Freefall: Why Our Housing Safety Net Is Failing the Lowest-Income Renters During COVID-19

.269 I.Introduction President Roosevelt famously described "one third of a nation ill-housed" in his 1937 inaugural address following his re-election1 and later that year championed legislation that created a federal public housing program.2 Eight decades later, while much progress has been made in expanding the nation's access to safe and affordable housing, only one in three of our nation's 11.2 million extremely low income renters has access to an affordable home.3 These shortfalls have only grown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with record unemployment rates impacting low-wage renters the hardest.4 More than twenty million renters live in households that have experienced COVID-related job losses.5 And a recent review of research on the pandemic's impacts on renters found that between twenty-nine and forty-three percent of renter households-between thirty and forty million households-could be at risk of eviction by the end of 2020.6 Following patterns well documented before the pandemic, people of color will be hit hardest by these evictions.7 In addition, COVID-impacted households are more likely to live in small mom-and-pop rentals, leaving these landlords at a graver risk of foreclosure, potentially exacerbating the shortfall of affordable rental properties.8 In response to COVID-19 and the ensuing eviction crisis, new housing policies and programs have popped up to support renters across the country focused on short-term relief such as eviction moratoria and onetime rental assistance. "9 It was not until 1968 that the initial goal of 800,000 public housing units would be met, diminished by the demolition of 425,000 existing central city housing units through slum-clearance programs.10 Opponents of public housing, concerned that the program was unfairly competing with private-housing producers, lobbied to limit the authorization of funds necessary to meet the goals of the 1949 Act, and local battles over the siting of public housing, often linked to racial and class prejudice, also slowed progress.11 Between 1960 and 1972, Congress sought to expand affordable housing programs at all levels, including rental housing production, rehabilitation programs, and subsidized financing mechanisms offered to private developers. A 1971 review of affordable housing programs raised fears about program costs, targeting, and environmental and community impacts, along with administrative problems.13 In early 1973, the administration imposed a moratorium on subs