[Senate Hearing 116-453]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 116-453
SENATE BUDGET COMMITTEE HOUSING ROUNDTABLE: EXAMING FEDERAL HOUSING
ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS
=======================================================================
ROUNDTABLE
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
September 16, 2020
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
44-022 WASHINGTON : 2021
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming, Chairman
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
MIKE CRAPO, Idaho PATTY MURRAY, Washington
LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina RON WYDEN, Oregon
PATRICK TOOMEY, Pennsylvania DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
DAVID A. PERDUE, Georgia MARK R. WARNER, Virginia
MIKE BRAUN, Indiana JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
RICK SCOTT, Florida TIM KAINE, Virginia
JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota KAMALA D. HARRIS, California
Doug Dziak, Republican Staff Director
Warren Gunnels, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2020
Page
STATEMENTS BY COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Chairman Michael B. Enzi......................................... 1
Senator Chris Van Hollen......................................... 4
WITNESSES
Garcia-Diaz, Daniel, Managing Director, Financial Markets and
Community Investment Team, U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO)................................................... 7
Prepared Statement of Mr. Daniel Garcia-Diaz................. 9
Questions and Answers (Post-Hearing) from:
Chairman Michael B. Enzi................................. 73
Senator Charles E. Grassley.............................. 76
Senator Mike Crapo....................................... 80
Olsen, Edgar, Professor of Economics and Public Policy,
University of Virginia (UVA)................................... 15
Prepared Statement of Mr. Edgar Olsen........................ 17
Questions and Answers (Post-Hearing) from:
Chairman Michael B. Enzi................................. 83
Senator Charles E. Grassley.............................. 87
Senator Mike Crapo....................................... 91
Yentel, Diane, President and Chief Executive Officer, National
Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC)........................... 35
Prepared Statement of Ms. Diane Yentel....................... 37
Questions and Answers (Post-Hearing) from:
Chairman Michael B. Enzi................................. 94
SENATE BUDGET COMMITTEE HOUSING ROUNDTABLE: EXAMINING FEDERAL HOUSING
ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS
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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2020
U.S. Senate,
Committee on the Budget,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:32 p.m., in
Room 608, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Michael B. Enzi,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Enzi, Grassley, Crapo, Braun, Scott,
Kaine, and Van Hollen.
Staff Present: Doug Dziak, Republican Staff Director; and
Alex Beaton, Minority Policy Advisor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MICHAEL B. ENZI
Chairman Enzi. I will go ahead and call this meeting to
order. Welcome to this roundtable. This is a topic where
Senator Sanders and I probably have a lot of agreement. Senator
Mikulski and I had success working some of these housing
issues.
I have worked on more and better housing for people since
1975. I was mayor of a small boomtown. We were already impacted
by oil development, but that was to be nothing compared to the
power plant construction and the opening of 14 coal mines, one
of which would turn out to be the world's largest producing
coal mine.
It takes people to do those things, and people need
housing. I also found that once people had a home, they were
ever more concerned about, and involved in their community. I
worked to get affordable housing. I did a city plan that called
for a mix of housing types in all the neighborhoods. The mix
was more important before everyone had air conditioning,
because people used to sit on the porch and visit with
neighbors. There was more knowledge and understanding of
neighbors.
I did get companies to voluntarily even dig a channel
through the community in order to change the 100-year flood
plain, so houses could be built in logical places. I got
companies to actually build a mix of housing. Wyoming
recognized the housing problem and started the Wyoming
Community Development Authority, whose primary instruction was
to provide financing for first-time home buyers. People camped
out at the offices in order to be early in the line, expecting
the money would run out. It did, but it was quickly replenished
because it was making a difference.
When I was in the Wyoming legislature I participated in
building Habitat for Humanity houses. I want you to know I am a
great left-handed hammerer. There are some places where a
right-handed hammerer almost has to be upside down to get at
it. I was not just there for the photo opportunity, and later,
because of Wyoming wind, campaign signs have to have particle
board backing. Some of my signs are now donated parts of the
subflooring in Habitat houses.
Since coming to the Senate, I have been able to raise my
interest to a new level, but I am appalled at how little
progress we have made. We appear to be an employment agency for
thousands of Federal workers. Competing regulations,
duplication, and turf protection keeps people from homes. Our
goal is not to have more in Federal employees. It is to get
housing and homes for the millions.
I visited one agency and found some people proofreading
copies of documents. I asked how they correct the original if
they found a mistake. They told me they did not have to worry
about that because they seldom found a mistake. Put that effort
in the category of wasted time, and it does not say much for
management either.
I have also discovered we are paying off thousands of
housing units but the people we want to help do not get them
when it is paid for. They get no ownership, and neither does
the Federal Government. Yes, we subsidize construction and we
pay off properties that then belong to the developer.
A friend of mine, Pat Goggles of the Arapaho Tribe, used a
gym on the reservation to put on a housing open house for
Tribal members. There were several booths set up to teach and
explain how to buy a house, care for it, handle emergencies,
and pay for it. The first stop, though, was to get help filling
out a housing loan application. He and I were both surprised to
find that two-thirds of the families who came qualified for a
home loan.
The booths also had videos on the housing purchase process.
Most importantly, trained staff were there to help figure out
what programs would work best. I have been pleased at some of
the unique efforts separate from Congress and the Federal
Government.
We have built a bureaucracy of 160 overlapping housing
programs at a time when we need to change the focus to getting
people into housing. One hundred sixty programs, administered
by 20 different Federal agencies. I am pretty certain no
Senator has looked at the details of those 160 programs. I even
doubt that staff has. I asked the entities themselves to look
at duplication. This probably will not surprise you. Each
entity reported back that there is no duplication in their
jurisdiction.
I think that helps us to see the problem. Every agency
wants the joy of talking to people about the potential for
housing. We do not need talk. We need action. We need
management and coordination. We need to resolve overlaps and
confusion.
I want to thank the Government Accountability Office, GAO,
for all their work through the years. I hope the current
document is not another effort that will just gather dust. It
now requires some detailed work by several committees, which is
where we run into the jurisdictional issues.
At one time, Senator Kennedy and I were looking at
preschool children's education programs, and we found 145
different preschool--well, they were not different. Many had
changed from education to babysitting. We got that number down
to 45. You know why it was not less? Many of them were not in
our jurisdiction, and that is a problem with housing as well.
