mid1980s, providing an authoritateival 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 in 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. the worst case housing needs report is a critical tool that helped shed light on these issues. and as a former assistant secretary for the office within heard 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. so, i want to thank the heard 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 attendees to submit questions using the live chat on youtube or facebook or twitter, using #bpc live. the bpc team will be monitoring these throughout today's webinar and sharing them with the speakers. let me introduce our first speaker, peggy daily. she's the senior advisor on rental assistance at hud, where she worked to supply programs, which helped millions of families afford housing. peggy has a long record as an advocate for low-income americans, previously serving as vice president for housing policy at the center on budget and policy priorities. we really appreciate you joining us today, along with all your heard colleagues. we know you're incredibly busy. thank you for taking time for the important discussion and with that, i'll turn it over to you, peggy. >> thanks and thank you to the entire team for hosting today's event. highlighting heard's worst case housing needs report congress. also wanted to give a special word of appreciation to the hud team. especially the office of policy development, research and particularly jennifer turnum, who you'll hear from in a minute. and many rely on for housing affordability and this year in particular, we need this informed policy and couldn't 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 forclosures, recent increase in housing costs and the need to address housing related costs for quality safety concerns have all risen to the spotlight. when our worst case housing needs report shows is that these issues are not new. people are struggling to afford a home before the pandemic and even a strong economy with low unemployment didn't fix it. and who was hit hardest? people with low incomes and people of color. while the economy was strong, it shows that doesn't mean it was equally strong for everyone. the result is that more and more households are spending bigger chunks of their paycheck on rent and leaving rent for other basic needs for food, transportation and health care. we deenlt know what the next housing needs report will show. but largely worse, and largely due to the pandemic. how do we fix this? and what are the tools we should be creating today, particularly with the frequencies, to reverse the housing affordability crisis? that's what i'm excited about today's panel to discuss and many other important questions. so, first though, it's my pleasure to introduce jennifer tournamentic jennifer is the director of the policy development division of heard's office of policy development and research. the mission is to insure the relevance of research policy to advise the department on policy implications of research and it also produces this biannual need -- worse case housing needs report. prior to joining heard in 2020, spent nearly two decades where she led numerous research studies on housing and development. i'll pass it to you. >> thank you, peggy. good afternoon, everyone. i'm really pleased to provide an over view of the work 2021 report for the congress. the 2021 report is the 18th in a multidecade series, documenting and analyzing critical housing problems facing low income renter families. over the years it documents the scarcity. the authors of this year's report, who work with me in the policy development division at heard and i'd like to tax a moment to expregsz my appreciation as well as years of working on the housing needs report. the 2021 report and all previous work space housing needs report can be found at heard users.org. the worst case needs report analyzes data from the american housing survey or ahs. it's conducted by the census bureau and been collected since 1973 and every two years since 1984. it's a housing-unit based survey that provide information on the difficult homes in neighborhood and the characteristics of the people who live in the homes. the data are typically ready for release nine to 12 months after they feel work is complete. and heard requires additional time to analyze the results. the 2021 needs report is based on 2019 ahs data. this is a key contextual factor because the data for the report were collected before the start of the covid-19 pandemic. worse case needs household are renter households who don't receive housing assistance, who have incomes at or below 50% of the area medium income and for either paying more than 50% of their household on rent are living in severely inadequate housing or experiencing both of these problems. in 2019, previous years, 95% of households with workplace needs, only had worse case needs because they were paying more than one-half of their income for rent. people experiencing homelessness are not included. people experiencing homelessness clearly have great needs for houses but not counted in the great american housesing survey. only housing units and the households that live in them. over the past 20 years. in 2019, 7.77 million renter households experience worse case housing needs. worse case needs increase by 50,000 households between 2017 and 2019. which is an insignificant increase. it's generally declined since 2011, when they peeked at 8.48 million households. there's still about 2 million households with worse case needs in 2019, than in the early 2000s rb when there was more affordable housing available. of the 7.77 million households with worse case needs, about three-quarters are extremely lee income, meaning at or below the area median income. i'd like to note that the charts have been reformatted and in some cases, modified for this presentation. but they're in the 2021 report. at the bottom of the slide, you'll see a note in blue identifying the relevant exhibits in the report. this