Dear DHRC members and partners,

Millions of renters and people experiencing homelessness lack the resources and protections they need to stay safe and remain stably housed. Senate Republicans need to stop playing political games, do their jobs, and immediately negotiate on a relief bill that includes the essential housing protections and provisions that passed the House over three months ago in the “HEROES Act.”

Join NLIHC, the Coalition on Human Needs, and advocates across the nation for a Day of Action on August 24 to demand that Congress #GetBackToWork and #DoYourJob!

Ways to Participate:

1. Call and email your senators and representatives. Tell them to #DoYourJob, get back to the negotiating table, and immediately pass the essential housing provisions of the HEROES Act. Find the phone numbers of your members of Congress here or send an email. Find a sample script here.
2. Use NLIHC’s Advocacy Toolkit to schedule meetings with members of Congress and engage with them on housing talking points.
3. Amplify personal stories, news articles, blog posts, and other information on social media about how congressional inaction is exacerbating evictions and harming people with the lowest incomes. Use #GetBackToWork, #DoYourJob, and #RentReliefNow. Use NLIHC’s Social Media Toolkit for sample posts and images. Find additional sample social media posts for the Day of Action here.
4. Share stories of how the threat of being evicted has impacted your well-being through NLIHC’s story banking form. We will share these stories with members of Congress, reporters, and on social media.
5. Pitch op-eds to your local newspapers about the need for Congress to restart negotiations and how the pandemic is harming low-income renters and people experiencing homelessness. NLIHC’s #RentReliefNow Media Toolkit contains an op-ed template to help get you started.
    

Join Monday’s (August 24) national call on coronavirus, housing, and homelessness at 2:30-4:00pm ET for a discussion on the latest state of play on coronavirus relief and needed advocacy actions. We will also hear about Monday’s Day of Action, discuss the issue of utility cut-offs, receive updates from the field, and more. Register for the call here: https://tinyurl.com/ru73qan

Additional updates below.

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Coronavirus Update, Friday, August 21, 2020

NLIHC is maintaining a COVID-19/Housing and Homelessness News and Resource page here.

ICYMI: NLIHC held a webinar on August 19 on emergency rental assistance in response to COVID-19. Check out the recording to find out more about the programs created and expanded in response to the pandemic: https://bit.ly/3kYDczv

National Updates  

Advocacy

The NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition will continue to push for a broad array of resources and protections, including emergency rental assistance and eviction prevention assistance, a national moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, and emergency funds for homelessness service providers, housing authorities, and housing providers, among other recommendations. For more information, see DHRC’s full list of recommendations.

Reporting

Newsweek discusses housing advocates’ warnings that the expiration of the federal eviction moratorium will lead to a surge in COVID-19 cases, increase in poverty, and future housing shortages. NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel spoke to Newsweek about the president’s executive order and need for robust emergency rental assistance.

Administration officials told Politico that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will extend a ban on evictions and foreclosures for homes backed by the Federal Housing Administration through the end of the year. The move will cover far fewer homes than did the four-month eviction moratorium that expired on July 24. “The very limited number of covered properties with renters living in them are already covered under existing law, the ‘Protecting Tenants in Foreclosure Act,” said NLIHC’s Diane Yentel.

U.S. News & World Report outlines what tenants can expect from President Trump’s August 8 executive order, highlighting advocates’ concerns that the order, which does not halt evictions, might give renters a false sense of security. NLIHC’s Diane Yentel discusses the urgent need for housing and homelessness resources and what renters can do to prevent eviction.

Federal coronavirus relief aid has kept many tenants housed, but the New York Times reports that as this support ebbs, tenants are forced to take increasingly desperate measures to pay rent - with potentially devastating long-term effects. Solely focusing on eviction rates can paint a misleadingly optimistic picture of the devastating situations millions of tenants are facing.

CNBC reports that evictions are expected to skyrocket as eviction protections come to an end. The federal ban on evictions expired last month, and many states that enacted eviction moratoriums have allowed them to expire.

The United Nations’ expert on housing rights warned of an impending eviction tsunami and urged governments around the world to ban all evictions until the pandemic ends. “Losing your home during the pandemic could mean losing your life,” said Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to housing. “The right to life and adequate housing are intrinsically linked.”

According to Shelterforce, homeless service providers report that the shift from congregate shelters to hotel rooms has had dramatically positive impacts on their clients.

The Fulcrum reports that the looming eviction crisis could create significant barriers to voting in the November election. Like most forms of disenfranchisement, the mass eviction crisis is expected to impact minority communities the most.

The World Economic Forum examines eviction protections implemented around the world in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The article highlights research from NLIHC, Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, and the Aspen Institute.

State and Local News

A list of state and local emergency rental assistance programs is available here from NLIHC.

Alabama

Just weeks after the federal eviction moratorium and supplemental unemployment insurance benefit expired, Montgomery shelters are filling up again with people who are now homeless.

California

Mercury News reports that funding for Project Homekey falls far short of the overwhelming need. Cities, counties, and organizations in the Bay Area submitted 29 applications seeking $324 million from Project Homekey. California, however, has set aside just $100 million for the nine-county region, meaning that local projects will receive less than a third of what they need.

The Los Angeles Times reports that California lawmakers on August 20 declined to support a plan that would have provided tax credits for landlords while sending a separate proposal that would protect tenants back to Governor Gavin Newsom for additional negotiations. Senators moved forward Assembly Bill 1436, which would prohibit evictions for up to a year.