Today's Budget Committee roundtable purpose is to examine
Federal housing assistance programs. The goal of this
roundtable is to understand how housing assistance is
delivered, and more importantly, how we can improve it. Rather
than structure this as a hearing, which in my experience
results in less learning on our part and more political points
being made, I have structured this discussion as a roundtable.
A roundtable is designed to gather information, to allow
witnesses and members to engage in thoughtful conversation, and
hopefully identify some solutions to the specific problems.
This works a little different than a regular hearing. After the
opening statements and then the witness statements we will ask
some questions, but rather than a question just being directed
to one witness, other witnesses can comment. Given that all of
our witnesses are appearing by video, I would ask that they
raise their hand if they want to speak, when a topic comes up.
Hopefully, as a result, we will come away with many ideas,
and that has been my experience with roundtables.
I would like to welcome the three experts joining us today,
Daniel Garcia-Diaz of the Government Accountability Office,
GAO; Professor Edgar Olsen of the University of Virginia; and
Diane Yentel, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the
National Low Income Housing Coalition. Thank you all for
joining us. I look forward to your testimony.
We can come together at a difficult time for our nation. A
global pandemic has sent shockwaves through our economy. It has
caused businesses to shutter and it has caused jobs to be lost.
Against this backdrop, the Federal Government's current
approach to housing assistance is falling short in many ways.
As Congress considers additional measures to address housing
needs in the wake of COVID, it is worth reviewing the current
state of Federal housing programs and seeing what works and
what does not, so that we can better determine what form those
measures should take.
I know some would disagree. Critics may argue that working
to reform the system could hurt certain constituencies, but
that is not what we are about. And usually if we get into the
details, those can be solved. But the Federal housing system is
already failing. People are being left out.
Today the Federal Government spends more than $50 billion
per year on low-income housing assistance programs. It also
guarantees $2 trillion in home loans, and it provides billions
more in assistance through the tax code. Is that money
achieving its intended purpose?
We can do better. We better do better. With half a million
people homeless, and given the significant amount we spend,
there are still years-long waiting lists for public housing.
Studies have shown that public housing and project-based
programs can trap families in high poverty neighborhoods, which
has significant long-term consequences for both their health
and their well-being.
And programs are scattered across agencies, creating
confusion and significant challenges for those seeking
assistance. Federal housing bureaucracies have grown so large
that they are now failing those they should be serving. Most
Americans do not even know the full extent of the programs
available or where they can go for help.
Critics may also argue that Federal housing programs cannot
be one size fits all, but in a 2012 report, GAO found housing
assistance is fragmented across the 160 programs I mentioned,
with significant areas of duplication and overlap. One size
fits all may not be the answer but serving the need should not
take 160 programs.
The GAO report also found that of those 160 programs, 39
helped with buying, selling, or financing a home. That is some
duplication! Twenty-five provided assistance for financing
rental housing and eight provided assistance for rental
property owners. How many places do you have to go and ask
questions to see if you qualify and to get answers? The report
found that significant overlap existed in the assistance
offered, the service delivered, and even the areas served.
Finally, the report said opportunities existed to increase
collaboration and potentially realize efficiencies. Mr. Garcia-
Diaz, I look forward to hearing GAO's update today. I think the
issue comes down to a simple question: If given the amount of
resources the Federal Government puts into Federal housing
assistance programs each year and setting aside interest groups
that may profit from the status quo, would we ever design a
system with 160 programs?
With programs scattered across multiple Federal agencies,
the system leads to overlap and waste and actually limits
resources that should be going to those in need. We need to get
the money to the people.
I hope this is the start of a serious bipartisan review to
find improvements to the system. That is why we are here, to
identify solutions and gather ideas about reform and to discuss
how to make these programs work better for those who truly need
them.
Thank you again to the panelists for joining us. I welcome
your insights and look forward to them, as we work together to
find common solutions to these challenges.
With that I now recognize Senator Van Hollen, standing in
for the Ranking Member, for his opening statement. Senator?
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CHRIS VAN HOLLEN
Senator Van Hollen. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you for holding this hearing. Thank you for your efforts
both in the Senate and previously as mayor, on affordable
housing. And I know that the Ranking Member joins me in
agreeing with you that to the extent that we can find
efficiencies in our current Federal housing programs we should
do so. We want to make sure that the resources being provided
travel just as far as they can go, in terms of achieving the
goal of affordable housing.
I think it is also fair to say, I think there would be
broad agreement on this, that even if we squeezed every dollar
of efficiency out of the current system, we are still going to
have an affordable housing crisis in the United States of
America. That is, of course, very acute right now during the
pandemic, as you mentioned, and I am going to say a word about
that in a moment.
But as you indicated, that affordable housing crisis
actually predates the pandemic. In fact, in the United States
today there are over 18 million families paying more than half
of their limited income toward housing. That leaves very little
for other essentials like food and transportation and health
care, much less the ability to put aside and sock away a little
bit for getting ahead and making other important investments.
In fact, the numbers show that there is no State, no
metropolitan area or county in this country where a minimum
wage worker putting in 40 hours a week can afford a modest two-
bedroom apartment. And if you are working 40 hours a week, I
think most of us agree you should be able to have enough to
have a safe and affordable place in which to raise your family.
Meanwhile, as you said, Mr. Chairman, we have over half a
million Americans homeless on any given night, and many of
these are working families with children, many are veterans and
others have mental illness.
And so the resources we provide are important.
Unfortunately, if you look at this administration's budget--and
these are just facts, not political rhetoric--we see deep cuts
proposed. In fact, if you look at the most recent Trump
administration budget they ask for $100 billion in cuts to
housing assistance and proposed eliminating the National
Housing Trust Fund and other programs to build and preserve
affordable housing. It would also end funding for public
housing repairs that are desperately needed.
Now I am pleased to report that the Congress, on a
bipartisan basis, has rejected those proposed cuts, but I dare
say that even if we were to squeeze every dollar of efficiency
out of the program those cuts would still have a huge damaging
impact, the $100 billion proposed cuts.
And so we have got to also address the shortage in housing
for lowest-income families. Right now there is a shortage of
about 7.5 million homes in the country. And that is all just
before the pandemic hit. We now know that Americans are
experiencing economic hardships we have not witnessed, since
the Great Depression of the 1930s. Americans have lost their
jobs, their health insurance, and depleted their savings. Many
were able to make ends meet and pay some of the bills with the
additional $600 a week in unemployment benefits through the
Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, but
the Senate did not extend those provisions as the House, Health
and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act
would have done.
