This holiday season, consider giving the gift of support to NLIHC and our state and tribal partners by donating on behalf of housing justice!
Over the last year, NLIHC continued to lead in the areas of affordable housing research, policy analysis, and advocacy, successfully working with low-income renters, people experiencing homelessness, and other key partners across the country to protect and expand vital affordable housing resources and to expand tenant protections and rights. Thanks in large part to collaboration with our state and tribal partners, we were able to make great strides in the fight for affordable housing:
- Our HoUSed Campaign for Universal, Stable, Affordable Homes and Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH) campaign mobilized thousands of partners throughout 2021 and 2022 to push for investments in housing for the lowest-income people through the “Build Back Better Act.” This year, the HoUSed and OSAH campaigns focused especially on protecting low-income families from the threat of deep budget cuts to HUD's housing and homelessness programs. When Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives threatened to cut HUD’s budget by 30% – a move that would have resulted in as many as 1 million households losing access to rental assistance and 120,000 fewer people experiencing homelessness having access to services – NLIHC mobilized HoUSed and OSAH campaign members and successfully helped prevent such extreme budget cuts. NLIHC and our partners are now advocating for the highest level of funding possible under tight budget caps for affordable housing and homelessness programs and working to protect thousands of our nation’s lowest-income and most marginalized households from losing their rental assistance.
- NLIHC’s End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) project achieved significant success in ensuring that $46.5 billion in federal emergency rental assistance that was made available during the pandemic reached the lowest-income and most marginalized people. To date, nearly all ERA funds have been spent or obligated, and nearly 11 million ERA payments have been made. Those households that have so far received assistance are predominantly very low- (80%) and extremely low-income (64%) and disproportionately households of color (43% are Black and 20% are Latino), a direct result of NLIHC’s and our ERASE partners’ intentional advocacy and program-influencing efforts, which succeeded in centering equity as a primary goal in ERA distribution.
- NLIHC and our partners have also succeeded in helping bring about the passage of more than 200 new renter protections (including eviction stays covering the period when people are applying for ERA, right-to-counsel ordinances, eviction filing expungement legislation, and source-of-income discrimination protections) in states and jurisdictions around the country.
- With help from our partners, NLIHC continued to expand the racial justice work of our IDEAS (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism, and Systems Thinking) project, and, among other things, deepen our commitment to supporting and amplifying the voices of tenant leaders in our work. For example, this fall, NLIHC convened our second annual Collective Retreat in Albany, Georgia, where members of our 2023-24 Collective (previously known as the Tenant Leader Cohort) gathered to discuss their shared goals for achieving housing justice and to engage in community healing in preparation for their upcoming work.
- NLIHC’s Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC) – a group of more than 900 national, state, and local organizations working to ensure that federal disaster recovery efforts reach the lowest-income and most marginalized survivors – continued to grow over the last year, reinforcing its position as a national leader in the field of disaster housing recovery advocacy by providing materials, information, and presentations assisting advocates working in disaster-stricken areas and providing recommendations that are regularly adopted in disaster recovery reform efforts.
This holiday season, consider supporting NLIHC and our state and tribal partners as we continue our important work advocating for housing justice.
You can also support NLIHC and our partners by:
- Joining us in urging Congress to advance the equitable, anti-racist policies and large-scale, sustained investments needed to ensure that renters with the lowest incomes have an affordable place to call home.
- Becoming a member of NLIHC to help advocate for equitable housing policies.
- Signing up for updates and calls to action from NLIHC.
Thank you for your advocacy!