Rental Eviction and the COVID-19 Pandemic

To coordinate the connection of individuals and families at risk of eviction with information and resources to a level commensurate with the gravity of the housing instability problem, the Executive Office of the President should consider establishing a national task force to prevent eviction and mitigate its effects during the pandemic and beyond. This task force could extend the existing Interagency Council on Homelessness with representation from key state and federal agencies that administer and coordinate major social programs currently serving millions of individuals affected by the COVID-19 crisis.17 In addition, this task force could include tenant advocates, attorneys, and property owners. The task force could take the following specific actions:

• Working with states as necessary, coordinate and deploy proactive outreach to renters at risk of eviction because of the COVID-19 pandemic by harnessing, modernizing, and scaling up existing administrative social program infrastructure to directly reach individuals with tailored information about eviction moratoriums, legal service providers at the local level, and social support programs.
• Develop data-driven strategies based on existing information on service recipients to target outreach efforts to those renters most at risk of being affected by housing instability, eviction, and homelessness (see Goal 2).
• Devise strategies for reaching out to individuals who have never received federal support, especially historically marginalized groups, using, among other channels, local networks, community-based organizations (see also Strategy 1B), and a national outreach campaign.
• Devise guidance and best practices on how agencies can cooperate to develop one-stop application portals for sharing information and streamlining the application process for multiple programs.
• In collaboration with nongovernmental organizations, develop recommendations for reaching traditionally marginalized communities with limited access to information technology and broadband internet.
• Devise a strategy for immediately mobilizing a large number of temporary state and local administrative employees and streamlining state procedures to enable the above actions and quickly disburse federal emergency rental assistance to the large number of applicants expected.

Local public housing authorities, state housing agencies, and local governments should reach out to landlords, including through local property management associations, to ensure that they are fully informed of all assistance programs available to tenants in every market, including financial and legal support, online support, and language translation, and, if they can, assist them in gaining access to these services.

State and local governments should provide funding and support to community-based organizations, such as legal aid agencies and tenant advocates, for establishing a process, in consultation with landlords, that triggers assistance in the form of the provision of information and legal aid to tenants regarding procedures, rights, and resources for which they may be eligible should they receive a notice of eviction or unlawful detainer notice. These funds could support community-based organizations in training existing and new staff to assist individuals at risk of eviction because of the pandemic, with the goal of expanding and sustaining their operations through the economic recovery.

State and local governments should enlist community-based organizations, particularly those with expertise in culturally specific communications, to connect with members of the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), immigrant, and refugee communities that may not be covered by public assistance programs; people with disabilities; and members of other historically marginalized communities.

The U.S. Congress should consider policy options for better connecting to intensive WIOA and WPA services those individuals being served by unemployment insurance and SNAP who are at risk of long-term unemployment as a result of the pandemic.

HUD, public housing authorities, and local and state governments should establish a federal reporting standard for eviction data, as well as a program akin to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program through which local police departments voluntarily submit their crime data to a state UCR program or directly to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. HUD could offer an online system for free to promote a basic level of uniformity, information security, and federal access. In addition, state and local jurisdictions should require:

• Landlords and their legal representatives to notify local authorities whenever eviction notices or unlawful detainer notices are sent,30 and those authorities should record the actions and their outcomes (e.g., abandonment).
• Sheriff’s departments (or other responsible law enforcement agencies) to record and report when they are asked to carry out or execute a writ of restitution.
• State and local courts to file electronic copies of all documents associated with eviction cases, and authorities should report these cases through the reporting program recommended here.
• Public housing authorities, as organizations that serve largely populations most vulnerable to eviction, to file independent reports on any eviction actions within the public housing system, including the circumstances and outcomes of any notices, filings, and writs and the stage in the process if and when the tenant was removed from the unit.