exhibit shows the results of our analysis of the relevant influence of the factor's rising change between 2017 and 2019. starting from the left-hand side, we see an increase in work space needs of households attributed to new households, the result of population growth. shift in 10 year and reduce needs by about 45,000 households. the growth lagged. in the third column, you can see changes in renter household income have work space needs by about 20,000. worse case also increased by an estimated 135,000 because housing assistance became scarcer, relative to the expanding numbers of low-income renters. in other words, it got wider. now, counteracting all of the factors, pushing work place needs up reduced competition for affordable units. the increase in rental housing reduced work space needs by 218,000, which reduced the net increase to just 50,000. this shows across different racial and ethnic groups. about 3.6 million of the 7.77 million households were non-hispanic white households. about 1.9 million were hispanic, followed by 9.6 and 420,000 non-hispanic asian households. other races and ethnicities totalled 210,000 households. on this slide, the blue bars show the orange bars show the share of all households in each group that experienced worse case in 2019. so, you can see from the chart that the rates of which households experience needs vary by race and ethnicity. native hawaiian and pacific islanders have the highest case of work place needs. 13% of all households. next highest were asian households and hispanic households. nonhispanic households had a relatively low amount of needs among renters at 36%. this reflects the high rate of housing assistance among low-income black renters. if you look at the orange bar, you'll see the rate among all black households is 10%, more than twice that for white households and this reflects that a much higherroom low income and rent housing. this chart illustrates housing assistance in preventing households from experiencing worse-case needs. central cities are shown by purple bubble and nonmetro areas by green bubble. larger bubbles represent a larger national share of worse case needs households. across regions in metro locations, housing assistance is correlated with worse case needs. locations in the upper left quadrant of the chart, such as nonmetro areas have higher than average levels of housing assistance and work space needs and by contrast, in the lower right quadrant, suburban areas in the south have lower rates of housing assistance, leading to higher rates of worse case needs. so, we noted earlier 95% of households with worse case needs in 2019 had worse case needs only because they had severe rent burden. given that they're largely an affordability problem, access is critical for addressing the problem. over the past 20 years, the unmet needs for decent space and affordable housing says you need out space growth and the affordability of government to facilitate house progduction. this results in a housing supply mismatch, which is severe for extremely low-income renters. it's exacerbated because they occupy many of the units for extremely low income renters. on the chart, the orange line shows the number of housing units available for every number of low-income households and those available for every 100 extremely low income household. in 2019, there were only 62 units affordable and available per 100 very low income renters. the supply of housing was even more constrained for extremely low income renters with only 40 units available for every 100 households. extremely low income renters did not benefit much from the modest growth of housing supply in 2017 and 2019. so, this report contain as special adendm on the potential effects of the covid-19 pandemic on worse case needs. you'll recall the data in the report from 2019. so, collected by the pandemic. as we all know, the pandemic caused an economic recession and negative shocks to many's household income. at the same time, federal policy involved significant household subsidies and eviction moratorium for the most negative effects. it's not clear how the pandemic might effect worse case needs, as documented in the 2021 ahs. note that the 2021 data collection took place this past spring and summer and is now wrapping up. so, the adendm to the report discusses the major federal relief law that could effect rent payments this year, such as the cares act, the covid-19 relief bill and the american rescue plan. the adendm also analyzes data on rental payments and eviction collected during the pandemic through the house survey. and then the adendms include, with an exercise where we try to estimate the effects of federal relief on work space needs for a hypothetical household. i know this is incredibly dense but i encourage you to look at it. and it might effect the measurement of worse case needs. this examines the impact of a hypothetical family of four with two minimum wage workers who lost their job during the pandemic. so, like other major surveys, generally counts prepacked money income. it doesn't count post pack income, nonrecurring income or benefits, such as food assistance. the values shown in brackets, represent income sources not captured by the ahs. the first numeric column of the table presents data for the family after the pandemic and they loses employment but receives federal pandemic benefits. the enhanced uninsurance benefits have the potential to leave the family better off in terms of pretax income. but post tax income would not change a great deal. the households estimating cost burden would fall below the 50% threshold and trigger the worse case needs. they would no longer count as having worse case needs because the unemployment benefits exceeded their pretax incomes as minimum wage workers. on an after-tax basis, the family's tax burden would not change much between the scenarios and continue to qualify as moderate housing costs. this is by no means definitive and it contain as lot of assumptions. it does illustrate how it can be