housing needs report to congress." hud has reported on worst-case housing needs since the mid-1980s, providing an authoritative look at the critical problems facing low income renter households. the center was founded on the idea that every american regardless of wealth or background should have the opportunity to live and a decent, affordable and safe home. working towards that goal requires a rigorous understanding of the housing challenges facing america's low income households, as well as an appreciation for the national and regional trends in house near the worst-case housing needs report is a critical tool that helps shed light on these issues. and as a former assistant secretary for the office within hud charged with producing this report for congress, i know that blood, sweat, and tears involved in analyzing and summarizing the data that informs the report. some want to thank the hud team and particularly those in the office of policy development and research for all their hard work. one quick note before we begin. we invite all attendee to submit questions using the live chat on you tube or facebook or on twitter using hashtag bpc life. the bpc team will be monitoring these throughout today's webinar and sharing them with the speakers. let me now and it is our first speaker, peggy bailey. peggy is the senior advisor on rental assistance at hud where she works to enhance the department rental subsidy and supply programs which help millions of families afford housing. peggy has a long record as an advocate for low-income americans, regency serving as vice president for l housing policy at the center on budget and policy priorities. peggy, we really appreciate you joining us today along with all your hud colleagues here i know you are incredibly busy for thank you for taking time for this important discussion, and with that i will turned over to you, peggy. >> thanks, dennis. and thank you to the entire team at the bipartisan policy center are hosting today's event. highlighting hud's "worst case housing needs report to congress." i also wanted to give a special word of appreciation to the hud team, as dennis noted, especially the office of policy development and research and particularly jennifer turnham paul gosar from in a moment here s not touch. jennifer delivered this excellent report that many rely on. this year in particular, we could not be more proud of the team's work. throughout the pandemic, housing has gotten a lot of attention. concerns about an increase in evictions and foreclosures, the recent increase in housing costs, and the need to address utilities, broadband, and safety concerns have all risen to the spotlight. these issues are not new. people were struggling to afford a home before the pandemic. even a strong economy with low unemployment did not fix it. actually, it continued to get worse. who was hit hardest? people with low incomes and people of color. while the economy was strong, it showed that that did not mean it was equally strong for everyone. the result is that more and more households are spending bigger chunks of their paychecks on rent and leaving less for other basic needs like food, transportation, health care. we do not know within next worst-case housing report will show, but it could be the same or worse, largely due to the economic fallout from the pandemic. how do we fix this? what are the tools we should be employing or creating today, particularly with additional relief resources to reverse the housing affordability crisis? that is what i am excited about for today's panel to discuss. first, it is my pleasure to introduce jennifer turn them -- turnhma. jennifer is the director of the policy development division of hud. it's mission is to ensure the relevance of research to policy and to serve as a key hud resource for data and analysis. it also produces this biannual housing report. prior to joining hide in 2020, jennifer led numerous research studies on diverse housing and community development efforts. jennifer: good afternoon. i am pleased to provide an overview of worst-case housing needs 2021. the 2021 report is the 18th in a multi-decade series documenting critical housing problems facing very low income renter families. over the years, the report has documented scarcity in affordable housing and the role of housing assistance and supply in addressing scarcity. the authors work with me in policy development at hud. i would like to express my appreciation for their hard work. the 2021 report and all previous worst-case housing needs reports can be found at huduser.org. the worst-case needs report analyzes data from the american housing survey. dahs has been collected since 1973 and every two years since 1984. the survey provides data on the physical conditions of homes, the cost of financing and maintaining homes, and the characteristics of the people who live in the homes. data are typically ready 9-12 months after the field is complete. the 2021 worst-case needs report is based on 2019 data. this is a key contextual factor, because the data were collected for the pandemic. -- before the pandemic. what does it need to have worst-case housing needs? worst-case needs households are renter households do not receive housing assistance, who have incomes at or below 50% of the area median income, are either paying more than 50% of their income and dutch in ranch, living in an advocate housing or both. 95% of households with worst-case needs had severe worst-case needs only because they had severe rent versions. people experiencing homelessness are not included. people extrinsic homelessness clearly have great need for housing, but they are not counted because dahs covers only households and households that live in them. it shows the trend in the number of households with worst-case needs over the past 20 years. in 2019, 7.7 million households experienced worst-case housing needs. this increased from 2017, which is statistically insignificant increase. worst-case needs have generally declined since 2011. however, there are still about 2 million more households with worst-case needs in 2019 than in the early 2000. of the 7.7 million households with worst-case needs, about three quarters have incomes at or below 30% of the area median income. the chart i am presenting has been reformatted for this presentation, but they'll derive from charts and tables in the 21 report. at the bottom of each side, you will see a note in blue identifying that. this exhibit shows the results of our analysis of the relative influence of the factors driving change in worst-case needs between 2017 and 2019. we see an increase in worst-case needs of 159 households. shifting toward homeownership reduced worst-case needs by about 45,000 households. growth in renters legs the growth in homeownership. -- increased worst-case needs by about 20,000, but there was a net increase of very low income renters. worst-case needs increased as housing