NLIHC Releases 2022 Annual Report

NLIHC released its 2022 Annual Report on August 3. In addition to providing financial information and a current list of NLIHC members, partners, and donors, the report surveys NLIHC’s advocacy victories, campaign wins, media accomplishments, research and publications, and other notable triumphs in 2022. Read the 2022 Annual Report here.

NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel highlights the year’s achievements in a letter introducing the report. “Our End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) project continued to provide invaluable support [in 2022] to those state and local organizations working to ensure that the historic $46.55 billion in emergency rental assistance (ERA) made available by Congress during the pandemic reaches those extremely low-income renters for whom it was intended,” writes Diane. “By the end of the year, $38 billion in ERA had been issued to renters in need, with 63% of recipients being extremely low-income households.” Likewise, due to the efforts of NLIHC and a range of partners, “Congress [was persuaded] to raise HUD’s budget by $8.1 billion in fiscal year 2023, ensuring not only that all existing Housing Choice Voucher and Project-Based Rental Assistance contracts would be renewed but that 12,000 additional households receive housing vouchers.”

The report foregrounds how NLIHC helped low-income renters cope with the effects of the pandemic in 2022, including by:

• Arranging a conversation in January 2022 between the ERASE project’s 38 state and local partners and key federal officials from the White House, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury), HUD, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Office, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
• Hosting “Emergency Rental Assistance: The Path to a Permanent Program,” a national convening held by the ERASE project at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in October 2022. Attended by more than 1,200 people, the convening focused on the implementation of ERA and the prospects for making ERA permanent and included five panels, 23 guest speakers, and two messages from members of Congress.
• Publishing Emergency Rental Assistance: A Blueprint for a Permanent Program, a lengthy report that examines the implementation of Treasury’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program by state and local organizations to identify policies and practices that led to successful implementation and provide recommendations for model programs.
• Working with state and local partners throughout the country to help enact more than 175 new state and local tenant protections between January 2021 and December 2022, resulting in increased housing stability for millions of renter households. These protections include laws ensuring the civil right to counsel, measures prohibiting source-of-income discrimination, ordinances related to eviction record sealing and expungement, rent stabilization legislation, and “just cause” eviction laws.
• Releasing 10 reports and briefs – one of them authored jointly with the Housing Initiative at Penn – examining the development and implementation of ERA programs.

NLIHC’s HoUSed Campaign for Universal, Stable, Affordable Homes and our Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH) campaign continued to make significant progress, as the report shows, including by:

• Collaborating with the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) to launch a webinar series on homelessness and Housing First in the summer of 2022. Given the immense success of the series – more than 7,000 people registered to attend the original set of webinars, for example – NLIHC, NAEH, and CBPP decided to restart the series in December 2022. More than 7,800 people registered to attend the first webinar in the follow-up series on December 12.
• Releasing a comprehensive advocacy toolkit in July 2022 designed to guide homelessness and housing advocates and direct service providers in advocacy efforts during the August congressional recess. NLIHC released a follow-up advocacy toolkit in November 2022.
• Testifying at a hearing hosted by the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in August 2022 concerning affordability in the rental market. During the hearing, “The Rent Eats First’: How Renters and Communities Are Impacted by Today’s Housing Market,” NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel addressed the underlying causes of the affordable housing crisis, discussed the current state of the housing market, and outlined immediate actions that could be taken by the Biden administration to protect the lowest-income and most marginalized renters from the harmful impacts of inflation and rising rents, high rates of eviction fillings, and increasing homelessness.
• Releasing Improving Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Data for Preservation, a report authored jointly with the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation (PAHRC) in October 2022. The report examines the extent to which housing finance agencies (HFAs) provide data on Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) properties at the state and local levels and analyzes the catalysts and challenges impacting their ability to collect, maintain, and report LIHTC property data to HUD and the wider public.