complicated to predict how the pandemic and federal response can effect work space needs as captured in the american housing survey. what is clear from our 2021 worse case needs report, as peggy mentioned, is even before the pandemic hit in 2019, this country had a large and persistent housing affordability problem that disproportionately effected low-income households and households of color. this needs solutions, such as extending rental assistance, preserving the existing assisted housing -- oh, the existing assisted and affordable housing stock and reducing barriers to the production of new affordable housing. we appreciate your interest in this year's housing needs report and i'm greatly looking forward to the panel's discussion. i'll present ben winter, who will moderate the discussion. ben winter rejoined hud as deputy assistant secretary in the office of policy development and research. ben over seas the office of policy work in assessing the policy relevance of hud research and analyzing legislative proposals and disseminating research findings and in managing the international and philanthropic engagement. before coming to hud, he led the california community foundation housing and economic opportunity initiatives in los angeles and he was the chief housing officer for the city of los angeles. in these roles, he worked on strengthening low-income communities and to grow the region 's affordable housing supply. over to you, guys. >> good afternoon. thank you, jennifer, for that presentation. also thank you for your leadership. it is a joy and a pleasure to work with you every day. i wanted to say thank you to the staff and you know, i'm in awe of what you're able to pull off and really love working with you all. i'm excited to introduce all our panelists and started a chat with them. here they are on the screen. we have chris herbert joining us, the managing director of a harvard voice center for housing studies and a lecturer at harvard graduate school of design. we're super lucky to have him here because he leads the team that has the state of the nation's housing report and the biannual america housing report. so, two key resources for understanding housesing markets in the company. really excited to get his thoughts on the panel. we also have robin hughes zooming in from los angeles, california. hello, robin. she is the president and executive director of the community. that is a prolific affordable housing developer in california. and robin has been involved in community development for more than 30 years now. and we're really excited to see her bring a local and state and housing development perspective to the panel. we also have dennis day, who you've already heard from today from the bipartisan center, the executive director of the brand new center for housing policy. and i'm really excited to have dennis on the panel to share his expertise. because out of who you've probably had the most history with in the office. so, welcome, dennis. and finally, last but not least, we have ann. she's the vice president for housing policy at the center for budget policy and ann is also another hud alum. i'm also a hud alum as well. the deputy assistant secretary for special needs. an office that focuses 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 affordable housing. so, thank you so much. so, to get us started, i want to 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 and give us your insights first, since you spent the most time on this report. why do you think we should produce this every two years and invested in the underlying american housing survey that helps us gleen all these data points in the report. >> thank you, ben. and i do want to tip my hat to barry as well. i worked with barry back in the day. but to answer your question. let me start by telling you about the new center. our missions is to promote bipartisan policies that advance housesing 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 on a national and regional level. and the data provided by the american housing survey, as interpreted by hud is critical to this understanding. ron reminds us that the housing affordability challenge has two dimensions. you have the supply side demention and the demand side dimension. now, what we learned from the worse case housing needs report is there's a severe shortage of affordable rental homes. we heard jennifer's presentation. only 62 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 very low-income renters and just 40 available and affordable rental homes for every 100 extremely low income renters. so, there's a severe shortage of affordable rental homes, which we need address in the nation. on the demand side, what do we learn from the worse case housing needs report? we learn that fewer rental households receive housing assistance and 7.77 million renter households who are very low income, who have worse case housing needs. meaning they pay in excess of 50% of their income just on housing costs. and that's produces incredibly difficult trade offs between paying monthly rent and buying health care, food, supporteding your kid's education. the data provided by the american housing survey and interpreted by the worse case needs report at hud is incredible. jennifer mentioned about the american housing survey created -- launched in 1973. it's done every two years. biannual assessment of housing units throughout the united states and the people who live in those housing units. what are their characteristics? before that existed, before we had the american housing survey too, learn about the situation in the united states, we primarily relied on the census and that occurs, of course, every ten years. that's if you're trying to get something close to a semblance of a real time understanding of what's going on in housing in the nation. i hope congress continues to support the american housing survey, continues direct at hud to create the worse case housing needs report. this is a report to congress. i hope it continues to insist that hud do this