became scarcer. the rental assistance counter -- can tracking these needs was a modest expansion in the renting supply over this period. the increase in rental housing reduced worst-case needs by 218, 000. this slide shows the number of households with worst-case needs in 2019 across racial and ethnic groups. about 3.6 million of the households with worst-case needs were non-hispanic white. about 1.9 million were hispanic. other races and ethnicities -- on this side, the blue bars show the share of very low income renter households within each group that experienced worst-case needs in 2019. the orange bars show the share of all households that experienced worst-case needs in 2019. you can see that this vary by race and ethnicity. data for hawaiian and pacific islander households had the highest rate. next highest were asian and hispanic households. black households had a relatively low rate of worst-case needs among the low income renters at 36%. this reflects the relatively high rate of housing assistance among very low income black renters. however, the rate of worst-case needs of all black households was more than twice that for white households. this chart illustrates the vital role that housing assistance place in preventing households from experiencing worst-case needs. in the exhibit, central cities are shown right blue bubbles. suburbs by purple, nonmetro green. larger doubles represent a larger national share of worst-case households. across regions and metro locations, housing assistance is inversely correlated with worst-case needs. you see the locations in the upper left quadrant of the chart such as a nonmetro areas in the midwest and northeast have a lower than average worst-case needs. by contrast, central cities in the west and that -- cities in the south have higher rates of worst-case needs. 95% of households with worst-case needs in 2019 had worst-case needs only because of severe rent burden. access to affordable units and rental subsidies is critical to addressing the problem. over the past 20 years, the unmet need has continued to outpace income growth and the ability of government to supply housing assistance and facilitate production. this results in a mismatch, which is severe for extremely low income renters. the essential shortage is exacerbated because higher income households occupy many of the units that otherwise would be available to low income renters. on the chart, the orange line shows the number of housing units available and affordable for everyone hundred very low income renter household. the blue line shows the number affordable and available for every 100 extremely low income renter households. in 2019, there were only 62 units affordable and available for every 100 low income renters. only 40 units available for everyone hundred extremely low income renters. he not benefit much from the modest growth in rental housing. -- they did not benefit this year's report contains a special addendum on the potential effects of the pandemic on worst-case needs. you will recall that the data in the report were collected prior to the pandemic. the pandemic caused an economic recession and major negative shocks too many incomes. at the same time, the federal policy is positive involved significant subsidy and addiction moratoria -- even action moratoria. it is not clear how worst-case these will be documented in the future dahs. data collection is now wrapping up. major federal relief laws could have affected household income and rent payments this year, such as the cares act, the covid release bill, the american rescue plan. the addendum also analyzes data on rental payments and risk of eviction collected during the pandemic. the addendum concludes with an exercise where we try to estimate the effects of federal relief on worst-case needs for hypothetical household. i know this site is incredibly complicated, but i encourage you to review the full table in the report. the idea is to think about the numerous factors that might effect the level and measurement of worst-case needs. this table examines the pandemic's impact for hypothetical family of four that includes two minimum-wage workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic. the american housing survey generally counts pretax income. it does not count post income, nonrecurring income, or benefits such as food assistance. the values in brackets represent income sources not captured. the first numeric column presents data for the family after the pandemic, on the second presents the case for the family losing his employment due to the end of it also received federal benefits. the enhanced unemployment benefits have the potential to leave our hypothetical family financially at her off in terms of pretax income, though its post-tax income would not change a great deal. the estimated housing cost burden would fall below the 50% threshold that triggers the worst-case knee. this family would no longer count as having worst-case needs. with the unemployment benefits, that would exceed pretax income of bone wage workers -- minimum-wage workers. on an after-tax income, the family would continue to qualify as a moderate housing cost burden. this contains a lot of assumptions, but it does illustrate how it can be complicated to predict how the pandemic and the federal response will affect worst-case needs, both as experienced by households but also is captured in the american housing survey. what is clear from our 2021 worst-case needs report is that even before the pandemic hit, his country had a large and persistent housing affordability problem that disproportionately affected the lowest income households and households of color. reducing worst case needs requires demand-side and supply-side solutions, such as increasing incomes of low income renters, expanding assistance, preserving the existing assisted and affordable housing stock, and reducing barriers to the production of affordable housing. we appreciate your interest in the report. i am looking forward to the panel discussion. with that i will introduce ben winter. he rejoined hud earlier this year in the office of policy development and research. he oversees work in relevance of hud research, disseminating policy and research findings, and managing had -- hud's philanthropic engagement. before coming to hud, he led economic opportunity initiatives in los angeles. he worked on helping to strengthen low income communities, address homelessness, and to grow affordable housing supply. ben: good afternoon. thank you for your leadership in policy development and research. it is a pleasure to work with you. i also wanted to say thank you to that staff who have been working on this report. i am in all of what you are able to pull off and love working with you all. thank you all for joining the panel discussion. i am excited to introduce our panelists. here they are on the screen. we have got the managing director of harvard's joint