The 2022 Annual Report also overviews NLIHC’s work advancing racial equity, diversity, inclusion, and tenant engagement in 2022. NLIHC launched a major, organization-wide initiative – IDEAS (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-racism, and Systems-thinking) – in 2021 to advance racial equity, inclusion, and diversity in our policy analysis and strategy, internal operations and relationships, and work with external partners. In 2022, NLIHC followed through on these commitments in a wide range of ways, including by:

• Being recognized for our role in creating Dot’s Home, a narrative video game that received the Game of the Year Award at the Games for Change Festival’s awards ceremony in New York City on July 8. Dot’s Home competed with 17 other finalists selected from more than 400 games submitted this year. The game also won the Best Narrative Game award and was nominated for awards in the Best Civic Game and Most Significant Impact categories.
• Launching in June 2022 a Summer of IDEAS educational event series showcasing and amplifying stories about the social and economic issues facing marginalized communities in the U.S. The series paired narrative and new media projects with discussions about topics such as housing disparities, race and poverty, environmental racism, and voter suppression led by prominent voices in these areas.
• Holding our first-ever hybrid Tenant and Community Leader Retreat in Albany, Georgia, in October 2022. The retreat brought together members of NLIHC’s Tenant Leader cohort, which is made up of people with lived experience of housing insecurity who have become leading voices and advocates in their communities in the fight for housing justice. The retreat introduced tenant leaders to each other and provided a forum for discussion about developments in their communities, topics for the tenant session of NLIHC’s annual policy forum, and plans to build out NLIHC’s policy agenda on tenant protections.
• Arranging a meeting at the White House on tenant protections in November 2022 attended by 11 members of NLIHC’s Tenant Leader Cohort and NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel. NLIHC was able to ensure that one tenant leader from the Cohort served as a panelist for a session on tenant protections and that two members (attending virtually) were able to provide opening statements and ask senior officials questions.
• Holding our first in-person convening of state and tribal partners in over three years in November 2022. More than 50 people representing 39 of NLIHC’s state and tribal partner organizations, along with NLIHC staff, gathered in Washington, D.C., and online for the hybrid event. The United Native American Housing Association (UNAHA), a longtime NLIHC member, was also welcomed as the group’s first tribal partner.
• Submitting a comment letter to HUD in January 2022 addressing the four focus areas identified by the department for its “Draft Strategic Plan” for 2022 to 2026. NLIHC urged HUD to make racial equity an explicit goal of federal housing programs and to actively pursue the anti-racist reforms needed to ensure households with the lowest incomes have affordable places to call home.

As the report shows, 2022 was another banner year for congressional advocacy and media engagement. NLIHC:

• Made over 17,605 contacts (meetings/briefings, calls, and exchanges) with congressional offices.
• Led or participated in 21 sign-on/comment letters to federal decision makers.
• Issued 310 calls to action and updates to our network of 145,000 advocates.
• Made 286 contacts with administration departments and offices.
• Testified at two congressional hearings.
• Conducted 301 meetings/convenings/webinars/forums attended by 31,211 participants.
• Presented at 148 events and forums attended by more than 11,356 people.
• Released research featured in 10,242 stories by media around the country.
• Participated in 302 media interviews.
• Issued 32 press releases/statements.

At the same time, NLIHC saw further growth in its social media presence, with 3.05 million unique web visitors, approximately 70,047 Twitter followers, and more than 10.5 million Twitter impressions.

NLIHC published two new issues of the renter-oriented newsletter Tenant Talk in 2022. Released in February 2022, the first issue, Emergency Rental Assistance at All Angles, focused on emergency rental assistance (ERA) programs and explored how ERA had impacted tenants navigating the economic challenges of the pandemic. The issue includes articles from partners across the country about efforts to increase access to ERA for tenants facing rental debt. As always, the publication offers tenant perspectives on their experiences – in this case, with ERA – as well as articles by NLIHC staff about tenant protections, updates on the “Build Back Better Act,” and summaries of recent NLIHC research. The second, Housing is Built with Ballots, was released in August 2022 and addressed nonpartisan election engagement and the important role renters and affordable housing advocates can play, presenting practical tips for mobilizing renters to vote and engaging candidates, as well as important state deadlines to be aware of as elections were approaching. The issue also included perspectives from renters and people experiencing homelessness, updates from partners of the Our Homes, Our Votes campaign, and news from NLIHC.