HUD, HHS, and USDOL, in partnership with housing services, state agencies administering health care services, public health, Medicare/Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, as well as nonprofit organizations and the private health care sector, should publish guidelines on the conditions under which it is safe to remove such short-term COVID-19 protections as eviction moratoriums based on local health metrics and employment statistics. Specifically, in partnership with state public health authorities, these actors should link COVID-19 ordinances, cases, hospitalizations, intensive care unit (ICU) visits, mortality, testing availability, vaccination coverage, and employment statistics in the national eviction dashboard proposed under Action 2A-5. These guidelines could also inform understanding of the accessibility and availability of safe in-person pre-K care and K-12 education.

The U.S. Congress and HUD, in partnership with local public housing authorities as administrators, should consider increasing the number of HCVs during the pandemic emergency to guarantee that households with incomes below 50 percent of the area median that do not receive housing assistance from other sources are offered this benefit.

HUD, state housing agencies, property owners, and landlord associations should implement HUD’s Small Area Fair Market Rents to enhance the use of HCVs throughout metropolitan areas, as opposed to limiting them to lower-income, often segregated, communities.

To protect tenants from eviction and provide relief for landlords, state and federal agencies that administer social programs could use their administrative infrastructures—along with any improvements resulting from Action 1A-1—to quickly and effectively allocate the emergency rental assistance funds provided by recent federal relief packages directly to tenant rental arrears accumulated because of hardship during the pandemic. To reduce the administrative burden placed on tenants, landlords could be permitted to apply for rental assistance.

HUD should engage with the U.S. Department of Justice to distribute funds provided by recent federal relief packages to existing legal aid programs in order to increase the number of attorneys that can represent tenants and coordinate the right to access legal counsel for those facing eviction because of the hardship resulting from the pandemic. To create comprehensive and lasting relief for tenants at risk of eviction because of the pandemic, this service could be part of a strategic multitiered approach (dispute resolution, right to counsel, social support, financial assistance; see Strategy 1C) with a state-by-state evaluation program.

The U.S. Congress, in partnership with state public health authorities, should consider making the expiration of federally funded extensions of the unemployment insurance and SNAP programs contingent on sufficient improvement in state economic conditions, rather than time-based, during the pandemic and after it has been controlled. They should also consider extending policies stipulating that unemployment insurance income should not count toward SNAP eligibility during the same period.

The U.S. Congress, USDOL, and state governments might consider ways to extend eligibility for unemployment insurance permanently for workers who are traditionally uncovered, including self-employed and part-time workers and those who otherwise do not meet the income threshold. Action 1C-4: USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service could modernize SNAP by updating the Thrifty

The U.S. Congress should consider reauthorizing the WIOA and increasing funding for intensive job search programs authorized through the WPA to prepare for an influx of individuals seeking work after having lost their jobs during the pandemic.

The U.S. Congress, in partnership with HUD, the U.S. Census Bureau, and experts in housing instability, should consider establishing a temporary (2- to 3-year) Eviction Data-Collection Assistance Program that would (1) create a task force to assess the current state of data and existing databases and inform data collection strategies, and (2) fund underresourced state and local jurisdictions to collect data, modernize their electronic filing and records systems, and overcome administrative barriers to fulfilling reporting requirements discussed under Action 2A-2.

HUD, in collaboration with academics and other researchers, the Census Bureau, philanthropies, landlords and property managers, and community-based organizations, should launch and coordinate a comprehensive quantitative research program that provides an ongoing accurate picture of housing insecurity in the United States based on existing data and data to be collected in the future. Types and sources of data used for this research should include

• data from existing collection instruments, such as the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey,³⁴ the Rental Housing Finance Survey,³⁵ and the American Housing Survey,³⁶ and local homelessness management information systems;³⁷
• information on eviction cases as stated in the November 2020 update to HUD’s Research Roadmap;³⁸
• a compendium of relevant state and local laws and regulations germane to affordable housing, housing habitability, eviction, and tenant discrimination;
• eviction data collected by private firms for the purpose of tenant screening (such information may have to be licensed or purchased outright);
• near-real-time information about rental applicants, including source of income, demographic information consistent with the protected classes under the Fair Housing Act,39 and the application rates and waiting lists for federal housing assistance programs; and
• near-real-time information about the locations and quantities of outstanding tenant rental arrears nationwide so emergency funds and other assistance can be targeted effectively and distributed rapidly—information that will be particularly important for preventing major disruptions for both tenants and landlords during recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises.