and just want to have these two valuable documents for anyone working the field and wants to understand and appreciate what's going on in housing. >> thank you, dennis. and what about you? you're zooming in from another housing policy think tank, or 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 question of why it's so important. and i'm going to pick two different groups here. so, bear with me for a moment. and at the center on budgetl and policy priorities, which is where i am now, we consider this data incredibly valuable. we site this report and the number it provides. i can't tell you how many slide i have that have data from this report included. as an indicator of housing needs generally across the country. and who it most impacted by worse case housing. we really -- we use that data -- all the time. it is incredibly important advocacy and our estimate around that only one out of four eligible households for housing choice vouchers actually get one. is in that particular data. it is incredibly important to us from an analytical point of rue. view. but i'm going to go down another way for just a seconds. 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 the audience that this data forms the basis of seeing policy resource allocations and programs design decisions and informed 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 experiencing homelessness are not actually included in the report. they're not actually and this data provides really important information to cities and counties and states across the country when they're thinking about their homelessness assistance resources. there's been an increase in unfiltered homelessness across the country when we see the next 800, there will be the next years, especially on the west coast and also in lots of places around the country. i know a couple of you stay on the west coast. put a note in the fact that we're seeing that on the west coast. we also know the solution to homelessness is safe and affordable housing with community support. but at the local level, what often happens is conversations, as folks get frustrated with seeing increase encampments and homelessness in particular, those conversations can start to blame an individual for some sort of perceived shortcomings, rather than understanding homelessness and housing stability as systemic issues that need system level, equity-based solutions. so, the data that we're talking about today, hoped to tell the story of how all these things connect, both nationally and at the local level. and what i was struck by when i was reading the report this year is the difference, really, between extremely low income households and housesholds in other income brackets and how it accounts for 74% of the worse case housing cases and that's something we haven't seen since 2005. so, we need all of this data to understand that dynamic and how to allocate resources, build policy and design programs to the reality of what we're seeing, both on the housing instability side and on the homelessness side. and i'll note, earlier i said something about increases in encampments and increase homelessness on the west coast and you'll see an increase in worse case housing needs in the west andian don't think that's a coincidence. really what i'm following that is to say is this data tells the story of how all of these factors are connected and really drives homing why we need to work together across using an equity-based approach to address all of those needs. >> thank you. really good insights. you eluded to how this report can play into local conversations, right? and so, i want to turn to you and see if you would like to reflect a little bit about why is it important for us to focus on worse case housing needs, especially in the local context. >> thank you. for having me here today. this is a critically important topic, especially as ann has noted. and we should see increasing homelessness among low income and extremely low income households. i'm going to pick up on what ann was talking about earlier. i can talk about what i see on a project level, individual level, portfolio level. but what the data does is help us tell our story and at some point, define our story, which is great. it helps us and local advocacy and in terms of taking the data and what we know from our own experience, we experience that supply and demand that was talked about earlier when we're receiving five times the number of applications as we have available units. it clearly demonstrates this need for more affordable housing. 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. or for california. whatever that might be. think about who we serve as an affordable housing developer. we take our information in los angeles. beautiful there is an extreme need for housing for extremely low and low income people, that's where we want to target our mission and resources. and what this report does is put a shining light on where policy and programs alternatives should be. it's very clear that the market is not [ inaudible ] one of the things that i find that's interesting not in the report as well, and we see this in los angeles all the time, is the way in which extremely low and compensate for the high cost of housing is by over crowding. we often see family of four living in a one-bedroom apartment or multiple households in multiple generations renting a two-bedroom apartment and one taking the room and a living room. or the other extreme where you have a garage converted into four units for folks. that's another way of measuring the impact that high-cost areas like los angeles and housing are addressing the housing crisis and they're impacted. it's great if the report looks into that. thank you. >> thank you, robin. chris herbert, we're going to give you the mic and you've spent a lot of time on different affordability metrics and examining need across the country. what makes this report different? what's the value add for this report for the community? how does it fit into the broader research