And, in fact, just last week, nearly one-quarter of renters
had missed their September rent payments. Let me say that
again. A quarter of all renters missed their September rent
payments. That is the highest rate since the beginning of the
pandemic. And according to a Census Bureau survey, 42 percent
of blacks and 49 percent of Latino renters have little or no
confidence that they are going to be able to pay their next
month's rent on time.
According to Moody's Analytics, renters already owe an
estimated $25 billion in back rent, which could grow to $70
billion by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, public health experts continue to tell us that
safe and stable housing is vital to combat COVID-19. Not only
is it essential for people to have a place to stay and
quarantine if they are exposed but the homeless are
particularly vulnerable to this disease.
Now the Centers for Disease Control has put in place a
moratorium. It is not exactly clear how that will apply. But if
it does not fully apply or no matter what, at the end of the
day, if we do not provide more in terms of renter assistance,
we are going to have 30 or 40 million American households
facing eviction, because it will simply be pushing their
payments down the road and they will have balloon payments due.
And so the estimate is that if we do not do something on the
rental assistance front that 30 to 40 million Americans will be
at risk of eviction.
That is why, in the Senate, many of us have proposed an
Emergency Rental Assistance Act. That is why an emergency
rental assistance to the tune of about $150 billion is provided
for in the House HEROES Act. Some of those funds could also be
used to support mortgages, where people have lost their jobs
because of COVID-19.
So, Mr. Chairman, we agree with you that affordable housing
is a critical area of inquiry. In fact, it is an emergency now.
We have gone from what was bad to even worse. And we join you
in looking for efficiencies in the existing programs. But I
think we should also all recognize that if we are really going
to tackle this issue it will require not just restructuring and
reform but additional Federal resources.
And so we thank you for bringing us together. We hope we
can come together as a Senate and vote on the emergency rental
assistance provisions, which are going to be so necessary to
prevent mass evictions in the United States.
So thank you, and I look forward to the testimony.
Chairman Enzi. Thank you, Senator Van Hollen. I would now
like to introduce our panel and invite each of them to give
about a 5-minute statement, and then we will ask some
questions.
Our first witness is Daniel Garcia-Diaz. He is a Managing
Director in Financial Markets and Community Investment Team at
the Government Accountability Office. Since joining GAO more
than 20 years ago, he has led reviews of assistance to
homeowners and renters, to mortgage finance programs, and to
housing for the special needs population. Mr. Garcia-Diaz, I
thank you for joining us today. I appreciate the GAO's work on
this issue.
Next I would like to welcome Dr. Edgar Olsen, who is a
Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of
Virginia. He is an expert in low-income housing policy and has
published numerous papers. Dr. Olsen has been a consultant in
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with
six different administrations. He has also been a visiting
scholar at HUD and the American Enterprise Institute. Professor
Olsen has testified before Congress on several occasions, and I
am pleased to welcome him.
Our third witness is Diane Yentel. She is the President and
Chief Executive Officer of the National Low Income Housing
Coalition. Ms. Yentel has previously worked on affordable
housing and community development issues at Enterprise
Community Partners, at HUD, at Oxfam America, and at the
Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless.
I want to thank all three of you for joining us today to
share your expertise. With that we will now hear your
testimony. Mr. Garcia-Diaz, please begin.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL GARCIA-DIAZ, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FINANCIAL
MARKETS AND COMMUNITY INVESTMENT TEAM, U.S. GOVERNMENT
ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Garcia-Diaz. Thank you Chairman Enzi, Ranking Member
Sanders, Senator Van Hollen, and members of the Committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today at this
roundtable on Federal housing assistance programs.
Over the years, GAO has issued a body of work examining
these programs. As you know, the government's system of housing
programs, tax expenditures, and other tools is exceedingly
complex and fragmented. These programs and activities support a
range of efforts such as subsidizing housing construction,
paying for rental assistance, and offering mortgage financing,
and enforcing fair housing and other regulations.
The work undertaken by these agencies is critical. As you
know, safe and decent housing in good neighborhoods is an
important part of promoting opportunities for low-income
families. Yet the Federal Government reached about 30 percent
of very low income families who could qualify for rental
assistance. Long wait lists for public housing and voucher
assistance are a chronic problem across many communities. In
our 2020 report, we found that affordability has declined for a
variety of reasons, including that the supply of low-cost
rental units has not kept up with demand, more renters
competing for the same units, and income not keeping up with
housing costs. As we have noted in our CARES Act work, the
economic disruption resulting from COVID-19 will add
considerable challenges in keeping families in stable housing.
Our work has identified opportunities for consolidating
agencies and program activities to reduce program costs,
increase efficiency, and hopefully expand access to affordable
housing, although many of these options come with tradeoffs
that would need to be considered.
For example, we reported that Rural Housing Service (RHS)
and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Federal Housing
Administration's (FHA) single family loan guarantee programs
overlap in terms of income, location, and borrower
qualifications. Significant percentages of RHS and FHA
borrowers could have met criteria for the other program.
Merging programs into a single program, however, would pose
tradeoffs because of differences in borrower costs and
financial risk of RHS and FHA loans.
We have also commented on consolidating local housing
agencies. HUD expends considerable resources of overseeing
small local agencies which administer a fraction of public
housing and voucher units. Further, HUD research has found that
larger housing agencies' average cost of administering vouchers
tend to be around 20 percent less than smaller ones.
Consolidating smaller agencies or greater use of consortiums
may reduce costs, improve program economy and scales, and
provide benefits to assisted families.
We also have noted opportunities to merge and streamline
administrative functions. Merging wait lists, simplified
voucher portability rules could improve access to better
neighborhoods and potentially reduce overall administrative
costs.
In addition to program consolidation we have identified
other opportunities to address fragmentation and overlap. For
example, we have called for continued evaluation of program
costs to identify more cost-effective approaches. For example,
our research, as well as those of others, have found that
vouchers are more cost effective in providing housing
assistance than programs that build housing. Additionally, in
2018, we found that improved data collection and reporting in
the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program could improve program
evaluation efforts, help identify opportunities for cost
savings, and strengthen efforts to deter fraud.