In addition to Tenant Talk, NLIHC released several other annual flagship publications in 2022, including:

• The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes, finding that extremely low-income renters in the U.S. were facing a shortage of approximately 7 million affordable and available rental homes. Fewer than four affordable and available homes existed for every 10 extremely low-income renter households nationwide. As a result of this shortage of affordable homes, 71% of extremely low-income renter households were severely housing cost-burdened, spending more than half of their limited incomes on housing. Drawing on multiple data sources, the report documents how the pandemic exacerbated the housing crisis for the lowest-income renters. The report examines both short- and long-term policy interventions needed to address the immediate housing impacts of the pandemic and the underlying shortage of affordable housing. NLIHC released a Spanish-language edition of the report, The Gap: La Escasez de Viviendas Asequibles, in June 2022.
• Advocates’ Guide 2022, which featured new information about the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Emergency Rental Assistance program to protect renters from eviction during and after the COVID-19 pandemic; NLIHC’s End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) project and HoUSed campaign for racial housing justice and universal, stable, and affordable housing; and ways to overcome NIMBY opposition to affordable housing.
• Out of Reach 2022: The High Cost of Housing, showing how low-wage workers were facing severe challenges affording housing amid record-breaking rent increases. The report highlights the mismatch between the wages people earn and the price of decent rental housing in every state, metropolitan area, and county in the U.S. while also calculating the “Housing Wage” a full-time worker must earn to afford a rental home without spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs. In 2022, the national Housing Wage was $25.82 per hour for a modest two-bedroom home at fair market rent and $21.25 per hour for a modest one-bedroom home. The report included a preface written by Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA).
• The National Housing Trust Fund: An Overview of 2017 State Projects, summarizing how each state and the District of Columbia planned to use $219 million allocated in 2017 by the national Housing Trust Fund (HTF). In 2017 – the second year of HTF implementation – states continued to use most of their HTF resources to target projects that served people experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities, elderly people, or other special needs populations. Most of the 2017 HTF allocation – more than $144 million – was used to construct new affordable housing units. Another $7 million was used for adaptive re-use projects, creating more affordable housing in properties previously used for non-housing purposes. Meanwhile, $38 million of HTF money was used to preserve existing affordable housing, helping to ensure that this stock does not revert to market-rate housing. Of that $38 million, more than $15 million was used to help preserve earlier federal investment in affordable housing through HUD’s Project-Based Section 8 program and USDA’s Rural Development (RD) Section 515 program.
• The National Housing Trust Fund: An Overview of 2018 State Projects, showing how each state and the District of Columbia planned to use $267 million allocated in 2018 by the HTF. In 2018 – the third year of HTF implementation – states continued to use most of their HTF resources to target projects that served people experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities, elderly people, or other special needs populations. As in 2017, most of the 2018 HTF allocation – more than $181 million – was used to construct new affordable housing units. Meanwhile, $7 million was used for adaptive re-use projects, with $5 million of that amount being used to create new affordable housing. At the same time, $41 million of HTF was used to preserve existing affordable housing, with more than $18.5 million of that amount being used to help preserve earlier federal investment in affordable housing through HUD’s Project-Based Section 8 program and USDA’s Rural Development (RD) Section 515 program.

The 2022 Annual Report also highlights NLIHC’s 2022 Housing Policy Forum, “Achieving Housing Justice,” held virtually on March 22-23 and attended by more than 900 advocates. The virtual forum featured conversations with and presentations by key leaders in Congress and the Biden administration, including HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge, Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rob Portman (R-OH), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Tina Smith (D-MN), and Representatives Maxine Waters (D-CA), Cori Bush (D-MO), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), David Price (D-NC), and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL). The Forum also offered a session featuring MacArthur Genius award-winning photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier, as well as panels on topics ranging from racial equity and housing, the state of play on Capitol Hill, tenant protections, and best practices in organizing, to the multi-sector affordable housing movement, disaster housing recovery, effective media strategies and practices, lessons learned from emergency rental assistance implementation, and the central role of anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion in housing advocacy.