world? >> yeah, happy to answer that and the anticipation waits for the report to come out because it is so valuable. three things i want to it measures household income and categories that map the policy. overall, in general it starts with categorizing households. when you think about household size, that's a valuable building block for the analysis. and the seconds thing that's unusual is american housing survey is able to take into account who is using housing assistance? and when we look at who's experiencing worse case needs, it factors out the fact that some are getting the benefit of a voucher or subsidy or public housing. and the information doesn't exist. we can take into account whether or not how people are being able to access the assistance and to what extent is that helping meet the need for affordable, decent housing. and lastly, the measure the housing quality and we don't talk very much about housing quality these days because it's how much less of an issue than it was 50 years ago. but for families in severely inadequate housing. and this may have a lack of electricity or exposed wiring, holes of more than a foot in the wall. so, when we talk about severely inadequate, we're talking about challenging to inhabit. it's a problem i think that's over looked and the fact this report takes advantage of that information that's really only available in the american housing surveys, it paints a portrait of the nation's needs for housing assistance that is second to none. >> okay. so, it sounds like i'm hearing consensus that this report is valuable enough that we can continue to do it every two years. i agree. and 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 takeaways are the prevalence of worse case housing needs. it's hasn't budged this year, especially for extremely low-income renters. the factors driving that are rental assistance, a weak growth in the supply of housing that creates more competition for renters. and that we have free flowing growth, especially at the lower income. those are the three take away . a lot has changed with the pandemic. and chris, i want to kind of follow along with you. i know you've been putting out new research on the impacts of the pandemic. you think these three factors are a driving factor of worse case housing needs? what else is happening by the pandemic you might think are effecting worse case needs? >> i think the pandemic, in many respects is, is exacerbating the drivers. by undermining people's ability to make a living, that perspective. worse case needs. and initially rents were falling in the first phases of the pandemic. oddly, we had a housing crisis going up and rents falling. but now rents are going up quite rapidly. helping to drive the overall ppi to quite high levels. so, supply side and demand side are both exacerbated by the pandemic. one thing that i would -- that we don't have good data on but seems clear to be one of the outcomes of the pandemic is on housing quality. there's been a variety of studies. some from the urban institute and the turner center at berkley and looked at the impact on particularly small landlords and the inability of renters to make rent has put stress on particularly affordable unsubsidized housing units and landlords have to cutback in maintenance in particular. and missed payments on the mortgages and property taxes. more are considering putting their properties on the market. it's creating a lack of investment and instability among the affordable, unsubsidized housing stock that will exacerbate worse case needs. >> thank you. robin, you're on the ground. you've been seeing the pan domic on the ground in your properties and communities you work in. can you reflect on chris's comments and throw out some other factors you see are driving worse-case needs currently. >> you know, i'll start with your comment and i think many of you opened with and the need for housing is needed. and you know, here in los angeles, california housing partner and locally, in the local region. and about skoichb skoivl -- 65%. we're very much a renting region. and 78% are rent burdens and that's compared to the 2% of moderates. i would only imagine that is the same post pandemic. the shortage of available apartments and places to rent in los angeles has just been further impacted by the pandemic. we also 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, at best, 5,000 units a year in the county, that this 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 from a economic standpoint -- we did a survey around this time last year. around 69/70% of the residents in our affordable housing unit has been impacted from an economic standpoint. we see that, as the recession hits and people that are working in retail have to validate, those are the jobs been impacted and will continue to be impacted and those it are the types of families living in our affordable housesing. and lastly, when it will happen after the moratoriums are lifted in los angeles. and i believe the available resources for rent relief in california may meet 50% of the overall relee. relief. so, that's going to have a significant impact on low-income residents post pandemic as well. >> thanks, robin. so, you already started to move the conversation into policy. what to do about this. yes, we have the need. seems to have grown since -- in recent years and we know the pandemic has exacerbated the need but we also know we have a new administration in place and congress are actively debating about how the federal government can address worse case needs, whether that's through build back better, the budged process and i'm looking at you to see if you can kind of talk to us a little bit about what you think are the most important proposals out there right now that can help address this need. >> thanks for that question. it's something i've been spending and my team has been spending a lot of time on recently. 