We have also called for greater interagency collaboration.
Inefficiency can arise when a subsidized property has multiple
layers of Federal assistance. We have reported that
implementing different physical inspection, tenant income
reporting, and financial reporting requirements for the same
property can create regulatory burden. Interagency efforts to
harmonize those requirements across programs may reduce
duplicative actions and reduce costs. And some progress has
been made in this area, but it is uncertain the extent to which
these efforts have been sustained.
In closing, the housing needs of lower-income families are
significant, and the Federal Government only reaches a small
fraction of that need. Examining how the Federal Government
provides housing assistance can open up opportunities to serve
additional needy families. Further, in examining how the
government delivers assistance, attention needs to be paid in
improving service delivery to and support of these families who
must navigate through this complex system. Also, property
owners and State and local partners who help deliver Federal
assistance stand to benefit from more streamlined and
compatible requirements across programs.
This concludes my opening remarks and I would be happy to
answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Garcia-Diaz follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mr. Daniel Garcia-Diaz
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Enzi. Thank you for your testimony. Dr. Olsen,
your comments?
STATEMENT OF EDGAR OLSEN, PhD., PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND
PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Mr. Olsen. I am delighted to be here today to share with
you and the members of your Committee what I know about the
performance of low-income housing programs, and some ideas
about how to get better outcomes from the money spent on them.
Low-income housing assistance is fertile ground for reforms
that would provide better outcomes for the money spent. Most
current recipients are served by programs whose cost is
enormously excessive for the housing provided. Phasing out
these programs in favor of the system's most cost-effective
program would ultimately free up the resources to provide
housing assistance to millions of additional people, without
any increase in taxes.
The second major defect of the current system is its
failure to offer housing assistance to most of the poorest
people. About two-thirds of families with extremely low incomes
receive no housing assistance, while others with the same
incomes receive large subsidies. Offering modest assistance to
all of these families would not only eliminate this inequity
but it would also largely end homelessness and evictions.
The path to remedying these defects at a reasonable cost to
taxpayers is to phase out cost-ineffective programs in favor of
the cost-effective housing voucher program. This would
enormously simplify the system of low-income housing
assistance.
In papers for American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and
Brookings, I have suggested steps that would provide a smooth
transition to a system that would offer housing assistance to
all the poorest households. They deal with all parts of the
current system: active construction programs, existing
privately owned housing projects, public housing, and the
housing voucher program itself.
The desirability of the proposed reforms does not depend on
how much is spent on low-income housing assistance. If more
money is spent, more families will be helped, and the families
assisted will receive larger benefits.
Today most low-income housing assistance in the U.S. is
delivered by subsidizing the construction, renovation, and
operation of housing projects. The Low-Income Housing Tax
Credit Program is the largest and fastest growing program of
this type.
Tax credit projects have a much greater cost than most
people realize. They receive subsidies from many sources.
Considerable resources are devoted to getting these subsidies
and trying to enforce their restrictions. And the layering of
subsidies from multiple sources enables the building of very
expensive units. The development costs of units in tax credit
projects is about equal to the median value of owner-occupied
houses in the same locality.
This complexity is totally unnecessary to achieve the
purposes of low-income housing assistance, and it is one reason
for the program's excessive cost. The simplest approach to
providing housing assistance is to provide a subsidy to the
people we want to help, that is conditional on occupying
housing meeting certain standards. HUD's Housing Choice Voucher
Program does that. This simple method can be used to subsidize
homeowners as well as renters, and it can be combined easily
with down payment assistance to induce more recipients to be
homeowners.
This is not only the simplest approach but also by far the
most cost-effective. We do not need to build subsidized housing
projects to solve a housing affordability problem. All people
who spend a high fraction of their income on housing are
housed. The least expensive way to reduce how much they spend
on housing is to pay a part of their rent. A housing voucher
program does that. Building new housing for these households
and charging them the same rents as they would pay under the
housing voucher program is much more expensive.
Furthermore, it is neither necessary nor desirable to
construct new units to house the homeless. The number of people
who are homeless is far less than the number of vacant rental
units. In the entire country there are only about 600,000
homeless people on a single night, and more than 3 million
vacant units available for rent. Even if all homeless people
were single, they could be easily accommodated in vacant
existing units, and that would be much less expensive than
building new units for them. The reason they are homeless is
they do not have the money to pay the rent for an existing
vacant unit.
A modest housing voucher would solve that problem. It would
also prevent evictions for financial reasons. If a voucher
recipient loses income, the subsidy is increased to offset the
loss.
I look forward to your questions about these important
issues.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Olsen follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mr. Edgar Olsen
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Enzi. Thank you for that summary of your
testimony. Ms. Yentel?
STATEMENT OF DIANE YENTEL, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, NATIONAL LOW INCOME HOUSING COALITION
Ms. Yentel. Thank you, Chairman Enzi and Senator Van Hollen
for the opportunity to be here today. NLIHC supports some
efforts to realign, streamline, and coordinate Federal housing
programs, including many highlighted by Mr. Garcia-Diaz in his
oral testimony.
But let us be clear. Consolidation or cutting funding is
not the solution to the housing and homelessness crisis. What
is most urgently needed is increased investments in solutions
that are woefully underfunded.
Even before the pandemic, the country was in the grips of a
pervasive affordable housing crisis. Nearly 8 million of our
nation's lowest-income households are severely cost burdened,
spending more than half of their limited incomes on rent and
leaving very little else for other basic needs. More than half
a million people experience homelessness on any given night.
Because Federal investments are chronically underfunded,
just one in four eligible households receives rental
assistance. Decades of structural racism create deep racial
disparities in housing and homelessness. Black and brown people
are disproportionately likely to rent their homes, to be very
low income, to be rent-burdened, and to be homeless.
The housing crisis is most acute for extremely low-income
households. Nationally, there is a shortage of 7 million rental
homes affordable and available to them. Put another way, for
every 10 of the lowest-income renters there are fewer than four
apartments affordable and available to them. There is no State
with enough affordable, available rental homes for its lowest-
income residents.
Without affordable options, most of these renters live in
housing they cannot afford, spending well over half of their
limited income on rent, or doubling or tripling up in
overcrowded housing. In worst cases, they become homeless,
sleeping in cars, in homeless shelters, or on sidewalks.