center for housing studies. he is also a lecturer at harvard school of design. he leads this team that writes the state of the nation housing report and the biannual america renter housing report. really excited to get his thoughts. we also have robin hughes from los angeles. she is the president and executive director of abode community. >> affordable housing developer in california and robin has been involved in housing community development for more than 30 years now, and we're really excited to hear her bring a local and state and from a housing developer perspective. we also have dennis day, who you've already heard from today. from the bipartisan policy center, he's the executive director of the brand new center for housing policy, and i'm excited to have dennis on this panel to share his expertise because out of all that you've probably had the most history with, having overseen the office during the bush years. welcome, dennis. finally, last but not least, we have ann, the vice-president for housing policy at the center for budget and policy priorities. like dennis, ann is also a hud alum. i'm also a hud alum as well and she served as the deputy assistant secretary for special needs and an office that really focuses in on the lowest income band that we're going to be discussing today on the panel, and she's also spent time as a senior advisor at the corporation for senior housing. thank you, ann, for joining us today. so to get us started, i wanted to just kind of take a step back and reflect a little bit about why this report matters, why do we keep doing it? and i'm going to offer you, dennis, to give us your insights first since you spent the most time on this report. why do you think we should be producing this every two years and investing on the american housing survey that helps us glean all of these data points in your report? >> well, thank you, ben. and i do want to tip my hat to thierry and barry, i worked with barry back in the day when i was at p d.n.r. but to answer your question, let me start by talking with the center. our mission is promote bipartisan policies that advance housing affordability for all. and you cannot really do this unless you understand the housing needs of the lowest income americans, as well as the trends in housing, both on a national and a regional level. and the data provided by the american housing survey, as interpreted by hud in the worse case housing needs report is critical to this understanding. ron terwilliger reminds us that the housing affordability has two dimensions, you've got the supply side dimension and the demand side dimension. what we've learned is there's a severe shortage of affordable family homes. and heard jennifer's presentation, only 62 available and affordable rental homes for 100 very low income renters and there's just 40 available and affordable rental homes for every every 100 extremely low income renters, so there's a severe shortage of affordable rental homes which we need to address as a nation. on the demand side, what do we learn from the worst case housing needs report? we've learned that a little more than 5 million rental households receive federal housing assistance, but there are 7.77 million renter households who are very low income who have worse case housing needs, meaning think pay 50% of their income just on housing costs and produces difficult tradeoffs between trading the monthly rent and buying health care and paying for food according to your kids' education. and the data provided by the american housing survey and interpreted by the worse case needs report by hud is incredible. now, jennifer mentioned a little about the american housing survey and this was created and launched in 1973. it's done every two years, it's a biennial and those people who live there. and before we had the housing survey in the united states we primarily relied on the biennial census every three to 10 years and that's unsatisfactory if you're trying 0 get something close to a semblance of a real-time understanding of what's going on in housing in the nation. so, i hope congress continues to support the american housing survey. i hope it continues, it directed hud to create the worse case needs report, and a report to congress. this is a report to congress. i hope it continues to insist that hud do this and i just want -- these are very valuable a documents for anyone working in the field who wants to understand and appreciate what's going on in housing. >> thank you, dennis. ann, what about you? you're zooming in from another housing policy think tank organization. from your perspective what is the value of this report and why should we be continuing to track worse case housing needs as a nation? >> thank you, ben. and i want to start by saying thank you so much for having me today and for giving me the opportunity to talk about this report and answer the why why it's so important. i'm going to take two different routes here, so bear with me for a minute. starting with the analytical side, right, the center on budget and policy priorities, which is where i am now, we consider this data incredibly valuable. we cite this report and the numbers that it provides. i can't tell you how many slides i have that have data from this report included as an indicator of housing generally across the country. and who is most impacted by worse case housing. on the side we really-- we use that data. it is all the time. it is incredibly important to our advocacy and our estimates around that only one out of every four eligible households for housing choice factors, actually get one, is related to that particular data. so, it is incredibly important to us from an analytical point of view. but i'm just going to go down another road for just a second. i've had the privilege of working both at the national and federal levels, as well as the local level over the last few years and i can tell you, and i can tell our audience that this data forms the basis of policy resource allocations and programs design decisions that informs discussions across the affordable housing spectrum, all the way from homelessness assistance to affordable housing development, and rental assistance. and let me just give you a real example of how this might play out. jennifer mentioned a moment ago that people experienced homelessness are not actually included in that report. that comes through the annual homeless assessment report from congress because they're not actually renters, but this data provides really important information to cities and counties and states across the country, when they're thinking about their homelessness assistance resources. so, as you know, there has been-- there's been an increase in unsheltered homelessness across the country for five, i would guess, when we see the next 800, it will be six straight years we're seeing a rise in the numbers of encampments, especially on the west coast, but also in lots of places