Policy News :: Weekly Update for October 8, 2021

This week in affordable housing news…:

State update:

  • The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced this week that it will continue to prohibit the eviction of tenants for nonpayment of rent from HUD-subsidized public housing and properties with project-based rental assistance even after the expiration this fall of state eviction moratoria. The new HUD rule, published on Thursday, requires landlords to provide tenants with a 30-day notice period that includes information about (in California’s case) $5.2 billion available to renters through federal emergency rental assistance. “For many months, our Department has worked with landlords and owners who do business with HUD to ensure they access the Emergency Rental Assistance Program and do everything they can to keep people housed,” said HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge. “This rule is a significant step in raising tenant awareness about the availability of funds that can assist them with past due rent and allowing them additional time to access relief that may stave off eviction entirely.”

ICYMI – Top news stories:

Editorial: Let courts help tenants through the eviction process
Los Angeles Times
Even with the state moratorium on evictions being lifted Oct. 1, there are protections in place for tenants who lost income during the pandemic and fell behind on rent. There is also a $5.2-billion state rental assistance fund that is still available to tenants and landlords. In the city of Los Angeles, there is still a moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent due to pandemic-relatedfinancial problems that lasts until a year after the current state of emergency expires. But when some tenants, particularly those who don’t speak English well or are in the country illegally, receive an eviction notice, they may be so intimidated that they just move out—“self-evict”—before they ever get a chance to argue their case.

New law signals change in how California legislators are attacking the housing crisis
Washington Post
In a state where the homeownership rate is about 55.8 percent—among the lowest in the nation, in part because of skyrocketing housing prices—many first-time home buyers struggle to scrape together enough for a down payment. And for many more, purchasing a home remains out of reach. But a bill that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed recently could transform homeownership opportunities for thousands of Californians. SB 9 (Atkins) will allow property owners to split their single-family lots into two parcels and build up to four units on a property originally zoned for one home. Matthew Lewis of the pro-housing advocacy organization California YIMBY said the bill sends a clear message to cities that continue to impede the development of new housing: “It’s over.”

Where the suburbs end
New York Times
Faced with ballooning home costs that even a pandemic couldn’t tame, politicians from both parties now routinely talk about the state’s and nation’s affordability problems in terms of a lack of homes. The debate is about where and how to build new ones. Across America, housing is for the most part built in one of two familiar ways. The first is when acres of fields outside the urban center are turned into wide streets and cul-de-sacs named after trees. The second is when a developer descends on an already urbanized neighborhood and, after donating to a few campaigns and feuding with anti-gentrification activists, builds a glass condominium tower or high-rent apartment building. In the vast zone between those poles lie existing single-family neighborhoods, which account for most of the urban landscape yet remain conspicuously untouched. 

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