The fundamental problem creating the affordable housing
crisis is a mismatch between what people earn and what rent
costs. Since 1960, renters' incomes increased by 5 percent
while rents rose 61 percent.
There is also market failure and chronic underfunding of
solutions. Without Federal subsidies, affordable homes cannot
be built and operated at a price that the very lowest-income
people can afford. Despite the urgent need, Federal funding for
housing subsidies has not kept pace, and for many programs has
precipitously declined over the last decade.
The pandemic has exacerbated the housing crisis. To make
rent after having lost jobs or hours at work, millions of
families are increasingly paying rent with credit cards or
other borrowed money, or they are foregoing other necessities
like store-bought food, relying on food banks instead, or
skipping important medication to cut corners and save money.
Many renters are falling behind on rent, accruing debt that
they will not be able to pay off.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC)
eviction moratorium extends vital protections to renters at
risk of eviction, but while this action is long overdue and
badly needed, it is a half measure that postpones but does not
prevent evictions for the up to 30 to 40 million people at risk
of eviction when the moratorium ends and back rent is owed.
To protect these households and avoid a massive wave of
evictions, Congress and the White House must pass a relief
package that includes essential resources and protections that
were included in the HEROES Act that passed 4 months ago in the
House: a nationally uniform moratorium on all evictions for
nonpayment of rent for the duration of the pandemic; at least
$100 billion in emergency rental assistance; and $11.5 billion
to prevent outbreaks among people experiencing homelessness and
to get them quickly housed.
The stakes could not be higher. Evictions risk lives. They
drive families deeper into poverty. They burden already
overstretched hospital systems and they make it harder for us
as a country to contain the virus. Ensuring that everyone is
stably housed during the pandemic is not only a moral
imperative, it is a public health necessity.
And after Congress stems the tide of evictions it must go
further and address the underlying causes of the crisis.
Congress should fund the construction of apartments affordable
to the lowest-income renters through the National Housing Trust
Fund. Bridge the gap between what people earn and what rent
costs through rental assistance like Section 8 vouchers.
Provide emergency assistance to stabilize families for a
financial emergency and prevent evictions, and preserve our
country's existing public housing and other affordable housing
stock.
Homelessness and housing poverty is a public policy choice.
We can choose otherwise if we fund solutions at the scale
needed. It has never been more clear that housing is health
care, so let's take this moment not to tinker around the edges
of housing programs but to expand and fully fund them.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify and I look
forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Yentel follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ms. Diane Yentel
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Enzi. Thank you. I appreciate the comments of all
of you who have testified. A lot of good information there, and
additional information in the materials that you submitted,
which I will encourage other Senators and staff to take a look
at.
Now we will turn to questions. Let me take a moment to
explain the process to the Committee members before we start. I
will start with some general questions and then Senator Van
Hollen will follow that, and then other members can have an
opportunity to question too. We have a process for those who
are here or online to move to the front of the line and other
people as they join us.
For the witnesses, as I mentioned in my opening remarks,
the purpose of a roundtable is to gather information, so if a
question is asked and you would like to comment on it, even if
it was not directed at you, if you would hold your hand up or
something, the staff here will help me to monitor the thing so
we can tell who wishes to speak.
I would also ask anybody participating via video to keep
themselves on mute until they are speaking. That helps to
eliminate some interference. We had a problem with that just
before we opened up.
So with that I will go ahead and move to questions. The
first one would be to all three. To frame the discussion and
put the 2012 GAO report on housing duplication and overlap into
context and help us solicit ideas from the panel I will start
with a hypothetical question. If each of you were designing a
Federal housing assistance program from scratch, would it look
like the system we have today? If yes, why. If no, what would
an effective and efficient system actually look like?
Mr. Garcia-Diaz?
Mr. Garcia-Diaz. Yes, Mr. Chairman. So from this
hypothetical I would certainly hope that we have learned plenty
over the past 80 or 90 years of providing housing assistance
and that if we were to be designing a new system that it would
incorporate a lot of those lessons.
Our work, at least, points to the few areas to consider in
a new system of housing. One is that housing subsidies, and
especially housing subsidies targeted to extremely low and low-
income households is very expensive. And the empirical
evidence, and certainly the work we have done, certainly points
to tenant-based assistance and vouchers as being a very cost-
effective approach to deliver housing. And so it is by no means
a perfect solution. It has its own challenges, but it also has
many advantages from a policy standpoint as well.
Housing production has been part of the Federal toolkit for
much of that time. In fact, for a longer period of time. But I
would hope that we take away a few elements that were lessons
learned, let's say, from these programs and how they have
operated in the past. One certainly is to address the cost
issue and certainly limiting and understanding development
costs. But the other part--and we see this, for instance, in
public housing--is planning for future needs and designing
features, program design features that allow for the funding of
maintenance and modernization. Historically, the Federal
Government has struggled to fund reserves, establish mechanisms
to fund ongoing maintenance and modernization in aging
property.
And a related point to that is building, in these
production programs, a preservation strategy from the get-go.
The minute the ribbon is cut and the property is opened it is
starting to deteriorate, and the contracts on the property are
going to expire at some point, and the use agreement will go
with it.
And so having the tools already and the criteria to make
decisions later on, and the structure to make those decisions
later on for preservation and the decision to preserve those
properties are key. And we are seeing today where even after
all we have learned about preserving properties we have USDA
and Rural Housing Service about to experience a wave of loans
maturing and rental systems contracts expiring. And so I would
hope that it would take some of that into account in the design
of the program.
And finally, and very quickly, I would say location
matters. And so to the extent that programs take into account
where people are living, concentration of poverty, and linking
families to good schools and social services I think is key
moving forward.
Chairman Enzi. Dr. Olsen, did you want to comment on that?
Mr. Olsen. Yes. Thank you. So my comment is really very
simple. The current system is highly inefficient and
inequitable. Subsidized housing projects are very expensive for
the housing that they provide. The majority of the poorest
people receive no housing assistance, and other people with the
same incomes receive large subsidies.
So if it were left to my own devices there would be only
one low-income housing program. It would be a simplified
version of the current Housing Choice Voucher program that was
used during the Housing Assistance Supply Experiment. It would
provide the same assistance on the same terms to renters and
homeowners who are in the same economic circumstances. Renters
and homeowners in the same economic circumstances would get the
same subsidy, under the same terms.
