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As rents rise, so do pressures on people at risk of eviction

October 25, 2021 by Housing Leadership Council

By Sophie Kasakove | The New York Times

The heightened strain on available housing has strengthened the position of landlords.

“Landlords seem anxious to move tenants out so they can go out and take advantage of those higher rents,” said Zach Neumann, director of the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project in Colorado.

Skyrocketing rents are blunting the effectiveness of emergency rental assistance, the only federal tool remaining for struggling renters, as landlords decide not to extend leases and then raise rents beyond what existing tenants can afford, Neumann said. Other tenants are being displaced as landlords rush to sell buildings amid a booming market.

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Filed Under: Affordable Housing, Evictions, News

As rents in South Florida soar out of reach, more people are finding themselves priced out — and onto the streets

October 25, 2021 by Housing Leadership Council

By Amber Randall | South Florida Sun Sentinel

It’s been two weeks since Sean Jeremy’s landlord raised his rent beyond what he could afford. For now, the only place he can afford to live is in his car.

Soaring rents in South Florida are putting others like Jeremy is a similar bind. With housing costs too high, concern is growing that more people will find themselves priced onto the streets.

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Filed Under: Evictions, Homeless, Low-Income, News

The CDC Extends Its Eviction Moratorium For 30 Days

July 6, 2021 by Housing Leadership Council

For inquiries, please reach out to Today in Housing Managing Editor Ahmad Abu-Khalaf, senior research analyst at Enterprise.

JUNE 24, 2021

Today, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky extended the agency’s temporary eviction moratorium for qualifying renters, which was set to expire on June 30, 2021, through July 31, 2021. A press release from the CDC notes that this extension is intended to be the final extension of the eviction moratorium. Additionally, the White House announced a set of actions aimed at helping state and local governments prevent evictions and accelerating the disbursement of the Treasury’s Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) funds to renters and landlords in need of aid. The Treasury released updated FAQs and a new fact sheet, directing state and local ERA administrators to provide a streamlined payment option for utility providers and large landlords to make accessing ERA funds on behalf of multiple tenants easier and more attractive, and clarifying that funds from the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds can be used to support eviction diversion programs. The guidance also creates a commitment letter process to help families who are experiencing homelessness and do not have a current rental obligation gain access to ERA relief, among other clarifications. Furthermore, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta sent a letter to state courts, encouraging them to adopt eviction diversion practices that would help landlords and tenants reach agreement, access ERA relief and avoid the costs of legal actions.

President Biden and Vice President Harris announced earlier today their support for the nearly $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework. The bipartisan proposal would invest two-thirds of the resources that the President proposed in his American Jobs Plan to make investments in a number of areas, including transportation infrastructure, universal broadband infrastructure and resilience to climate change. Specifically, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework includes $550 billion in new federal spending on infrastructure, which would invest $312 billion in transportation infrastructure, $65 billion in broadband infrastructure, $47 billion in increasing the nation’s infrastructure resilience against climate change threats, and $21 billion in environmental remediation, among other investments. In a meeting with the White House, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12) discussed passing the White House infrastructure priorities through a two-track approach; a bipartisan infrastructure package, and a second package that includes provisions from the President’s $1.7 trillion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan that were not included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework. Enterprise urges the Administration and Congress to include housing infrastructure investments in any infrastructure package.

Yesterday, the Biden-Harris Administration appointed Sandra Thompson to serve as the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). This appointment followed a Supreme Court ruling that found the FHFA’s structure unconstitutional and gave President Biden and future presidents the authority to remove the head of the FHFA at-will, a decision that is in line with a similar Supreme Court decision concerning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s structure. Thompson previously served as the FHFA’s Deputy Director of the Division of Housing Mission and Goals, overseeing the agency’s housing and regulatory policy, capital policy, financial analysis, fair lending and all mission activities for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks. In a statement, Thompson emphasized her commitment to “making sure our nation’s housing finance systems and our regulated entities operate in a safe and sound manner,” and noted that the agency’s duty is to “ensure that all Americans have equal access to safe, decent and affordable housing.”

HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge sent a letter to public housing authorities (PHAs), Continuums of Care (CoC) partners, multifamily owners and HUD grantees, clarifying that returning citizens—formerly incarcerated individuals returning to their communities—who are at-risk of homelessness are among the eligible populations for the recently awarded 70,000 emergency housing vouchers funded by the American Rescue Plan. HUD recently released Notice PIH 2021-15, clarifying that individuals exiting prisons and jails who are at-risk of homelessness due to their low incomes and lack of sufficient resources or social supports are eligible for these vouchers, while strongly encouraging PHAs to work with their CoC partners to ensure that individuals who are at-risk of homelessness after leaving prisons or jails are considered for these vouchers. Additionally, HUD is taking additional steps to meet the housing needs of returning citizens, including reviewing existing HUD policies and regulations that limit access to housing and HUD assistance among formerly incarcerated people.

Filed Under: Affordable Housing, COVID-19, Evictions, News

The FHA Foreclosure Moratorium Ends of June 30, 2021

June 10, 2021 by Housing Leadership Council

Covid-19 has impacted the world and nation in ways that we could not have imagined. We understand the hardships faced as you are struggling to pay your mortgage.  The FHA foreclosure moratorium that began in March last year comes to an end on June 30, 2021.  While the economy enters recovery phase, many families are currently having trouble recovering from personal and financial challenges.