across the country. so, i know a couple of you sit on the west coast, so let's put us in the fact that we're seeing that on the west coastment we also know that the solution to homelessness is safe and affordable housing with community support. but at the local level, what often happens is that conversations, as folks get frustrated with seeing increase encampments and unsheltered homelessness in particular, those conversations can start to blame individuals for some sort of perceived shortcomings, rather than really understanding homelessness as-- and helping and stability, as systemic issues that need system level, equity-based solutions. so these data that we're talking about today help to tell the story of all of these things connect, both nationally and at the local level. and what i was really struck by when i was reading this report this year is the difference, really, between extremely low income households and households in other income brackets and how, how the households account for 74% of the worst case housing needs cases, and that's something that we haven't seen since 2005. so we need all of this data to understand that dynamic and how to allocate the resources, build policy and design programs to the reality of what we're seeing, both on the housing and stability side and on the homelessness side. and i'll note earlier, i said something about increases in encampments and unsheltered homelessness on the west coast. in this report you'll see an increase in worse case housing needs in the west of almost 7% and i don't think that that's a coincidence. so really, what i'm-- all of that is to stay that this data tells the story of how all of these factors are connected and really drives home why we need to work together across the sun using an equity-based approach to address all of those needs. >> thank you, erin, very good insight and you alluded how the report can play into local conversations, right? and so now i want to turn to you and would see if you'd like to reflect a little bit why is it important for us to focus on worse case housing needs, especially from the local context. >> thank you again for having me here today. this is a critically important topic, especially as ann has noted that we see increasing homelessness as well as housing instability along-- among low income and extremely low income households. so i'm going to pick up on what ann was talking about earlier. so as a practitioner in the field, i can think about and talk about what i see on a project level, individual level, portfolio level at both communities. but what the data does is help us tell our story and sometimes even define our story, which is really great. so, it helps us in local advocacy and ann touched on this in terms of taking this data and taking what we know from our own experience when we have an affordable housing development. we experience the supply and demand that they have talked about earlier when we are receiving, you know, five times the number of applications as we have available units. it clearly demonstrates this need for more affordable housing, but when we're able to point back to this data and say, that's not unique to this one experience or opportunity, that's the data for los angeles, for the reason or for california for this date. whatever that might be. when we think of who we serve as an affording housing developer, again, we can take our intuitive information that we get here in los angeles, but we know, if there's extreme need for housing, for extremely low and low income people, that's where we want to target our mission and our resources for producing that housing. and what this report does, shine light on where policy and programs should be. it's very clear that the market is not going to produce housing for extremely low and low income households. so there has to be government intervention in that, so we can point to this data to say that our local resources should be targeted towards, out in los angeles, both sides, the homelessness situation that we have here now, as well as extremely low income housing, so that we don't have more and more people slipping into homelessness. so, again, it helps to define our story. it helps to determine more policy and direction as we go. you know, one of the things that i find that's interesting, that's not in the report as well, and we see this in los angeles all the time, is the way in which extremely low come sates for the high cost of housing, overcrowding and we often see a family of four living in a one bedroom apartment or multiple households or multiple generations, living in a two bedroom apartment and one sleeping in the living room or a garage converted into units for folks. so, that's another way of measuring the impact that high cost rental areas like los angeles and how we are addressing the housing crisis in these for people are impacted. so it would be great if the report also looked into that. so, thank you. >> thank you, robin. chris herbert, i want to give you the mic there. you've spent a lot of time on disability metrics and examining needs across the country. what makes this different? what's the value add for this report for the community? how does it fit into the broader research world from your perspective? >> yes, i'm happy to answer that and i just want to say, for the study and waiting for this report to come out this year because it's so valuable. you know, there are three things i point to, ben. one to start with, it measures household incomes in terms of ami, americare and median income and characters that mask the policiment and overall the report in general i would say is strongly policy relevant and it starts with categorizing the households for that measure. it doesn't seem that complicated, but when you think about the people and the measures difference where you live in the country of the that's a building block for the analysis. the second thing that's unusual because of the fact that it's in the american housing survey, it's able to take into account who is actually receiving housing assistance. so when we look at who is experiencing worst case needs, it factors out the fact that some people are getting the benefit of, you know, a voucher or a private based subsidy or public housing and we can take into account what-- how people are able to access those-- that assistance and how that's affecting the need for affordable decent housing. and we don't talk much about housing quality these days because it's become much less of an issue. but for families with severe inadequate housing, and that lacks plumbing or exposed wiring, and holes of more than a foot in the wall or the floors, when we talk about severely inadequate. we're talking housing that's challenging to inhabit. it's a problem i think that is overlooked and the fact that this report makes-- takes advantage of that information only available in the american housing survey and the need for housing assistance