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 incremental steps. which means everyone eligible for a housing voucher would get one, is ult mtdly what we want to be aiming at right now. ultimately what we want to be aiming at. right now, we have a number of things in front of us that we want to take advantage of. and like many of the other speakers have said, in particular, which is really the piece under discussion to be effective, housing has to be included, affordable houses housing has to be included and include supplies and affordability. for many people in the audience, who probably know it's particularly focussed in three areas. increase in supply through investments in the national housing trust fund. making improvements to the current public housing stock and i think most importantly from our point of view is a significant increase in rental assistance through housing choice voucher expansion. as a reason we're focussed on these three areas and how it's tied to the report is they're resources highly targeted to the population. this report are facing the greatest challenges in getting and maintaining space in affordable housing. so, we really need to focus on those who need help the most and that includes people at extremely -- who are at extremely low incomes, who have disabilities. seniors. i saw questions in the chat about seniors, working families and children. there's an equity-based targeted universal approach to insure 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 a package that addresses both supply and affordability. >> thanks. supply and affordability, two big policy levers in the policy level. what do you think about federal policy on housing. what do you think are some of the hot-ticket items that you'd like to talk about. >> yes, i work at the bpc and it stands for bipartisan. the good news is there are a lot of ideas, lot of initiatives on the table in washington that enjoy bipartisan support, that can make a difference, that can 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. expanding the tax credit, making a more effective program is something that enjoys bipartisan support in congress. secondly, there's a neighborhood homes improvement act, which would incentivize crowd investment in the -- we have new construction of homes for first-time home buyers in distressed communities who are low income. and this bill, estimates about 500,000 homes could be created over the next ten years. enjoys bipartisan support in congress and would address the issue, which we haven't talked about in the worse case needs report about the crowding out effect, about how the lowering some households are often crowded out from accessing a unit of five people and higher income bracket. if you created, for the higher income folks, the opportunity to become first-time home buyers, that should provide more relief for the lower -- people on the lownercome scale, seeking to access the rental market. neighborhood homes improvement act is another idea that enjoys bipartisan support. reinvesting -- and ann talked about public housing. very important. reinvesting, modernizing our public housing stock, which is an important source of affordable housing is critical and 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 grants program to encourage community reform there, local zoning and lows to enable production of more affordable housing. and that idea of regulatory barrier remove, regulatory reform also enjoys republican support, bipartisan support. so, that's the good news. the bpc ten years ago had a housing commission that supported an expansion of the voucher program to make sure all eli households get access to it. they supported the creation of a permanent program at the federal level for emergency, one-time emergency assistance for renters who potentially face 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 the -- on both parties. on both parties. before i go, one thing that struck me in this report is 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 this is something we need to be focussed on, as america ages, as the population, percentage of the population is focusing on the needs of older renters. and whether, you know, our homes is suitable for that. suitability might be something we ought to be looking at as well assed a kwkacy. to be look well as adequacy. are they suitable for an older population? but thank you. i'll leave it at that. >> thanks, dennis. thanks for highlighting the need for older adults. i see a question from linda couch on there as well. we talked about federal policy levers. robin, what do you think can be the role of state and local governments and actors at play to address worst case housing needs? >> well, 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 those federal dollars are critical. but i think at the state and local level, it's probably the same theme as levers as ann and dennis mentioned. at the state of california, i am part of the california housing consortium, the state-wide organization, and we also collaborate with housing california, and there's a big push to get state -- another state-wide bond on the ballot at a larger amount this time. $10 billion, and i think it really is creating resources at a level that's going to be sufficient to address the problem. so we keep passing these smaller bond initiatives, but we need to get to a larger level. and so having a bond issuance that is sufficient over an extended period of time is really critical. and california, we're lucky enough to have a state credit program, so to the extent that our state legislature can look at making that a permanent opportunity to produce affordable housing and particularly targeting extremely low income folks, that would be great. the other tool that of course the state has is land use and zoning, and in california, we have seen a number of bills to streamline the production of affordable housing throughout the state. so one that hasn't quite gotten through the legislature is allowing residential zoning with a priority to affordable housing within commercial areas, so it's sort of 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. there is also a push