34 See https://www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/hhp/#.
35 See https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/rhfs.html.
36 See https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs.html.
37 See https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/hmis.
38 See https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Research-Roadmap-2020.pdf (p. 52, accessed May 19, 2021). While HUD has already called for a feasibility study and clearly recognizes the complexity of this monumental task, it must be acted upon rapidly and treated as an immediate priority since many subsequent actions will depend on its quick and effective implementation

HUD, in collaboration with community-based organizations, public housing authorities, and academic and other research institutes, should launch and coordinate a comprehensive qualitative research program to identify, record, and analyze both short-term predictors of housing instability and more robust, long-term metrics to inform future policy. These indicators will be essential to monitoring eviction risks and inequities and responding rapidly to unmet housing needs in targeted, equitable, and communitycentric ways.40 Such qualitative indicators may include tenant and landlord characteristics related to history, identity, or behavior and circumstances surrounding the initiation of eviction proceedings.

HUD and HHS (specifically the CDC), in partnership with state agencies administering health care services, public health, and Medicare/Medicaid, as well as organizations and businesses in the health care sector, should fund research to compile strategies and ordinances aimed at mitigating the risk of COVID-19 in housing-unstable populations across the nation, assess their effectiveness, and develop models or best practices that can be applied by local and state housing and public health authorities and organizations to mitigate the health effects of evictions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, including strategies for tracking risks and determining appropriate indicators for enacting and lifting such measures.

Academic or other research institutions should create interdisciplinary research agendas for the evaluation of health, social, and economic interventions used to reduce housing instability in the context of such major stressors as a pandemic, and for research on additional needs in this area that reflects the diversity and lived experiences of the most affected and at-risk communities.

Academic or other research institutions should support efforts to collect the evidence needed to fill gaps in knowledge about differential outcomes of eviction by race and ethnicity, such as impacts and costs of eviction for BIPOC, and the potential for racial inequities in outcomes due to policy design and implementation in the context of such major stressors as a pandemic.

In addition to increasing the number of HCVs as proposed under Action 3A-2, the U.S. Congress should consider expanding the HCV program to include robust housing counseling for both tenants and landlords aimed at expanding the acceptance of housing vouchers, as well as case management services to participants who desire them.

Public housing authorities and landlord associations should implement landlord recruitment and retention strategies to increase the number of housing units that accept HCVs by educating landlords on the program, reducing administrative burdens, and/or increasing financial incentives to participate in the program.

The U.S. Congress should consider amending the Fair Housing Act to include discrimination based on source of income as a prohibited factor in rental screening, and the ECOA to include rental agreements as credit transactions.

The U.S Congress should consider amending the federal fair housing laws to create a path to prosecution for landlords who abuse the eviction process based on source of income and violate these laws, focusing on data integrity for eviction court records and prevention measures. This and other predatory practices should be monitored for serial patterns, investigated, and prosecuted as tenant abuse under the Unfair, Deceptive, and Abusive Practices law or fair housing or fair lending laws as applicable.

The U.S Congress should consider increasing internal resources available to enforce federal fair housing laws that support localities in providing legal assistance and protection for tenants.

The U.S. Congress and HUD should consider establishing a program under HUD to provide free credit counseling for renters in housing or utility arrears who apply for rental assistance to help them avoid the lasting effects of eviction during the unprecedented period of the pandemic and thereafter.

HUD, USDOL, HHS, and USDA, in coordination with credit counseling agencies and state and local agencies that administer low-income assistance programs, should integrate the offering of free credit counseling services to those newly unemployed with the process of applying for unemployment insurance benefits or for any low-income assistance program to mitigate the risk of falling into housing or utility arrearages. This action could be taken in conjunction with Action 1B-1, with the service coordinator program identified in Action 3B-1, or separately.