Likewise, the report lists especially notable achievements in administrative advocacy and disaster housing recovery. For example:

• Following advocacy by NLIHC and our partners for improved safety and habitability conditions in public and other federally assisted housing. HUD issued in February 2022 Notice PIH 2022-01/H 2022-01/OLHCHH 2022-01, clarifying that it would enforce the requirement that HUD-assisted properties install carbon monoxide alarms by December 2022.
• HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge issued a directive in April 2022 instructing the agency to review and identify internal policies and procedures that may increase barriers to housing access for people impacted by the criminal-legal system. Over the following six months, agency staff reviewed existing HUD guidance, regulations, and sub-regulatory documents and suggested needed changes to ensure increased access to federally assisted housing for those with conviction records. HUD’s proposed changes are expected to be released later this year. The announcement came after years of administrative advocacy by NLIHC and our colleagues in the Partnership for Just Housing (formerly the Reentry & Housing Working Group).
• The White House released in May 2022 its “Housing Supply Action Plan,” a comprehensive plan for combatting the rising cost of rent and the severe shortage of homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes. The plan includes several regulatory actions suggested by NLIHC, including tying federal transportation funds to the reduction of restrictive local zoning laws, supporting manufactured housing and small-scale developments to increase affordable housing options in communities across the nation, and streamlining federal financing and funding sources to help lower the cost and speed up development of affordable housing.
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a final “public charge” rule in September 2022 that put in place critical protections meant to ensure that immigrant families have better access to social safety net programs, including housing programs. The final rule clarifies that several health and social services should not be considered in a public charge determination, a decades-old test to deny temporary admission into the U.S. or deny requests to change one’s status to lawful permanent resident. NLIHC joined more than 1,000 organizations in signing on to a public charge comment letter led by the Protecting Immigrant Families (PIF) campaign.
• The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) released in September 2022 a landmark report detailing the federal response to Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, “Civil Rights and Protections during the Federal Response to Hurricanes Harvey and Maria.” The 900-page report is the first examination by the commission of the civil rights implications of federal disaster response. The report extensively cites testimony by NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel, as well as numerous statements and documents created by members and partners of the NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC).
• In response to years of advocacy by the NLIHC-led DHRC, HUD announced in October 2022 the creation of the Rapid Unsheltered Survivor Housing (RUSH) program to help the lowest-income and most marginalized disaster survivors maintain or regain stable, affordable housing. RUSH will provide displaced disaster survivors with the longer-term direct rental assistance and supportive services they need to get back on their feet. The program will provide rapid re-housing assistance, including up to 24 months of rental assistance, as well as supportive services for people currently experiencing homelessness and those at risk of homelessness through its network of housing providers and experts.
• The NLIHC- and DHRC-endorsed “Community Disaster Resilience Zones Act of 2022” was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2022 following a vote of 333-92. The bill was passed by the U.S. Senate during the summer of 2022. The bill creates a hazard assessment rating system for census tracts across the country and designates the area in each state with the highest hazard rating as a community disaster resilience zone, allowing for greater technical, planning, and financial assistance for disaster resilience and mitigation projects in such areas. NLIHC and DHRC members, including the Fair Share Housing Center, worked with bill sponsors to ensure that any households displaced due to mitigation or resilience projects within community disaster resilience zones would be able to relocate to affordable, permanent, accessible, housing within their communities, which would guarantee that efforts to protect communities from disasters would not come at the expense of permanent displacement. Language protecting these households was included in the final version of the bill.
• NLIHC and its DHRC held a series of national webinars focused on strengthening the response to hurricanes during the 2022 Atlantic Hurricane Season. The webinars addressed the ways federal, state, and local governments are responding to housing needs related to Hurricanes Fiona and Ian and allowed participants to hear from leaders in impacted communities about the impact on people experiencing homelessness and other low-income households.

Read the 2022 Annual Report here.