this legislative period to create a special housing agency that would actually cover the county of los angeles and have both 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 streamlining, insuring that there's an incentive to actually fund extremely low and low income housing, and that becomes a priority. and you know, as ann mentioned, making sure that there is 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 at an appropriate level to get more housing built. to take the pressure off of the market. so if you can build a ten-unit apartment, perhaps that takes a little bit of pressure throughout the city, that takes a little bit of the pressure to build 100-unit, 200-unit developments, so balancing out the zoning throughout the city. >> thanks. so no shortage of levers at the state and local level either. lots to do on the agenda. there is so many other findings from this report that we could unpack. there's a lot in here. and we don't have a lot of time. but i did want to kind of throw a question out to the floor here. you know, the report unpacks the unequal incidents of worst case needs by geography. it reports the unequal distribution by race and ethnicity. talks a little bit about the need by disability status. there's a lot in here, so broad question. what other findings in there do you think you would like to raise up and elevate and discuss with your peers here? and this is to anybody, really. >> i'm happy to start and just raise up some of the data that's presented around race and ethnicity. you heard me a couple times now talk about using an equity-based approach and insuring that we're targeting these resources that we might be getting or the resources that we have in the best way that we can. so recently, i have had the opportunity to work with the urban institute. 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 you were using to determine need including housing need, race and covid impact, overlap quite a bit with those -- the maps that show historic redlining practices. and in a lot of cases, either they overlap or there has 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 i just wanted to say out loud is that folks who are experiencing worst case housing needs and who are highly impacted really, those neighborhoods are often reflective of those racist housing practices like redlining and covenants and disinvestment in communities. and again, this goes back to the theme i was trying to point out at the beginning, which is really these are all cross-cutting, these are cross-cutting issues that need a racial equity lens applied 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 problem 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. >> ben, if i might just -- in terms of the geographic variation, one of the graphics in the report that i really like was the chart showing the association between the share of households with assistance and the incidents of worst case needs. obviously, if you count someone receiving assistance as not having worst case needs, there's going to be an inverse relationship there, but there are strong geographic variations, the northeast, the midwest in particular, tend to have higher levels of assistance. i think one takeaway from that is the value of supply side subsidies as gifts that keep on giving, and one reason why the northeast and the midwest have higher shares of assisted households is because they played in all of the housing production programs going back to the 1930s. and so we have a stock in new york city and in boston of public housing that provides a really important foundation for assistance. and so i think as we think about different means of supplying affordable housing and the fact that the build back better agenda includes supply side subsidies is important because it builds an infrastructure that has lasting value. i will add a caution to that, which is we can't just assume as the report does and perhaps because it has to, that people in assisted housing don't have worst case needs. i think there are really significant concerns about the quality of particularly older public housing, but even some of the older project based housing. i think we need a more nuanced view of the quality of that housing. one of the striking things on the racial side was the fact that african-americans are actually have lower rates of worst case needs, but that's primarily because they have high rates of assistance. we drill into that, they have higher rates of assistance in public housing, and not all of that public housing is well located, not in areas of opportunity, not in good quality housing. i think that means we need to also invest in that existing housing in those communities just because they're assisted doesn't mean they are getting the quality of housing that people need and should expect from their assisted housing. >> thanks, chris. i call that chart that you referenced the bubble chart, and it's also my favorite as well in that report. try to get that uplifted as much as possible. i love the bubble chart. it's complicated until you read it and learn about it and talk about it. then it clicks. you started to talk a little bit about some of the shortcomings, i guess, of how we define worst case housing needs. this kind of gets us into the last theme of the conversation, which 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. there's some ability for small changes or supplemental studies or slight changes to how we look at the data. i wanted to put that out there as what are some suggestions you have for hud and the analysts here on helping this 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, as ann and robin have mentioned, that worst 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 worst availability of affordable rental homes, just 44 per 100 very low income rental households, so i was thinking, okay, so the worst case needs is the result of a lack of supply, is that the primary driver as to why the west coast is in the worst situation? and why we saw worst case needs increase. i