The U.S. Congress, Treasury, and HUD should consider expanding Treasury’s CDFI Fund and 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.

Philanthropies should fund academic or other research institutions to study the CMF in order to understand its impacts.

State and local governments should encourage governors, mayors, and city councils to continue to work to eliminate exclusionary land-use regulations, which raise housing costs and restrict access to housing and economic mobility, entrenching existing inequities.⁶⁸

68 See the strategy employed in Massachusetts (Chapter 40B, 40R) (Cowan, 2006; Karki, 2015). Recent research suggests that Chapter 40B has effectively boosted the supply of affordable housing and overcome local exclusionary barriers in the jurisdictions most resistant to affordable housing development in Massachusetts (Fisher and Marantz, 2015; Marantz and Zheng, 2020; Reid et al., 2017).

HUD should develop and provide technical support for an interactive web-based screening tool that would enable individuals seeking economic support and community-based organizations assisting them to better connect to the range of social benefits available to them, such as unemployment insurance, SNAP, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Child Tax Credit (CTC), and Medicaid.

The U.S. Congress, USDOL, and state governments should consider a comprehensive reform of the unemployment insurance system aimed at increasing accessibility and benefits, including but not limited to modernizing the system infrastructure, instituting mandated benefit floors, improving the financial position of state unemployment insurance funds, and reducing administrative hurdles for receiving benefits.

To reach low-income renters more effectively, USDOL and responsible state agencies could use the infrastructure discussed under Action 1A-1 to take steps toward integrating unemployment insurance programs with other social insurance programs serving similar populations, such as SNAP and housing assistance programs, using the dashboard described in Action 2A-5 below.

In light of the difficulties encountered by the government while distributing emergency assistance to vulnerable individuals during the pandemic, USDOL, USDA, HUD, IRS, and state governments should improve infrastructure for linking services and delivering payments to households, in particular those that do not currently file taxes, so that during future disruptive events, individuals and households will receive payments in a timely fashion, protecting them and the nation’s economy.

HUD, in consultation with data scientists in the private, academic, and nongovernmental organization sectors, should build a publicly accessible National Housing Security Dashboard combining, collating, translating, and visualizing all the information sought under Actions 2A-1, 2A-2, 2A-3, and 2A-4 into a usable online interface. Actionable and geographically granular information on the dashboard should grow as new types of information become available and should progressively include

• national, state, county, and tract aggregated counts of eviction notices, filings, settlements, executions, and outcomes of tenants who vacated (either voluntarily or forcibly), by characteristics of affected tenants and their landlords;
• interactive breakouts explaining specific protection protocols, such as whether particular tenants are receiving federal housing assistance and under which programs, the reasons for eviction, and statistics on illegal evictions (e.g., those conducted in violation of COVID-19– related moratoriums); and
• a reporting of housing assistance needs containing national, state, county, and tract aggregated counts of households that have applied for or are receiving low-income housing assistance, sortable by characteristics of affected tenants and programs.

Academic or other research institutions should perform a gap analysis of all programs that provide housing support to identify needs, overlaps, inefficiencies, and gaps in outreach during the pandemic or other catastrophic events.

Academic or other research institutions should use the data available on the proposed eviction dashboard (see strategy 2A) to develop metrics for the evaluation of housing support programs for both tenants and property owners (this action is in support of Action 2A-4).

The U.S. Congress should consider extending and improving the LIHTC program to ensure that LIHTC units are prioritized and subsidized for the lowest-income individuals and families. This would increase incentives for developers to make housing affordable for extremely low-income renters (‹ percent of the area median income) and incentivize affordable housing development in tribal and rural communities (NLIHC, 2019). Such tax credits could be financed by Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE)⁶² purchases. Absent market incentives for GSEs to invest in these credits under conservatorship, they should be encouraged to do so by the Federal Housing Finance Agency under the direction of the Department of Treasury.