I personally would offer subsidies less generous than the
current housing voucher program, but that is not fundamental to
me. What is fundamental is to offer assistance to all of the
eligible households. No exceptions.
Chairman Enzi. Thank you. Ms. Yentel?
Ms. Yentel. Yes. Thank you. So I am a strong supporter of
the Section 8 voucher program. It is a proven solution to
ending homelessness and housing poverty, and I really welcome
the strong, it appears bipartisan support for the program and
for, I believe for expanding the program.
But suggesting that that program be the single housing
program of the Federal Government, with respect, is a vast
oversimplification of our country's housing system, of the
needs throughout the country, and what is truly needed to
respond to them.
I do agree that the system that we have today is
overcomplicated and could be improved. And one of the main
principles that we believe all housing--really all Federal
spending should follow is that scarce Federal resources should
be targeted towards those with the greatest needs. And when it
comes to housing it is very clear that the greatest needs exist
among the lowest-income people, extremely low-income people and
people experiencing homelessness.
So the more we can realign Federal housing programs to meet
the needs of those extremely low-income renters, the better the
Federal dollars will be used. And I think a good example of
that, within the existing system, a good example of where there
is waste and poor alignment is the mortgage interest deduction.
You know, before the 2017 tax bill we spent about $200 billion
as a country to help Americans, to subsidize Americans to buy
or rent their homes, and the vast majority of that, three-
quarters of that, goes--went to subsidize higher-income people
to be homeowners.
And the mortgage interest deduction has been proven time
and again to be a very regressive tax policy and not at all to
actually subsidize or incentivize home ownership. What it does
is incentivize current homeowners to take on bigger mortgages
and buy bigger homes. And the tax bill did reduce the funding
for the mortgage interest deduction down to about $30 billion,
but 80 percent of that goes to the top 20 percent of earners in
our country. So again, highly regressive and poorly aligned use
of scarce Federal resources. We would propose that the mortgage
interest deduction certainly be reformed or even eliminated,
and that the funds that are utilized there today be redirected
to housing programs that assist the lowest-income renters or
people experiencing homelessness.
Chairman Enzi. Thank you, and that expires my time. Senator
Van Hollen.
He is on the floor speaking so we will go to Senator Kaine.
Senator Kaine. Well, Mr. Chair, thank you for doing this.
For 17 years before I was in politics I was a fair housing
attorney in Richmond. I worked a lot on housing issues,
representing people that had been discriminated against, and
then have worked in housing at the local, State, and Federal
level, so I am really interested in this hearing.
And I sort of have one question that is, I guess, primarily
for Professor Olsen and then one question for Ms. Yentel. So to
Professor Olsen, and a shout-out to UVA, your thought about
simplification in the Housing Choice Voucher program. I am a
strong supporter of that program.
What fair housing lawyers find that is often a challenge
with the Section 8 programs or housing voucher programs is that
landlords of rental properties refuse to accept it. They are
not allowed to refuse to rent to someone because of the color
of their skin or gender or religion, but you are allowed to
reject someone because of the kind of income that they put on
the table. And so someone who wants to, frankly, discriminate
on the grounds of race, knowing that many of these programs
disproportionately are for minority families, say, ``Well, I
would like to rent to you but we don't accept vouchers'' or
``We don't accept Section 8.''
And even if there is not a racial motive there, if you have
a big expansion of a housing voucher program but landlords
retain the ability to turn down people based on their source of
income, if it is a voucher, if it is a social security
disability check, then people who are in that situation have
dramatically fewer housing options.
So my question for you is, I am assuming your
simplification proposal--if we took all of the housing programs
and put it into housing vouchers--you would support a concept
that I initially introduced with Senator Orrin Hatch, which
would be to change the Federal Fair Housing Act to make any
discrimination based on the type of income a violation of the
Federal Fair Housing Act, so that people with vouchers could be
treated equally to those who brought a paycheck or, you know,
other forms of income that could be used for their housing. Am
I correct in making that assumption?
Mr. Olsen. I do not have a strong view about that. I did a
little analysis of source-of-income law. So some States and
localities have source-of-income laws----
Senator Kaine. Yes.
Mr. Olsen. --which you are talking about, and I guess you
are proposing to make it a national law.
Senator Kaine. Yes.
Mr. Olsen. I looked at how the voucher utilization rate
depended on source-of-income laws, and it did not have a big
effect. And one thing to realize is the current voucher
program, is operated throughout the country and most places do
not have source-of-income laws. Half of the recipients are
black. So the housing voucher program, even without additional
source-of-income laws, certainly serves blacks heavily.
Senator Kaine. And just in the discussions phase----
Mr. Olsen. The only study I have read on source-of-income
laws suggests they have a modest effect. So I would just say do
not hope for too much on that.
Senator Kaine. Right. I mean, and I think your point is
right, that the American population is a certain percentage
African American, probably somewhere between 12 and 20 percent.
I do not know the precise number. But if 50 percent of those
receiving housing voucher programs are African American then a
landlord who might want to discriminate on the basis of race
can say, ``Well, I am not going to accept vouchers,'' and that
is allowed under current law in many jurisdictions, even though
it has a disproportionate racial effect. And so I would hope
that we might eliminate that.
For Ms. Yentel, so here is a question I want to ask you
about, to dig deeper into a point you made about Professor
Olsen's point. If you and I reached a funding level for housing
that we agreed at, that you agreed was sufficient to meet the
national need, and then we converted every housing program,
including mortgage interest deduction, into a housing voucher,
so there was just a single program but adequately funded, if
you accept my assumption, what would be the problem or
challenge with a Federal housing policy that put that adequate
funding into a single program of a Housing Choice voucher?
Ms. Yentel. Well, there is no silver bullet solution to the
housing crisis, right, and in some markets where there is a
sufficient supply of apartments, and the main challenge is that
people living in them cannot afford them, rental assistance is
essential and very helpful to making people pay the rent and
stay housed.
There are, as you suggest, some challenges with the voucher
program. It needs additional improvements. Source-of-income
discrimination is a very real problem, and while ultimately
voucher dollars get used, there is a lot of churning that
happens where in some communities like in Los Angeles as many
as 78 percent of renters with vouchers get turned away by
landlords when trying to rent that apartment, due to source-of-
income discrimination. That voucher then gets turned back to
the Public Housing Agencies (PHA) and given to another renter,
who can use it, but the original renter is out of luck.
