APPENDIX D
Proposed List of Actions by Category of Priority
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
Provide immediate, emergency assistance | ||||
NEAR | 1A-1: Establish a national task force to prevent eviction and mitigate its effects during the pandemic and beyond. | Executive Office of the President | Key state and federal agencies that administer and coordinate major social programs | 9 |
SHORT | 1A-2: Use current administrative infrastructures to allocate emergency rental assistance toward tenant arrears. | State and federal social service administrators | Landlords | 10 |
SHORT | 1A-5: Distribute federal relief funds to legal aid programs for tenant assistance. | U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) | U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) | 11 |
NEAR | 3A-1: Increase the number of Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs) to guarantee that households with incomes below 50 percent of the area median receive housing assistance during the pandemic. | Congress and HUD | Local public housing agencies | 29 |
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
Stabilize housing, families, and communities to support health | ||||
MEDIUM | 1A-4: Develop web-based tools and provide technical support for individuals seeking social services to better connect to benefits. | HUD | 11 | |
SHORT | 1C-3: Extend eligibility for unemployment insurance to workers traditionally uncovered. | Congress | USDOL and state governments | 14 |
NEAR | 1B-2: Partner to connect with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), immigrants, and refugees that may not be covered by public assistance programs, as well as people living with disabilities and historically marginalized communities. | State and local governments | Community-based organizations (CBOs) | 12 |
NEAR | 2B-2: Publish guidelines on when short-term COVID-19 protections such as eviction moratoriums can be lifted based on local health metrics and employment statistics. | HUD, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) | Health care nonprofits, housing services, health care companies, and state health care and social service agencies | 24 |
SHORT | 1C-5: Reauthorize the WIOA and increase funding for WPA-authorized job search programs. | Congress | 14 |
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
Support and assist renters and property owners1 | ||||
NEAR | 1A-3: Provide landlords with information on tenant assistance programs. | Local public housing authorities (PHAs), state housing agencies, local governments | Landlord associations | 10 |
NEAR | 1B-1: Provide support to community-based organizations (CBOs) to establish automatic processes for tenant legal assistance. | State and local governments | In consultation with landlords and in support of CBOs | 12 |
SHORT | 3B-1: Expand the HCV program to include robust housing counseling for both tenants and landlords to improve uptake. | Congress, HUD, state housing agencies | PHAs, property owners, and landlord associations | 30 |
SHORT | 3B-3: Implement landlord recruitment and retention strategies to increase the number of housing units that accept HCVs through education, incentives, and reduced administrative burdens. | HUD, state housing agencies | Property owners and landlord associations | 30 |
MEDIUM | 4A-6: Incentivize rental management companies to invest private capital to preserve Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) Section 8, and naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) properties. | State and local housing authorities | Rental management companies | 38 |
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1 The text of these headers and associated recommendations have been modified from that in the pre-publication version of this document. Two categories were refined to better reflect the potential broad economic, social, and health impacts of the suggested recommendations.
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
Support and assist landlords | ||||
SHORT | 4B-1: Expand the U.S. Treasury Department’s (Treasury’s) Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, HUD’s HOME Investments Partnership program, and the National Housing Trust Fund, which support CDFIs and for- and nonprofit housing developers to develop and invest in affordable housing. | Congress, Treasury, HUD | 39 | |
MEDIUM | 4B-3: Initiate programs to close credit gaps and create financial incentives for developers to build or rehabilitate affordable housing. | HUD | Community investment organizations | 40 |
Capture and build in existing pandemic-response efforts for the longer term | ||||
SHORT | 1C-1: Extend federally funded support of unemployment insurance and SNAP programs, contingent on state-by-state economic improvement. | Congress | State public health agencies | 14 |
NEAR | 1C-6: Consider policy options to connect unemployment insurance and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries with WIOA and WPA services. | Congress | 15 |
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
MEDIUM | 1C-4: Modernize SNAP by updating the Thrifty Food Plan. | USDA Food and Nutrition Service | 14 | |
MEDIUM | 1C-8: Improve infrastructure for bridging services and delivering payments to households to mitigate economic damage in future crises. | USDOL, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), HUD, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and state governments | 15 | |
MEDIUM | 2A-5: Build a publicly accessible National Housing Security Dashboard, combining information sought in Actions 2A-1, 2A-2, 2A-3, and 2A-4 into a usable online interface. | HUD | Data scientists from the private, academic, and nonprofit sectors | 23 |
SHORT | 3A-2: Permanently increase the number of HCVs after the pandemic to guarantee that households with incomes below 50 percent of the area median receive housing assistance. | Congress, HUD | Local public housing agencies | 29 |
Set research priorities and new partnerships to inform long-term improvements | ||||
SHORT | 2A-1: Establish a temporary Eviction Data Collection Assistance Program to assess data needs and modernize electronic filing systems. | Congress | HUD, U.S. Census Bureau, and housing experts | 19 |
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
NEAR | 2A-2: Establish a federal reporting standard and online reporting portal for evictions data. | HUD | PHAs, local and state governments, landlords and their legal reps, sheriff’s departments and law enforcement agencies, state and local courts | 19 |
