local policymakers with resources they can use to ensure renters can better afford and access housing.
The gap between individuals’ income and rent prices has been growing for years, putting renters at an increased risk of eviction or homelessness. That threat became glaringly apparent during the pandemic, when millions of workers lost their jobs or had to work reduced hours, said Sarah Gallagher, NLIHC’s vice president of state and local innovation.
Federal intervention, such as the $46 billion Emergency Rental Assistance program that provided state and local governments with funding to prevent evictions and housing instability, helped prevent at least 1 million evictions in 2021. But as federal aid winds down, state and local governments must consider how they will continue to support rental housing affordability and availability.
It’s a problem that’s been years in the making. “No community, no state, no locality across our country has enough affordable housing to meet the needs of low-income renters,” Gallagher said.
“States and localities really rely on federal resources to be able to … solve a lot of these problems,” she said, but “that infrastructure at the state and local level is really crucial and instrumental … to implement policy in an effective way.”
The NLIHC’s State and Local Innovation project will offer government leaders a range of resources to help them develop and implement housing policies that reduce the risk of eviction and homelessness for renters.
The project will include a National Tenant Protections Network, a forum where officials, housing providers, community organizations and other stakeholders share information and best practices. The coalition will also host monthly calls for leaders and experts to discuss their efforts to improve the affordability and availability of housing in their communities, Gallagher said. Officials can join the network here.
Plus, the NLIHC will release a range of legislative tools to support the passage and implementation of tenant protection policies. State and local leaders will have access to draft bill language, research briefs and other resources to help them better understand different policy options for tenant protections. Lawmakers should consider, for instance, rules regarding excessive rental fees, habitability standards, eviction notice periods and other factors that affect an individual’s housing security, Gallagher said.
Every community will have unique challenges and solutions, “but we want to provide some guidance on what [officials] should be thinking about,” she said.
As part of the project, NLIHC will also maintain a database that tracks state and local rent protection legislation. Officials can see different tenant protections that have been passed, which “will help states and localities understand what their peer communities are doing and learn and reach out [to them],” Gallagher said.
The NLIHC is also developing resources for state and local leaders looking to fund and implement housing trust funds for low-income renters. Exact details are still being worked out, Gallagher said, but the coalition aims to provide guidance on how to finance and administer housing trust funds.
Ultimately, the State and Local Innovation project aims to address the housing crisis at the state and local level, but the data and insights from it could also help officials advocate for more federal action, Gallagher said.
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