So we do need source-of-income protections. We need changes
to how the value and the worth of vouchers are set, by using
small area Fair Market Rents (FMR) rather than existing fair
market rents.
But in other communities there are simply not enough
apartments for everybody that lives in that community, and
there we have to produce more affordable homes, and we have to
produce them so that they are affordable to the lowest-income
people, through programs like the National Housing Trust Fund
or through deeply-targeted low-income housing tax credits. This
combination of supply side solutions and demand side solutions
is a better approach to the housing crisis than oversimplifying
with just one solution.
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Enzi. Thank you. From your question, though, I
have another question. What if we were to change all the
programs over to a voucher system? That would differ from what
we have been doing, which is we provide developers with the
money to build houses provided they allocate a certain
percentage to low income. And then we pay off those buildings,
and then we do not wind up with anything.
I love the comments that we had about the need for
maintenance and preservation. I think those do have to start
early.
But if we did change over to housing vouchers as a project-
based assistance, why do you favor a voucher-based system? How
do you answer critics who claim this puts the users of the
vouchers at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords, which is
similar to the problem that you just raised? Does it concern
any of you that after providing these dollars, the Federal
Government does not actually own any physical assets? Does
anybody want to comment on that?
Mr. Olsen. Yes, I would like to comment on that.
Chairman Enzi. Dr. Olsen.
Mr. Olsen. First of all, I do not have any reason to
believe that landlords are particularly unscrupulous, but
whether they are scrupulous or not, I think that they cannot
take advantage of voucher tenants. The people who take
advantage of voucher tenants are the people who run subsidized
housing projects, because if you are a tenant in a subsidized
housing project and you leave, then you lose your subsidy.
So the people who run subsidized housing projects have a
captive audience, whereas if you have a voucher, and the total
amount being paid in rent for that voucher is very high
relative to how good the unit is, you can take the voucher, go
to another unit that is better, and you will continue to pay
the same rent. So you are not a captive audience.
And on the issue of does it bother me that the government
does not end up with physical assets, not a bit. I do not want
the government to be owning housing projects any more than I
want the government to be running farms or groceries in order
to provide food assistance to low-income households. We have a
program that has had government ownership of housing projects.
It is called the Public Housing Program, and its performance
has been terrible, and there is a lot of evidence on that.
Chairman Enzi. Thank you. Anyone else want to comment on
that?
Ms. Yentel. I would, yes.
Chairman Enzi. Ms. Yentel.
Ms. Yentel. To the point of public housing, public housing
has been drastically underfunded for decades. So to the extent
that there has been any failure, it has been a failure on the
part of Congress to live up to its commitment to make public
housing decent, safe, and sanitary homes.
And again, the Section 8 voucher program is a very
successful, important program, and the point that Dr. Olsen
raises about it being a mobile voucher is one of its strengths,
for the reasons he suggested and also because it allows
families to move to neighborhoods maybe that have better
performing schools or more access to transportation or jobs,
and not to lose their housing assistance when they do. So that
is the strength of the voucher program.
I just want to add to what I have already shared about the
need for construction, and construction of homes affordable to
lowest-income people is that the private market also does not
meet the housing needs of certain populations, for example,
very large families or people with disabilities who need
accessible homes. And that is another place where programs like
the National Housing Trust Fund, the Low-Income Housing Tax
Credit, or public housing provide those kind of units that are
needed by Americans, but not generally available in the private
market.
Chairman Enzi. Senator Kaine.
Senator Kaine. Mr. Chair?
Chairman Enzi. Mr. Kaine next and then Senator Scott.
Senator Kaine. Mr. Chair, I just want to share a story. I
completely embrace the need for simplification. I think this is
a smart hearing to have. I also resonate with what Ms. Yentel
said. We could do dramatic simplification. I think doing one
program alone would be too simple.
I would really like housing vouchers if we put a
requirement that all landlords must accept all sources of
income. Often a landlord will accept paycheck on a job that
could be gone next week and not accept a Section 8 voucher,
which is not going to be gone next week. So if we are going to
have voucher programs I think we should have protection against
source-of-income discrimination.
But I do believe, and Ms. Yentel just mentioned this, the
Low-Income Tax Credit program has been really valuable in
producing housing for particular groups of people for whom
there was not housing. Here is an example in Virginia. When I
was lieutenant governor I was chair of the State's Housing
Commission, and we, based on a number of analyses, became aware
there was insufficient rental housing for people with
disabilities. The design standards of the wider doors and lower
cabinets--people were not building those. They were not
building them.
They were not discriminating against somebody trying to
rent and saying, ``We will not rent to you because you are in a
wheelchair.'' But if the door was not wide enough and the
counters were not low, folks could not live there.
So we approached our Housing Development Authority and said
competition for these low-income tax credits is very high.
Developers want to get them, because it helps them finance
their projects. We will give extra points in such competition
for any developer that proposes to have X percentage of their
units designed to standards that would accommodate folks with
disabilities.
And we got a lot of grief from that from the development
community, but the Housing Authority did embrace this, now 10
or 15 years ago. And immediately all the developers knew that
if they were going to win the competition they would have to
produce accessible units, and they started to do it.
And they learned something. Here is what they learned.
Folks with disabilities who rented a unit that they liked were
some of their most loyal tenants. If they found a unit that
would work for them, they would not stay for a year and go
somewhere else. They would stay year after year after year.
Folks who had no disability who rented those units would have
disabled friends or children who could visit or stay with them.
Or when they got ill or they got elderly, suddenly that unit
was sufficient for that chapter of their life, even if they
would not have needed some of those modifications before.
And many of the developers came up years later and said,
``This was actually really, really smart. It was the right
thing to do, and we adjusted our practices. And what we learned
was this is a population we were not serving and now we are
serving them, and we are doing well and doing good at the same
time.''
So I sort of resonate with Ms. Yentel on the point that
going to one program would probably be too streamlined. I do
think we have to put choices in the hands of individuals. The
voucher program does that, if we can make some modifications
and protections. But we also have to have rigorous studies and
then try to incentivize the production of housing for
particular populations that may be difficult to house.
And, you know, I think there is probably some bipartisan
support for, you know, both halves of what I just said. So this
is helpful to hear these witnesses.
Chairman Enzi. Senator Van Hollen?
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you.
Mr. Olsen. Senator Enzi, can I inject a remark here?