We encourage affected borrowers to contact a HUD-approved Housing Counseling Agency for assistance.  Under the Cares Act of 2021, a mortgage payment forbearance option provides aid to homeowners who either directly or indirectly were financially impacted due to Covid-19.  The Act provides homeowners with an initial forbearance of their monthly mortgage payment for up to 180 days; and they may qualify for an additional 180 days depending upon their specific situation.  At the end of the forbearance period, FHA has a permanent partial claim/loss mitigation option to assist with repayment. To contact a HUD-approved Housing Counseling Agency at https://apps.hud.gov/offices/hsg/sfh/hcc/hcs.cfm or call the interactive voice response system at (800) 569-4287.

There are other resources that may offer help. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provided a Homeowner Assistance Fund. This funding is distributed to state and local governments to help homeowners remain in their homes. In addition to contacting a HUD-approved Housing Counseling Agency, borrowers may contact their lender directly to inquire about a forbearance, as well as the Florida Housing Finance Corporation at (850) 488-4197 and their local government.

Having a place to call home is one of the most important things we can do to recover from the ills of Covid-19. For additional information go to https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/covid-19/ or dial 1 (800) CALL FHA.

Filed Under: Evictions, News

Locked Out: Low pay, soaring rents, pro-landlord laws set up Florida renters for eviction once COVID hit

May 14, 2021 by Housing Leadership Council

By Caroline Glenn | May 13, 2021 | A Three-Part Orlando Sentinel Special Report

Alexiss Green packs up her four-bedroom rental home in Clermont on Wednesday, April 21, 2021, after being evicted.

How COVID exposed Florida’s eviction crisis

Jocelyn Bennett paints her daughters’ toenails, not bothered by the strong scent of nail polish filling the room at the HomeTown Studios in Orlando. The girls show off their pink toes, toddling around the small pay-by-the-week hotel room, one of many the Bennetts have called home since the pandemic began and they got evicted.

It’s just one room with a bathroom with not enough space to even open the front door all the way. But it’s got a stove and a fridge, and it’s better than living in their car or outside. There are two beds, one for mom and dad, and the other is shared by their five kids who are all under 6 years old.

These days, a bottle of Dollar Tree nail polish is one of the only luxuries Jocelyn Bennett can give them.

“That’s the worst feeling to have is I can’t provide for my kids. That’s probably the worst feeling you can have as a parent, not knowing what to do and calling 2-1-1 and them not knowing what to do,” Jocelyn, 26, said, referring to United Way’s emergency hotline.

In March 2020, Jocelyn lost her nursing assistant job at a senior living facility. Dexter, her husband, had been between jobs, finding work through a temp agency. They were already on food stamps. In April, they couldn’t cover the rent. Their landlord told them they needed to be out in 30 days. And the family became homeless in a matter of weeks.

“It was a downward spiral after that,” Dexter, 36, said. “Since COVID started, we’ve been living in hotels.”

For renters in Florida, this is what eviction can look like. It doesn’t always play out in a courtroom because many renters can’t get a court hearing, which results in their landlord automatically winning the case. Some people, like the Bennetts, leave without responding to an eviction notice because they don’t think they can fight it.

Housing experts argue Florida has some of the harshest eviction laws in the country, written so landlords can evict people as quickly as possible and without going to court. During the COVID-19 outbreak, those landlord-friendly laws, coupled with the state’s severe shortage of affordable homes, rising rents and years of stagnant wages, left thousands of suddenly jobless renters exposed. And even after the government ordered a halt to eviction proceedings and federal dollars were made available to help people pay rent, many tenants were not spared.

Black Floridians, who were already more likely to lose their job to the pandemic and die from COVID-19, were even more likely to be locked out of their homes. In a mostly Black part of downtown Orlando, for example, renters were about six times as likely to face eviction than in another mostly white part of downtown, according to new data compiled for the Orlando Sentinel by the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies at the University of Florida.

Shimberg estimates more than 57,000 evictions were filed in Florida just from March 2020 to mid-December, pushing families like the Bennetts into homelessness at a time the government was ordering people to quarantine.

Central Florida renters, many of them the same low-wage workers who power the region’s tourism economy, were particularly vulnerable. Even before the pandemic and mass layoffs upended their lives, they lived paycheck to paycheck in a town where rent keeps climbing and wages don’t budge.

So when the bottom fell out of the tourism and service industries, there was no safety net for them, and Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature did nothing to help.

“They are the ones who face wrongful eviction, they are the ones who can’t get living wages, they are the ones who are struggling to find reliable public transportation. It’s all on them,” said state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando. “And when we ignore these crises with affordable housing, eviction, wages, public transit — we’re doing it on the backs of working people.

“They are the ones who pay.”

Renters struggled before COVID

Florida ranks among the states with the worst affordable rental housing shortages in the nation, data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition show. New housing has been added to try to keep up with the state’s population growth, but developers have largely ignored building places to live for low-income residents.

Over the past 20 years in Florida, nearly 200,000 rental units priced under $1,000 per month disappeared as landlords increased rents. At the same time, about 1 million units priced above $1,000 were added, the Shimberg Center found…

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Filed Under: Affordable Housing, COVID-19, Evictions, Homeless, Low-Income, News, Unaffordable

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