that's second to none. >> thanks. it sounds like i'm hearing concensus that this report is valuable enough that we could continue to do it every two years. i agree. and i would think, so does the congress. so let's talk a little bit about the actual findings and what you're taking away from the findings this year. for me, the biggest take away are the prevalence hasn't budged in recent years and it's for extremely low income workers and the three major factors driving that are the shortage of rental assistance, a weak growth in the supply of housing that creates more competition for renters, and that we've got slow income growth especially at the lower income bands. those are kind of the three takeaways. a lot has changed since 2019 with the pandemic. and chris, i want to kind of follow along with you. i know you've kind of been putting out new research on the impacts of the pandemic. do you think these are the three factors that are still kind of driving factors between the housing needs? what else is happening by the pandemic that you might think are affecting worst case needs? >> well, you know, i think the pandemic in many respects has exacerbated the drivers. certainly by undermining people's ability to make a living, lowering incomes, that's affected worst case needs and it's also initially, rents were falling and during the first phase of the pandemic, and kind of oddly, we had a house prices going up and rents fall and that's turned around and now rents are going up quite rapidly, helping who drive the overall cpi to high levels. so the supply side and demand side as dennis said are both exacerbated by the pandemic. i guess one thing that i would-- that we don't have good data on, but it seems clearly one of the outcomes of the pandemic that i worry about is again on housing quality. and there's been a variety of studies from the center and the absolute and turner center at berkley that looked at the impact on particularly small landlords and the inability of renters to make rent has put stress on particularly these affordable, unsubsidized housing units and landlords have to cut back in ways like maintenance in particular and also, some missed payments on the property taxes, and more are considering putting their properties on the market. so it's creating a lack of investment and an instability among that affordable, unsubsidized housing stock that i think will potentially exacerbate worse case needs. >> thanks, chris. and robin, you're on the ground. you've been seeing the pandemic on the ground in your properties and into the communities that you worked in. could you kind of reflect on chris's comments on some other factors that you see are driving worse case needs currently? >> you know, i'll start with your comment, and i think that many of you opened with in terms of where the need for extremely low housing is needed and in los angeles the housing partnership corporation, to a housing report locally and statewide region. and in los angeles about 65%, we're very much a renter region. and 78% of extremely low income renters in los angeles are rent burdened compared to 2% of moderate. so i would only imagine that that needs to be the same post-pandemics, that a shortage of available apartments or places to rent in los angeles, have just been further impacted by the pandemic. we also need to produce or have available about 800,000 units for extremely low and long-term renters here in los angeles, and right now, we have a shortage of a half million units. and again, because we're probably only producing, you know, at best 5,000 units a year in the county, that just continues to grow. so post pandemic, we're still just having a shortage of overall units available to us. you know, in our affordable housing portfolio, in terms of residents who have been impacted by the pandemic from an economic standpoint, we did a survey last year around this time and at least 69, 70% of the residents in our affordable housing units had been impacted from an economic standpoint. so, i definitely see that as the recession hits and people that are working in retail, hospitality, and those are the jobs that have been impacted and will continue to be impacted and those are the types of families who are living in our affordable housing. and then lastly, in terms of, i think our biggest concern is what will happen after the moratoriums are lifted here in los angeles, and will extent through the period of time, but i believe the available resources for rent relief in california may meet 65% of the overall need so that's going to have a significant impact on extremely low and low income residents post-pandemic as well. >> so you've already started to move the conversation into policy levers, what to do about this. and we know we've got this need, it's a need that seems to have grown since -- in recent years and we know that the pandemic has exacerbated the need, but we also know we have a new information in place and that congress are actively debating right now how the federal government addresses the case needs, whether that's through build back better, the american rescue plan, the budget process and ann, i'm looking at you to see if you could kind of talk to us a little bit about what you think are the most important proposals out there right now na can help address this need? >> and thanks for that question. i've been spending and my team has been spending a lot of time recently, and we talk about this quite a bit. i want to start by saying what we hope to see in the long run is a permanent solution around affordable housing. as we work our way towards housing, universal housing, universal vouchers, we need to consider those incremental steps, but we do think that universal housing, which really means that everybody is eligible for housing choice option, would get one, is ultimately what we want to be aiming at right now. ultimately, what we want to be aiming at. but right now, we have a number of things in front of us that we really want to take advantage of and like many of the other speakers have said, the build back better in particular, which is really the piece that's under discussion right now to be effective. one, housing has to be included. affordable housing has to be included and two, address both the supply needs and affordability. a number of folks on the panel have said that today. and for many people in the audience, you probably know that the center is particularly focused in three areas, supply, increasing supply through investments and the national housing trust fund. making improvements to our current public housing stocks, and i think probably most importantly, from our point of view, is a significant increase in rental assistance through housing choice voucher expansions. and the reason that we're focussed on these three areas and how it ties to this report, is that they are resources that are highly targeted to the populations that this report shows are facing