62 See https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/gse.html.

Federal policy makers could ensure that the LIHTC expands recapitalization and preservation of existing affordable housing properties nearing the end of their original compliance periods.

State governments should consider prioritizing preservation in LIHTC Qualified Allocation Plans.

The U.S. Congress should consider increasing funding for the National Housing Trust Fund that supports low-income residents.

HUD should consider expanding the RAD program to allow more public housing properties to shift to more sustainable Section 8 PBV and PBRA platforms and ensure that RAD does not displace families. In addition, housing subsidies should be provided to incentivize the renovations needed to meet the backlog of public housing maintenance and repairs so as to ensure that affordable housing is fully functional and safe.

State and local housing authorities should incentivize rental management companies to invest private capital in preserving LIHTC, HAP Section 8, and NOAH properties. Specific strategies these companies should employ are

• converting non–rent-regulated NOAH properties to rent-restricted properties in conjunction with public incentives, for example, tax abatements, soft money loans, and/or public grants in exchange for renovating and preserving the affordability of NOAH properties;
• maintaining long-term HAP Section 8 contracts to ensure long-term affordability through the HUD Mark-to-Market process to increase Section 8 market rent reimbursements to the prevailing market rates; and
• making investments to improve long-term property energy efficiency in order to lower the utility costs of affordable residences, and seeking out rebates from utility companies to offset the capital expenditure on energy enhancements.

Local governments, in partnership with public housing authorities and nonprofit housing organizations, should identify at-risk properties and provide resources for rehabilitating and/or purchasing them, and should consider establishing or expanding such programs as the TOPA and COPA policies and NOAH Impact Funds.

Local, state, and federal governments, in partnership with philanthropies, should increase funding for housing partnership networks that enable community-oriented financing, scaled for the number of rental units needed, and should support community and nonprofit ownership models that move affordable housing out of the speculative market.

In partnership with community investment organizations, HUD should consider initiating programs to close credit gaps and create financial incentives for developers to build or rehabilitate affordable housing.

HUD should require that, to receive competitive funding for housing, states and local governments must demonstrate measurable progress toward meeting regional housing needs and distributing affordable housing across a diverse range of communities. Federal oversight of local land-use regulations could be strengthened by increasing reporting requirements for jurisdictions that receive Community Development Block Grants (such as the Yes in My Backyard [YIMBY] Act [Up for Growth, 2020]) and requiring municipalities to reexamine local land-use restrictions when applying for some federal transportation grants (such as the Build More Housing Near Transit Act [Up for Growth, 2019]). Through enabling legislation, states should provide local communities with state regulatory environments that allow them to mandate inclusionary units and/or provide incentives to zone for new multifamily housing development. States should reduce regulatory requirements that increase costs and prevent the development of such housing, and provide property tax exemptions in designated areas for specified time periods for rental or owner-occupied properties (see Whitehead and Williams-Derry, 2014).

Local governments should create local incentives, combined with inclusionary zoning mandates where possible, to increase the supply of affordable housing through mechanisms including zoning reform, acquisition, and increased production of new affordable housing.⁶⁷

67 Inclusionary zoning policies mandate or incentivize that new or renovated developments set aside a small percentage of the units for low-income residents at below-market rates. Frequently these programs have the additional benefit of creating affordable housing that is dispersed throughout a jurisdiction and in areas with high neighborhood opportunity. To make inclusionary zoning effective policy, such policies are frequently combined with density bonuses and refinements to allow for the seamless blending of inclusionary units into development. Additionally, the density bonuses address the potential issue of the mandate for inclusionary housing being an uncompensated taking. These strategies are supported by HUD research and policy recommendations concerning regulatory barriers to affordable housing over many years (HUD, 2021; see also https://www.huduser.gov/portal/taxonomy/term/42).

HUD and the Department of Justice should continue enforcing existing fair housing legislation.