Housing leaders are looking ahead at what is needed on all levels to combat the COVID-19 crisis.
“Now more than ever we have to first protect and house people who are homeless, prevent more people from becoming homeless, and preserve the limited affordable housing that exists in our country,” Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), told attendees of the Urban Land Institute “Confronting COVID-19 in Multifamily Housing” webinar. “Just from unemployment numbers alone, we know the need for affordable housing will increase. It’s too soon to tell just how bad it’s going to get, but clearly it’s going to become worse.”
The $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was a start in providing aid, she said. However, “it’s not enough, we’re going to need more than that.”
The biggest relief package in history included significant funding to assist homeless shelters, public housing, and other vital housing programs.
Doug Bibby, president of the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), agreed that more needs to be done for both renters and multifamily owners and operators.
“There’s a lot of stress out there. [The CARES Act] was severely lacking with connection to housing,” said Bibby. “We are all working toward the fixes and the new asks in what will be a disaster relief package.”
The NMHC has called for an emergency housing assistance fund for renter households; financial assistance and modification of the multifamily forbearance and eviction moratorium provisions in the CARES Act; an expansion of the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program to include multifamily businesses; enactment of the Multifamily Depreciation Parity Act; and an infrastructure investment packages that promote housing construction and rehabilitation.
Yentel said the NLIHC also is working with the leadership and members of Congress with a goal of getting at least $11.5 billion of additional emergency solutions grants, a national and uniform moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, and $100 billion for emergency rental assistance and eviction prevention. Additional needs include a moratorium on homeless encampment sweeps, emergency funds for public housing and other Department of Housing and Urban Development-subsidized housing, and access to legal services and housing counseling.
“It offers us some opportunities. The one opportunity will be that at some point Congress will turn to a package to stimulate the economy,” she added. “Constructing affordable housing can help with that. We have many years and decades of data and messages for how many jobs are created and local economies improved when we build affordable housing.”
Yentel said the industry is organized and poised to take advantage of that when it arises.
“There are so many housing groups from developers and renters and everyone in between who can work with us to push Congress to make investments in the National Housing Trust Fund, improve and increase the low-income housing tax credit, and a number of other ways to build homes for low-income people.”
In the immediate future, communication and partnerships are critical to weather the pandemic, urged Bibby and Yentel.
Bibby said the NMHC has emphasized for each owner or fee manager to have contact with every resident to assess their needs.
“This is a time when it’s got to be one-on-one contact,” he said. “Personal contact and letting every single person know that you want to work with them is the best way to approach it.”
Yentel added that the needs of residents in subsidized housing goes beyond being in the home. It’s about services, like WiFi or computers, to continue educating their children as well as food while schools are closed or incomes are going down and food banks are struggling to keep food on their shelves.
“Partnerships at this moment are critical,” she said, encouraging owners and managers to be resourceful and triage the residents’ needs. Solutions include reaching out to the food banks as well as the local libraries that are closed but might have equipment to share.
She noted that it is also important that local communities do all they can for the people who are homeless, including seniors and those with underlying health issues, by getting them into trailers, RVs, or hotels to isolate and stay safe from the virus.
“There are a lot of state and local governments, foundations, and private philanthropists who are putting money toward these resources,” she said. “Get creative to get these people into places where they can isolate.”
Yentel added that hotels are a great example. Filling the empty hotel rooms with people who are homeless protects them as well as the whole city and can keep people working, as well as keep the hotels afloat through the financial crisis. So far, she said she has seen about a dozen cities contracting with hotels to free up space and move people into those rooms, but it’s not happening fast enough or at scale anywhere.
“Our collective health depends on our ability to stay home,” she said. “Maybe one result will be we have a better understanding professionally, personally, and in a new profound way that housing is health care. We won’t contain the pandemic until every one of us has the ability to isolate.”
It’s time for the nation to reset, said Dr. Megan Sandel, co-director of the GROW clinic at Boston Medical Center, co-lead principal investigator with Children’s HealthWatch, and associate professor of pediatrics at Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health.
“Housing acts as a vaccine. A vaccine keeps you healthy now and in the future,” said the nationally recognized expert on health and housing. “We need additional resources for housing, including the multifamily space. We have to protect what we have, but we need a new investment at the federal level for kids and families to equitably give everyone that fair shot.”