the greatest challenges in getting and maintaining safe and affordable housing. so we really need to focus on those who need help the most and that includes people at extremely, who are extremely low income, who have disabilities, seniors, i saw questions coming through the chat about seniors. working families and children. we need to use an equity-based targeted universal approach to assure that the system works for communities of color and lgbtq people, who have been subject to racist and discriminatory practices in the past and i think we have a real opportunity to do that with this legislation, if it includes housing and if it includes a package that addresses both supplies and affordability. >> thanks. so supply and affordability, two big policy levers at the federal level. and dennis, where do you fit, and think about a lot about federal policy on housing. what do you think are some of the big hot ticket items that you'd like to talk about? >> well, yes, i work at the btc and the b stands for bipartisan. and the good news is there are a lot of ideas, a lot of initiatives on the table in washington that enjoy bipartisan support that could make a difference. that could help solve the-- or at least mitigate the housing affordability challenge. one of them, of course, is the expansion of the low income housing tax credit which has been the nation's most successful program to encourage private investment in their preservation and construction of new affordable rental units for lower income people. so, expanding the low income housing tax credit, making them a more effective program is something that enjoys bipartisan support in congress. secondly, there's this neighborhood homes improvement act which would incentivize private investment in the preservation-- we have and new construction of homes for the first time home buyers in distressed communities who are low income. and this bill, estimates are about 500,000 homes could be created over the next 10 years and enjoys bipartisan support in congress and it would address this issue which we haven't talked about in the worst case about the crowding out effect, about how the lower income households are often crowded out from accessing units by people in higher income brackets. so if you created for the entire income folks, the opportunity to become first time home owners that should provide more relief for the lower people, lower on income scale and such as the rental market and that's the other thing. the neighborhood homes improvement act is another idea that enjoys bipartisan support. reinvesting, ann talked about public housing and very important. reinvesting, public housing stock, which is affordable housing is critical and republicans, many republicans support something called the rental assistance demonstration program which brings the private capital into help support the public housing stock. one idea on the table is competitive-- to encourage community reform there, the local zoning and land use laws to enable the production of more affordable housing and that idea of regulatory barrier removal, regulatory reform also enjoys republican support, bipartisan support. so that's the good news. bpc10 years ago had a housing competition that supported expansion of the voucher program to make sure all eli households get access to it. we supported the creation after permanent program at the federal level for emergency, one-time emergency, specifically for renters who potentially faced eviction. so i guess the point i want to make is that there are a lot of things in congress being talked about in congress on housing enjoy support from people across -- on both parties, across the aisle. before i go, ben, i just want to-- i may not have time. one thing that struck me in this report is the significant increase in worse case needs among older renters, ages 62 and above. there's a 607,000 additional low income-- additional worse case needs among older renters and i think that this is something that we really need to be focused on as america ages, as the population, percentage of the population at 65 and above grows and it's focusing on the needs of older, older renters and whether, you know, are homes suitable for them. suitability is something that we might ought to be looking at as well as adequacy. are they suitable for an older population. but thank you, i'll leave it at that. >> thanks for highlighting the needs from older adults and our thanks for linda as well. we talked about federal policy levers. robin, what do you think could be the role of state and local governments and actors that play to address worse case housing needs? >> bep ben, i can't overemphasize the need to bring federal dollars to the local level. especially in california where unfortunately we are constrained by the ability to tax here in our state. so by proposition 13. so having the federal dollars are critical. but i think at the state and local level, it's probably the same theme of levers as ann and dennis mentioned. at the state of california, impart of the california housing organization and we collaborate with housing in california and there's a big push to get another statewide bond on the battle at a larger amount this time. 10 billion dollars. and i think it really is creating resources at a level that's going to be sufficient to address the problem. so, you see, we have the smaller bond initiatives, but we need to get to a larger level. and so, having, you know, a bond issuance that's sufficient over an extended period is critical. and in california we're lucky enough tbe a state credit program, so to the extent that our state legislature can look at making that a permanent opportunity to produce affordable housing in and particularly targeting low income folks, that would be great. the other two that of course, the state has, is land use and in california we've seen a number of bills to streamline the production of affordable housing throughout the state, of one that hasn't quite gotten to the legislature, and the residential zoning with priority to affordable housing within commercial areas so it's a bit odd that some of our cities throughout california do not allow that, so, those are really wonderful opportunities. locally, it's very similar, we have a housing trust fund here in los angeles and we need to continue to fund it at an appropriate level. to deliver housing here in the state and there's also a legislative period to create a special housing agency that would actually cover the county of los angeles and have those bonding and land use authority, again, to further streamline how we produce affordable housing throughout our county and state level. and within those programs, there's also how they're prioritizing, whether it's funding or stream lining. and ensuring that there's an incentive to actually fund extremely low, low income housing and that becomes a priority. and as ann mentioned, making sure that there's equity