A 2020 Case Study: NAA and COVID-19 Advocacy

As the cliché goes, “2020 was an unprecedented year.” The COVID-19 pandemic seemingly overnight knocked the nation’s economy to its knees and marched the health care system to the edge of an abyss where we continue to teeter. The virus took on average 906 lives each and every day and started a culture war over an individual’s right to ignore public health guidelines. For housing providers, who immediately had to grapple with operational challenges and adaptation to new COVID-19 safety regulations, the pandemic and its economic devastation broke the most important link in the housing ecosystem chain of events — the timely payment of rent.

Despite a bipartisan, rapid response at the outset of the pandemic, Congress and the Administration remained deadlocked for most of the year, taking nine months to finally reach an agreement on additional, much-needed support in December 2020. To be sure, in many ways we all would like to forget 2020 ever happened and move on to a hopefully better 2021. Yet, it is important to do some reflection on the advocacy front, where the battles were lost and won to protect the industry from the ongoing effects of the pandemic. Follow along the timeline as we revisit NAA’s COVID-19 federal advocacy to date.

On March 13, 2020, the last day of the NAA Advocate Conference in Washington, D.C., the President declared the COVID-19 outbreak a national emergency. What followed in the next two weeks was a rapid succession of legislating by the Congress. By March 27, three bills totaling $2.1 trillion were passed in quick succession: the

Supplemental Appropriations Act, the

Act and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The common thread of these bills was allocating resources to fight the virus, helping businesses survive the economic displacement and supporting impacted individuals and families. NAA added its voice and that of the apartment industry to these first deliberations, stressing the importance of assistance for rental housing providers and renters alike, and we worked quickly to ensure that compliance resources were made available to support the industry as they operationalized these new requirements.

These bills were of mixed benefit. On the positive side, the “boost” of federal unemployment benefits and individual “recovery rebate” checks would prove critical for partial or complete rent payments. Also, substantial allocations of federal grant funding for state and local governments would eventually be used to support rental assistance programs. Even with some challenges with program requirements implemented by states and localities, these resources helped housing providers fill growing gaps in rental income.

Expanded mortgage forbearance options for housing providers with federally backed loans and temporary business loans through the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) were on their face helpful. Unfortunately, both would prove only marginally beneficial as time went on, as the latter excluded segments of the multifamily industry from eligibility.

Of most concern, the CARES Act imposed an eviction moratorium for residents at properties with federallybacked mortgages or that receive funding from federal housing programs, regardless of actual impact from the pandemic and without any other

guardrails. The legislation also failed to set aside dedicated emergency rental assistance funding, a crucial federal resource that NAA and many other housing groups urged Congress to deploy. Ultimately, not being able to agree on the right structure to deploy rental assistance, Congress opted for direct payments to individuals.

From the passage of the CARES Act going forward, NAA’s advocacy efforts would ramp up dramatically and were defined by two factors. First, we learned more about how the pandemic and economic instability was truly impacting our members and what they really needed to survive the crisis and ensure industry viability in the long-term. We would learn that using programs like mortgage forbearance or PPP loans to fill the hole left by unpaid rent were at best weak band-aids and that the only true way to address the crisis was rental assistance. Only financial assistance could stabilize renters experiencing financial challenges and provide quick relief directly to struggling housing providers who needed help to cover their expenses in light of rental payment shortfalls. Second, we quickly saw the direct impact of eviction moratoria on industry operations. Housing providers, especially small firms, were steadily draining reserves and even personal savings to keep their businesses afloat. They could not be asked to carry the burden of the pandemic alone. Funding robust rental assistance and ending eviction moratoria would form the core of our efforts going forward.

As NAA and the apartment industry bombarded Congress almost nonstop from April through October (nearly 75,000 letters were sent over this period), partisan fighting stopped any real negotiating by policymakers, even as NAA continued to educate them on the need for rental assistance and further relief for the rental housing industry and the dire consequences of continued extensions of the federal eviction moratorium. Lost was the unified voice that had marked Congress’ initial legislating in March.

In May, House Democrats passed H.R. 6800, the Health and Economic

(HEROES) Act, a massive $3.4 billion COVID relief bill that left no aspect of the crisis untouched or unfunded but also included numerous items unrelated to COVID-19 that were guaranteed to be nonstarters for Republicans. For rental housing, the bill provided for $100 billion in emergency rental assistance, albeit through a distribution system of concern. On the other hand, the HEROES Act also imposed a 12-month eviction moratorium for virtually all rental housing, continued restrictions on consumer reporting and placed significant limitations on the debt collection process, which would leave the heavy burden of the financial impacts on COVID-19 solely on housing providers.

Senate Republicans, on the other hand, stuck to a very narrow band of proposals costing around $500 billion, but could never actually pass a bill. And while the Administration attempted to negotiate a compromise, it became clear over the summer than neither side could or would get to a deal and that the politics of the fall elections were becoming too much of a distraction. Throughout the wax and wane of negotiations, apartment advocates sent nearly 75,000 letters to Congress to continue to ensure that our industry’s voice was heard and housing remained an important part of the COVID-19 relief discussions.

When the pandemic started, the narrative was framed to suggest an intrinsic link between housing and health and to protect vulnerable populations of renters through emergency action at any cost. The view seemed to be that housing providers could absorb any lost rent. NAA was quick to respond to the inaccuracies being perpetuated that rent needs only cover mortgage payments, and housing providers had no other expenses with which to contend. That narrative slowly shifted over the summer. Now, the needs of housing providers and their residents are tied together as a result of NAA’s advocacy and thousands of advocates speaking to policymakers in one voice.

After the CARES Act moratorium ended in July, activists began predicting total calamity in the fall amid what they characterized as a “tsunami” of evictions. Analyses by economists and others raised significant doubts about these claims, but it was ultimately moot as the Trump Administration issued an order from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) halting evictions in all rental housing through the end of the year. Industry concerns with the CARES Act moratorium were now exponentially amplified as essentially every housing provider was captured under this umbrella, as opposed to the more tailored restrictions under the CARES Act. While NAA continued its advocacy with Congress and the Administration, we began to pursue legal avenues, joining a lawsuit against the CDC order on behalf of a rental property owner in western Virginia and arguing that the CDC exceeded its authority with its order. It was important to recognize that the agency has no expertise or business delving into housing concerns and to establish a precedent for future moratoria to be deployed for any future emergency. While our immediate request for a temporary injunction against the order was declined, the large case is still pending.

As we engaged in multiple avenues to protect the industry’s interests, we continued to aggressively lobby Congress and the Administration to ensure they understood the consequences of con-