Chairman Enzi. Yes. Please do. I am sorry. Dr. Olsen?
Mr. Olsen. This is on the issue of which type of program
serves large families better, and the answer is, among all the
current programs, by far the Housing Choice Voucher Program
serves larger families than any of the other programs. In fact,
a lot of the people in the Housing Choice Voucher Program live
in single-family units, which are especially good for large
families, and that is not a characteristic of the other
programs.
Chairman Enzi. Thank you. Anyone else from the panel wish
to comment on that?
[No response.]
Chairman Enzi. Senator Van Hollen.
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to
thank the witnesses for their testimony. I apologize. I had to
go up to the Senator floor on a motion that we have been
working on.
But like Senator Kaine I think that there are a number of
good ideas that we should be able to explore as a Committee on
a bipartisan basis. And with respect to the Housing Choice
voucher, I am pleased to have teamed up with Senator Young on a
bipartisan bill where we were successful in expanding the
number of Housing Choice vouchers and also securing additional
funding for those.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we
have also seen proposed deep cuts to many of the other voucher
programs, which the testimony has been clear are among the most
efficient ways of delivering affordable housing.
Given the situation we are facing right now, which the
Chairman mentioned in his opening remarks as well as I did,
with respect to the current COVID crisis and housing, Ms.
Yentel, Bloomberg recently reported that institutional
landlords have filed more than 900 eviction cases across eight
metropolitan areas, from September 2 to September 8, even in
the face of the CDC order. Can you comment a little bit on how
much protection the CDC order will provide with respect to
evictions? That is the first part of the question.
And then the second part of the question is, as I mentioned
in my opening statement, even if we are able to protect people
from evictions in the short term, if we do not provide rental
assistance that obviously just moves a huge problem down the
road, and we believe up to 20 million Americans will be facing
eviction when they are not able to make their balloon payments
at the end of the period.
So can you comment on both those parts, first the extent to
which the CDC order provides eviction protection, and number
two, the urgency of providing rental assistance, which, by the
way, in a Banking Committee hearing the other day witnesses
invited by both parties, Republicans and Democrats, agreed was
essential.
Ms. Yentel. It is essential, yes. Thank you for the
questions, Senator.
The previous Federal eviction moratorium under the CARES
Act was limited. It protected about 30 percent of renters and
it created some confusion, because renters had a difficult time
of knowing whether their particular property was covered under
the moratorium because it only covered certain federally backed
or federally subsidized properties. And so during the CARES
Act, despite many of our best efforts, there were some illegal
evictions that went forward.
The CDC eviction moratorium is much broader. It covers all
eligible renters, in all properties across the country. But it,
too, is creating a lot of confusion, because unlike the CARES
Act, where the protection was automatic for renters who lived
in covered properties, under the current CDC eviction
moratorium renters need to take an action to receive the
protection. So if they meet certain eligibility requirements
they need to sign a declarative statement and give it to their
landlord in order to receive that protection.
What we are finding is that many renters do not know about
the moratorium and they do not know about the actions that they
need to take. So we are doing everything we can, and I am
encouraging all policymakers at all levels to do everything you
can, to make sure that your constituents and that all renters
know about this protection and know what action they need to
take in order to receive it.
But another problem with the CDC moratorium is that judges
are interpreting it differently. The moratorium itself is quite
clear. It is pretty plain-spoken, and it is meant to be
interpreted very broadly. I mean, the purpose of the CDC
eviction moratorium, or the reasoning behind it, is that they
found that increased evictions will lead to increased COVID-19.
And so it is meant to be very broad. But some judges are
interpreting it more narrowly, and for that we may need more
action from the CDC to be clear on how it should be
interpreted.
And then the third problem, as you mentioned, is that there
is increasing evidence that large corporate landlords are
taking advantage of this moment of confusion and this moment
when renters do not know what their rights are, and trying to
rush through as many evictions through the courts as they can
before renters become aware of their protections and take
action to receive them, which is just reprehensible, and
another reason why we need to make sure that renters have all
the information that they need.
But ultimately any eviction moratorium is a half measure.
On its own it is not enough. Eventually those eviction
moratoriums expire, and when they do they create a financial
cliff for renters to fall off of, when back rent is owed and
they are no more able to pay it then than they are now, or they
were at the beginning of the pandemic. And during this
moratorium rent is still due, and on December 31st, all of the
rent will be due, plus the late fees and the penalties that
landlords tag onto it.
So it is essential that Congress pair a national eviction
moratorium with emergency rental assistance, at least $100
billion as you, as Senator Brown, and just about every Democrat
in the Senate has supported and has already passed in the
House. And as you say, there is growing bipartisan support for
this. Now we need Congress and the White House to come together
and actually act on it.
And I will say, too, that the emergency rental assistance
is essential not only to avoid saddling low-income renters with
more debt than they can ever pay off, but small landlords are
struggling and they are increasingly struggling as renters
increasingly cannot pay the rent. They rely on rental income to
pay their bills, to keep the lights on, to keep maintaining and
operating their properties. And the last thing we want to do is
end this crisis having lost some of our country's essential
rental housing stock. And for those two reasons it is essential
that Congress and the White House come to an agreement, pass a
bill that includes at least $100 billion in emergency rental
assistance.
Chairman Enzi. Do either of our other two panelists want to
comment on that?
Senator Van Hollen. --a lot of those landlords have their
own bills to pay too, and we need to work on both parts of
that.
Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you for holding the hearing.
Chairman Enzi. Thank you. Do either of the other two
panelists want to comment on that?
Not appearing so I want to thank the witnesses for
participating today. This concludes our roundtable. As
information for all Senators, questions for the record are due
by 12 p.m. tomorrow. Emailed copies of the questions are
acceptable, due to our current conditions. Under our rules we
do ask the witnesses to respond to the questions in 7 days.
There is a lot of good information here. As staff gets that to
the Senators who were not here, as well as those of us who were
here, I am sure there will be additional questions. There seems
to be more agreement on possibilities than I have had in other
roundtables. So under the rules we do ask the witnesses to
respond to questions in 7 days.
And finally, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the
record written statements from the Tax Foundation and the NRP
Group. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information follows:]
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Chairman Enzi. With no further business before the
Committee, the roundtable is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:46 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS
[The following submitted questions were not asked at the
hearing but were answered by the witnesses subsequent to the
hearing:]
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