SHORT | 2A-3: Launch and coordinate a comprehensive quantitative research program on evictions and housing instability. | HUD | Research institutes, U.S. Census Bureau, philanthropies, landlords and property managers, nonprofits, and CBOs | 21 |
SHORT | 2A-4: Launch and coordinate a comprehensive qualitative research program on evictions and housing instability. | HUD | CBOs, PHAs, philanthropies, and research institutes | 22 |
SHORT | 2B-1: Fund research to compile strategies and ordinances to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 in housing unstable populations. | HUD and HHS (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]) | State health care agencies and health care companies | 24 |
MEDIUM | 2C-1: Perform a gap analysis of all programs that provide housing support to identify needs, overlaps, inefficiencies, and gaps in outreach during the pandemic and other crises. | Research institutes funded by philanthropies and state and federal housing agencies | Tenant advocates and rental property developers, investors, and operators | 25 |
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
MEDIUM | 2C-2: Use the data available on the proposed eviction dashboard (see Action 2A) to develop metrics for the evaluation of housing support programs for both tenants and property owners (in support of Action 2A-4). | Research institutes funded by philanthropies, state and federal housing agencies | Tenant advocates and rental property developers, investors, and operators | 25 |
Set research priorities and new partnerships to inform long-term improvements | ||||
SHORT | 2C-3: Create interdisciplinary research agendas for the evaluation of health, social, and economic interventions used to reduce housing instability during crises that reflect the diversity and lived experiences of the most affected communities. | Research institutes funded by philanthropies, state and federal housing agencies | Tenant advocates and rental property developers, investors, and operators | 26 |
SHORT | 2C-4: Support efforts to collect the evidence needed to fill gaps in knowledge about differential outcomes of eviction by race and ethnicity. | Research institutes funded by philanthropies, state and federal housing agencies | Tenant advocates and rental property developers, investors, and operators | 26 |
SHORT | 3D-1: Establish a program under HUD to provide free credit counseling for renters in utility or housing arrears who apply for rental assistance. | Congress, HUD | 33 |
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
MEDIUM | 4A-7: Identify at-risk properties, and provide resources to rehabilitate and/or purchase them. | Local governments | PHAs and nonprofit housing organizations | 39 |
MEDIUM | 4A-8: Increase funding for housing partnership networks that enable community-oriented financing, scaled for the number of rental units needed. | Local, state, and federal governments | Philanthropies | 39 |
SHORT | 4B-2: Fund academic or other research institutions to study the Capital Magnet Fund (CMF) to understand its impacts. | Philanthropies | 40 | |
Promote legislative and regulatory changes to build a more resilient system for future crises | ||||
MEDIUM | 1C-7: Use the infrastructure in Action 1A-1 and the dashboard in 2A-5 to integrate unemployment insurance with other social insurance programs, such as SNAP and housing assistance programs. | USDOL | State social service and labor agencies | 15 |
SHORT | 3B-2: Implement HUD’s Small Area Fair Market Rents to allow the use of HCVs throughout metropolitan areas. | Congress, HUD, state housing agencies | PHAs, property owners, and landlord associations | 30 |
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
SHORT | 3C-1: Amend the Fair Housing Act to include discrimination based on source of income as a prohibited factor in rental screening and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to include rental agreements as credit transactions. | Congress | 32 | |
SHORT | 3C-2: Amend federal fair housing laws to create a path to prosecution for landlords who abuse the eviction process. | Congress | 32 | |
SHORT | 3C-3: Increase the internal resources available to enforce federal fair housing laws that support localities in providing legal assistance and protection for tenants. | Congress | 32 | |
SHORT | 3D-2: Integrate free credit counseling services with application for unemployment insurance benefits or housing assistance benefits. | HUD, USDOL, HHS, USDA | Credit counseling agencies and state and local social service administrators | 33 |
MEDIUM | 4A-1: Extend and improve LIHTC program to ensure that LIHTC units are prioritized and subsidized for the lowest-income individuals and families. | Congress | 38 |
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
MEDIUM | 4A-2: Ensure that the LIHTC expands recapitalization and preservation of existing affordable housing nearing the end of compliance periods. | Federal policy makers | 38 | |
MEDIUM | 4A-3: Prioritize preservation in LIHTC Qualified Allocation Plans. | State governments | 38 | |
MEDIUM | 4A-4: Continue and increase funding for the National Housing Trust Fund that supports low-income residents. | Congress | 38 | |
MEDIUM | 4A-5: Expand the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program to allow more public housing to shift to more sustainable Section 8 Project-Based Voucher (PBV) and Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) platforms without displacing families. | HUD | 38 |
Timeframe | Action | Actor | Partners | Page |
---|---|---|---|---|
Promote legislative and regulatory changes to build a more resilient system for future crises | ||||
MEDIUM | 4C-1: Require that to receive competitive funding for housing, states and local governments should demonstrate measurable progress toward meeting regional housing needs and distributing affordable housing across a diverse range of communities. | Federal, state, and local governments | 41 | |
MEDIUM | 4C-2: Create local incentives, combined with inclusionary zoning mandates where possible, to increase the affordable housing supply. | Local governments | 41 | |
SHORT | 4C-3: Encourage governors, mayors, and city councils to continue working to eliminate exclusionary land-use regulations. | State and local governments | 41 | |
MEDIUM | 4C-4: Continue enforcing existing fair housing legislation. | HUD, DOJ | 41 |
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