land associated with it. and lastly, zoning, you know, we still have so much r-1 zoning where you can only build one residential unit. we need to think about how to create zoning that increases density to get more housing built, to take the pressure off of the market. so, you can build, you know, 10-unit apartments, perhaps that takes a little bit of the pressure, throughout the city. that takes a little bit of the pressure to build 100 units, 200 units, so balancing out the zoning throughout our city. >> and the no shortage lever at the state and local level either. a lot to do on the agenda. there is so many other findings in this report that we could unpack. there's a lot in here and i don't have a lot of time, but i want to start a question on the floor here. you know, the report, to unpack the unequal incident worse case needs by geography. it reports the unequal distribution by race and ethnicity. it talks a little about the need by the disability status and there's a lot in here. so, the broad question, what other findings in there, do you think that you'd like to raise up and elevate and discuss this year? and this is anybody, really. >> i'm happy to start and raise up some of the data that's presented around race and ethnicity. and you've heard me a couple of times now talk about using an equity-based approach and ensuring that we're targeting the resources that we might be getting, or the resources that we have in the best way that we can. so, you know, recently i've had the opportunity to work with the urban institute and we did some mapping around need for the emergency rental assistance program in particular. and when we released the maps on twitter, we had a number of folks come back to us and say, the highest need areas in the map, based on the indices that you were using to determine need, including housing need, race and covid impact, over laps quite a bit with those-- the maps that show historic redlining practices. and in a lot of cases, either they overlap or that there's been some sort of impact around gentrification. we're going to be digging into that more over the next six months, but i think, you know, one of the things that i just wanted to say out loud is that folks who are experiencing the worst case housing needs and who are highly impacted, really that-- those neighborhoods are often reflective of those racest housing projects like covenants and disinvestment in communities and that's what i was pointing out at the beginning, these are all cross-cutting issues that neither racial equity lens applies to them so we can have the best impact that we can have. and it's not just about the money, it's a lot about the money, but it's not just about the money, it's about how we approach the policy. it's about asking people who are closest to the challenge and to the problems what they want and need and designing policies for those folks. it's about doing things like getting rid of discrimination around source of income. so all of these things are tied together and this report sort of nicely points to some of those things that we need to consider as we're thinking about racial justice and equity in a broader sense. >> and might i just-- in terms of the geographic areas, one of those the graphics of the report i really like is the chart showing between the share of households and assistance and the worse case needs and obviously, if you count someone receiving assistance as not having at worst case, it's an inverse relationship there, but there are strong geographic variations, northeast and midwest tend to have higher levels of assistance. one take away from that is the value of supplyside subsidies that gifts that keep on giving and one of the reasons the northeast and northwest have higher shares of assisted households, they've played in all of the housing production programs going back to the 1930's, so we have a stock in new york city and public housing for assistance. so, as we think about different means of supplying affordable housing and the build back better agenda includes the subsiies is important. i wants to add we can't just assume as the report does and perhaps because it has to that people in assisted housing don't have worse case needs. and i think there are specific concerns about the quality of particularly older public housing and even some of the older projects-based housing and we need a more nuanced view. one of the things on the racial side the fact that african-americans have lower rates of the worse case, primarily they have high rates of assistance. they have higher rates of assistance in public housing and not all of this public housing is well-located, not in areas of opportunity, and not in good quality housing. we need to invest in the housing and those communities because they're assisted doesn't mean that they are getting the quality of housing that people need and should expect that their assisted housing. >> i call that chart that you reference the bubble chart and this is my favorite as well in that report. and trying to get that as much as possible. i love the bubble chart. it's complicated until you read about it and then it like clicks. you start today talk a little bit about some of the shortcomings, i guess, of how we define worse case housing needs and this kind of gets us into the last theme of the conversation and we only have a few minutes and that is, what are we going to do in the next two years? we do this report every two years and there's some ability for small changes or supplemental studies or slight changes to how we look at the data. we're going to put that out there as what are some suggestions that youave for hud and the analysts here on helping that report evolve over time. >> well, i would-- hi, ben, i would say just to kind of work off of chris' last point about geography, i noticed, you know, as i think ann and robin have mentioned that worse case needs decreased in the south, the midwest, and the northeast, but increased by nearly 7% in the west. and then you look at the supply numbers and since the west had the most, the worst availability of affordable rental homes, just 44 per 100 very low income rental households. so, i was thinking, what-- okay, so the worse case is the result of a lack of supplies, that's the primary driver as to why the west coast is in the worst situation and why we saw worse case needs increase. i think maybe a little-- putting the points together in the report provides some sort of explanation. i don't know if you did in the report, i didn't see it, but giving sort of answering the why questions, periodically, because i was wondering why? what's going on in the west. i read reports about rents going through the roof in phoenix and boise and going through the roof, but i think answers the why or speculating on the why in places in the report would be helpful. >> thanks, dennis. any other thoughts? any other things that we should be paying attention to for the next