think maybe a little, putting those points together in the report to provide 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 have read reports about rents going through the roof in places like phoenix and boise and rent burden going through the roof, but answering the why or speculating on the why in places in the report would be helpful. >> thanks, dennis. any other thoughts? any other things we should be paying attention to for the next report? >> yeah, so i mentioned this earlier. it's overcrowding, which is there's rent burden and then there is sort of the quality of housing, but then there's overcrowding. i mentioned here and particularly in los angeles, but i'm sure it's in other places where we have large households, multiple households living in smaller units. and so they're taking what probably equates to multiple extremely low-income household rents and maybe getting to very low to rent an apartment. but there's still housing instability or quality, lack of quality that exists there. so i would be interested to see how that may impact the numbers in that way. i do wonder, also, what sort of discriminatory eviction policy might have in terms of defining worst case housing needs. because this also how often people, you know, move or have to move that impacts the quality of their life but also impacts the quality of their lives. kids getting education, getting to work, transportation, there's other things. so those might be two things that might be helpful data points within this type of report. >> thanks, robin. >> ben, i don't want to take us in the wrong direction. i do want to emphasize the questions about housing quality and how important they are, and how little we understand at a level that we need to, and this is probably not an issue for the next two years, but i think a bigger issue for the american housing survey is how can we measure the quality of housing in ways that really matter for households? i know peggy bailey has spent a lot of her career thinking about health and housing in her sections and issues around air quality, exposure to mold, exexposure to lead, they're so important. we had a question in the chat about the impact on climate change on housing. whether or not people have access to air conditioning in areas where there's going to be significant heat, or what cost will they have access to air conditioning. to what extent are households more at risk of severe weather that may damage their units, that are insecure that way. there's a whole range of issues around quality that we don't measure well and as a result we don't act on. it's a bigger question, how do we doit, but it's one we ought to be thinking about because they're really fundamental to people's wellbeing in a way that we don't have good measures on today. >> on that point, ben, i think it's also important to think about the overlap between quality and people experiencing homelessness or that meet the definition of experiencing homelessness. because there is some overlap there that i don't think that we have examined very closely. >> thanks. you know, our office, jennifer's office, also develops our research road map for hud that kind of lays out the priority questions that we'll be investing our research dollars into in the next five years. maybe we'll reach out to you all to talk more about some of these other research questions we should be prioritizing at 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 just give one person a chance to respond to this issue on climate change you talked about, chris. from the chat. to what extent do you see climate change influencing worst case housing needs today? and then into the future? and how do these intersect? then we'll turn it over to peggy for some closing remarks. that's open to anyone. >> i already had my turn so i'll yield the floor to someone else. >> well, obviously, 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 we definitely should be looking at and paying attention to. >> well, more discussion on that for sure at 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 bailey to give us some closing remarks. peggy. >> thanks, ben. and on behalf of secretary fudge and the entire hud family, i want to thank the bipartisan policy center for hosting us again today, and i want to thank all of you for attending today's event. the issues, the worst case housing needs report shows, and that the presenters highlighted the need for more supply of affordable housing, the need to increase rental assistance, the foundational role housing plays in reversing the negative impacts of racism and discrimination such as the outsized representation of people of color experiencing homelessness, explains why addressing the affordable housing crisis is so important. and that it is also a key component of president biden's build back better agenda. while the affordable housing crisis is multifaceted, it isn't impossible to fix. hud's programs and other federal assistance works for those who receive it. the problem is that too few people do. and we need to take the variety of tools and resources that presenters talked about today and future resources to scale to meet the need. housing is foundational for all of us, and the pandemic has made that crystal clear. so i hope today's discussion energizes you all, and the work that you do every day to not accept the status quo as it relates to housing and the affordability crisis. thank you all again for attending today's discussion. c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we're funded by these television companies and more. including midco. >> midco supports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers. giving you a front-row seat to democracy. >> arizona senator mark kelly says western states are experiencing the worst drought in more than 1,000 years. he along with members of the senate energy and natural resources subcommittee heard from environmental experts on the effect the drought is having on the u.s.

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