Approximately 30 lawyers and organizers gathered outside the state building in San Francisco to demand that the state Judicial Council extend Emergency Rule 1, which prevents evictions, and is set to expire on September 1. The attorneys argued that reopening the courts is a public health risk and would put seniors and low-income people facing eviction disproportionately at risk of contracting the coronavirus.

Faith in the Valley released two reports that examine the patterns and impacts of evictions, which contribute to the larger housing insecurity crises, in Kern County and San Joaquin County. The reports highlight the pandemic’s impact on evictions and outline actions city, county, and state officials must take to protect vulnerable tenants.

Colorado

Funding from the CARES Act has helped organizations move veterans experiencing homelessness in Colorado Springs to non-congregate settings. Rocky Mountain Human Services is providing funding for 317 veterans experiencing homelessness to temporarily live in motels across Colorado, with the goal to move the veterans into permanent housing.

Connecticut

Governor Ned Lamont on August 21 extended Connecticut’s eviction moratorium to October 1. Governor Lamont also announced that he is doubling funding for Connecticut’s COVID-19 rental assistance program. Just week’s into Connecticut’s COVID-19 rental assistance program, nearly 4,000 people have qualified for the program that was only supposed to serve 2,500 people.

Georgia

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced on August 20 that the city has allocated $22 million from the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) to the Atlanta COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program. The program is expected to help more than 6,700 Atlanta residents with rental, utility, and/or security deposit assistance. Applications for the rental assistance program are now available at: https://relief.uwga.org/.

Illinois

Governor Pritzker J.B. Pritzker will extend Illinois’ eviction moratorium for another 30 days when the current executive order ends on August 22.

Indiana

Governor Eric Holcomb announced on August 19 that Indiana’s rental assistance program will stop accepting applications on August 26, despite receiving more than 30,000 applications since it opened five weeks ago -- nearly three times the number of applications originally expected

Less than a week after Governor Eric Holcomb allowed Indiana’s eviction moratorium to expire on August 14, hundreds of Hoosiers have been served eviction notices. A survey of small claims court cases in Marion County found nearly 600 filings this week, and most of them are evictions. “Unfortunately, this is just what we expected to see,” said Andrew Bradley, policy director at Prosperity Indiana, an NLIHC state partner.

An estimated 600 eviction cases are pending in Allen County, Indiana, and 234 new cases have been filed since Governor Eric Holcomb allowed the eviction moratorium to expire. The Hoosier Housing Needs Coalition, an advocacy group that has urged Governor Holcomb to track eviction data as part of Indiana’s effort to combat the coronavirus, estimates up to 720,000 renters are in danger of losing their homes.

More than one hundred tenants across Greater Lafayette have received eviction notices in less than a week after Indiana’s moratorium was lifted. “We have added additional court time to process evictions,” said Tippecanoe Magistrate Judge Daniel Moore. “We are prepared to hear 100 to 200 evictions per week if necessary.”

Iowa

CNN Business shares the story of a renter in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, who has been waiting four weeks for the sheriff to evict her due to the long backlog of evictions. The county typically sees 15 to 18 evictions per month, but the sheriff’s office reports having 63 evictions in July, and 25 already in August.

Kentucky

The Lexington Herald Leader reports that hearings in Fayette County will resume on Monday, August 24. In Fayette County District Court, there are 157 eviction hearings scheduled next week and an additional 143 hearings the following week. This means more than 300 households could lose their homes by the first week of September.

Missouri

The Kansas City Star shares the story of a single mother of three who was evicted from her Kansas City rental home. According to the Kansas City Eviction Project, more than 1,600 eviction cases have been heard in Jackson County since the moratorium expired on May 31.
New Mexico

The Albuquerque City Council on August 17 approved using $300,000 of federal coronavirus relief funding for eviction prevention assistance programs. Some council members questioned whether the assistance would meet the need for assistance.

New York

Although New York’s eviction moratorium was extended until October 1, advocates say that the state courts and legislature should go further by pausing all eviction proceedings, including those filed before the pandemic’s start. “No one should have to fight to save their home during a pandemic,” said the Housing Justice for All and Right to Counsel NYC Coalitions in a joint statement.

Curbed NY reports that 14,500 New Yorkers have pending eviction warrants and will be the first tenants evicted when the state’s eviction moratorium expires in October. Behind those tenants, there are 200,000 pending eviction cases in New York City alone that were filed before March 17 that can begin to progress through housing court.

Washington

King County launched a $41.4 million rental assistance and eviction prevention program in partnership with community organizations. The county is accepting interest forms from tenants, small landlords, large property landlords and managers, manufactured home park owners and managers, and local nonprofits who wish to participate in the program.

Washington, DC

DCist reviews the current state of eviction protections in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, as well as any public funds available to struggling renters.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin organizations are bracing for a rise in evictions and homelessness in the coming months. According to the Wisconsin Coalition Against Homelessness, eviction filings were above average in Milwaukee County since Governor Tony Evers allowed the statewide eviction moratorium to expire on May 26.

Guidance

Department of Housing and Urban Development

Special Population Rehousing Strategy: Family Violence - August 21

Special Population Rehousing Strategy: Youth and Young Adults - August 21

FEMA

Evacuation and Sheltering Assistance under an Emergency Declaration in a COVID-19 Environment - August 21