report? >> so,i mentioned this earlier. it's overcrowding, which is -- there's the rent burden and then there's the -- there's the quality of housing, but then there's overcrowding and i mentioned here and particularly in los angeles and i'm sure it's in other places, where we have, you know, large households, multiple households living in smaller units. and so they're taking what probably equalities to multiple extremely low income household rent and getting to very low into an apartment. but they're still -- there's still housing instability or quality, lack of quality, rather. so, i would be interested to see how that may impact the numbers in that way. i do wonder, also, would the discriminatory eviction policy might have in terms of defining worse case housing needs. because it's also how often people, you know, move or have to move that impacts the quality of their life and also impacts of quality of their lives as kids getting education, getting to work, transportation and there's other things and there might be two things that might be helpful from the data points and this type of report. >> thanks, robin. and i don't want to take this in the wrong direction and i do wa the questions about housing quality and how important they are and how little we understand it on a level that we need to and this is how it's an issue for the neck two years. i think a bigger issue for the american housing survey, how do we measure the quality of housing in ways that really matter for households? i know that peggy spent her clear, worried about housing, exposure to mold, exposure to lead, exposure to toxins. there are so many things that are important. impact of climate change on housing, and people have access to air conditioning in areas where there's going to be, you know, significant heat or at what cost will they have access to air conditioning. to what extent are our households more at risk of, you know, severe weather that might damage their units, that are insecure that way. there are a whole range of issues around quality that we don't measure well, as a result we don't act on and it's a question for the housing survey, how do we do it, but i think we ought to be thinking about, they're fundamental to people's well-being that we don't have measures of today. >> on that point, benn, i think it's important to think about the overlap between quality and people experiencing homelessness or the definition of experiencing homelessness because there is some everlap there that i don't think that we have examined very closely. >> thanks. you know, we are-- jennifer's office also developed our research road map for hud and laid out the questions that will be our research dollars into the next five years. maybe we'll reach out to you all and talk more about some of the other research questions ap prioritizing hud we have some questions in the chat. we don't have a ton of time left over. we're set to end at 2:15. i wanted to give one person a chance to respond to this issue on climate change that you talked about, chris, at the chat. to what extent do you see climate change influences housing needs today and then into the future? and how do these intersect? and then we'll turn it over to peggy for closing remarks. >> that's open to anyone. >> i'm sorry, i've had my turn and i'll yield the floor to someone else. >> well, obviously, you know, if communities are going to be affected by ocean levels rising, they may not -- the issue may not be housing affordability. the issue may be housing, do i have a house. so, yeah, this is something that we definitely should be looking at and paying attention to. >> well, more discussion on that for sure another time. so i just wanted to say thank you so much to our panelists for lending us your time, your expertise, your words of wisdom and also, thank you all to our viewers for watching today. i'm going to hand it over to peggy daley to give us closing remarks. peggy. >> thanks, ben. and on behalf of secretary and the entire hud family i want to thank the bipartisan policy center for hosting us today and thank you all for attending the events and the worse case housing report shows and as the presenters highlighted, the need for more supply of affordable housing, the need to increase rental assistance, the foundational housing and reversing the negative impacts of racism and discrimination such as the outsize representation of people of color experiencing homelessness explains why addressing the affordable housing crisis is so important. and that is also a key component of president biden's build back better agenda. while the affordable housing crisis is multi-faceted, it isn't impossible to fix. hud programs and other federal ainstance works for those who receive it. the problem is that too few people do and we need to take the variety of pool and resources that renters talked about today and future resources to scale to meet the needs. housing is foundational for all of us and the pandemic has made that chris cal clear so i hope today's discussion energizes you all and the work that you do every day to not accept the status quotas relates to housing and the affordability crisis. thank you for attending today as discussion. >> here is a look at what's live today. on c-span the house to vote on a resolution to find steve in contempt of congress for the select committee for their investigation. they return for general speeches followed by legislative business at noon. on c-span2, the senate is back at 10 a.m. to take up judicial nominations as well as douglas parker's nomination to be assistant secretary of labor. and later, supreme court justice clarence thomas and senate minority leader mitch mcconnell speak alt an event commemorating the 30th anniversary of justice thomas' aappointment to the supreme court. and merrick garland testifies at an oversight hearing held by the house judiciary committee. you can watch on-line at c-span.org or with our new video app, c-span now. >> c-span shop.org is c-span's store. a selection of c-span products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories, there's something for every c-span fan and every purchase to help support our nonprofit operation. shop now or anytime at c-span shop.org. >> on a partyline vote the senate failed to begin debate on a bill introduced by democrats that would expand voting access and registration and make changes to the current campaign finance laws, the vote required 60 votes to move forward. and some legislation can be brought up at a later time. and senators spoke on the floor shortly after the vote failed. >> madam president, through a motion to reconsider that the failed closure vote. >> the motion i

Related Keywords

California , United States , Netherlands , Washington , Hawaii , Americans , America , Hawaiian , American , Dutch , Clarence Thomas , Robin Hughes , Dennis Shea , Robin Chris Herbert , Los Angeles , Ron Terwilliger , Peggy Bailey , Dennis Ann ,