The best estimates are that there are around seven million families in the US who are currently at risk of eviction. That risk is very real: even with the moratorium in place, there are a lot of corporate landlords in particular that are filing eviction paperwork already, getting things in motion so when the moratorium is lifted, they can be in line to make evictions happen as quickly as possible. In many places across the country, that federal moratorium is the only protection between renters and corporate landlords. So we are anticipating that millions of families are going to suffer.

The federal government has dedicated a lot of money for rental assistance (a total of $46 billion to date), which should be able to mitigate some of the crisis. A lot of this federal response, and some local- and state-level renter protections, has been a direct result of the activism on the ground, including by our affiliates.

But what we have been seeing now is that people face a real challenge getting access to that assistance. The big technological divide means a lot of seniors and other folks find the application process difficult, and undocumented families are concerned about all the questions asked in the application process — even though they are eligible — and may struggle with a language barrier. (The US Treasury Department reported last week that less than 10 percent of the $25 billion appropriated in December had been distributed by the end of May.)

In Pennsylvania, for example, the state government failed to distribute over $100 million in CARES Act rental assistance funds designated for housing help, even though tens of thousands of tenants and homeowners needed that money. The unspent money was actually reallocated from these resources and programs to the prison system. Think about that in the context of homelessness being criminalized.

A lot of our affiliates have acted as “navigators,” helping people go through the application process, coaching and training them about what is possible through this rental assistance. The government funds include money for overhead and infrastructure, so we are pushing for states to set up navigator programs to help renters get the assistance they qualify for.

They should be putting in their own universal eviction moratoriums and mechanisms to forgive rent fully, as California and New York are doing. States need also to deal with landlords that are refusing assistance funds from their tenants because they just want to evict. These landlords know that there’s a massive affordable housing crisis right now and they want to maximize rents, so it’s more profitable to put tenants on the streets. States should not allow landlords to file for evictions if they have refused rental assistance funds from their tenants.

We are on a precipice right now, hanging off the cliff, and part of the reason for that is because there are so few tenant protections. States and local governments should create eviction diversion programs, a right to counsel in eviction proceedings, rent control, and a requirement of good cause for evictions. Those could make a huge impact.

We already had a housing crisis before the pandemic; the pandemic has just exacerbated it. So a lot of our affiliates are pushing for long-term solutions, so that everybody has access to a home where they can thrive in a community that they choose.

For example, our affiliate Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment has won some significant victories in California on rent forgiveness and they are leading a campaign for social housing. Our affiliate One PA in Philadelphia has a Freedom to Stay campaign for rent control and requiring good cause for eviction. In Las Vegas, our affiliate Make the Road Nevada is organizing to end summary evictions and expand eviction protections.

In New York, Communities for Change, Make the Road New York and Churches United for Fair Housing are organizing to pass universal good cause protections for all tenants. So a number of our affiliates are pushing for permanent tools and protections that have been needed well before the pandemic, because now we are in a moment where people are waking up to a crisis that we’ve been facing for a long time.

In practice, it is already being done with state-level programs, like in California and New York, and they are using the rental assistance money to do it. The report from our partners at Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE) that outlines how we are spending $470 billion to bail out and give tax refunds and credits to corporate landlords shows it is clearly possible to forgive rent. We just need to start prioritizing renters the way we have been doing for landlords. If there is a will, there definitely is a way.

The concept of housing as a mechanism for wealth-building and as a commodity it is fundamentally flawed. When we acknowledge and recognize that housing is as essential as oxygen and water for human beings to thrive, we see how terrifying it is that corporate landlords have been able to use housing to extract so much wealth from poor and middle-class communities.

The simple fact that we don’t have any tenant protections in many states is a reflection of just how much unmitigated control the real estate industry and corporate landlords have. The government has tilted the playing field to allow a very few people to use a human necessity, housing, to extract as much wealth as possible from the majority of the people in this country.

Yes. We have seen clearly in housing programs over the years that we cannot trust in the benevolence of the wealthy to care about anybody else’s interests besides their own. So, when we think about how we de-commodify housing and make it accessible, not a wealth-building mechanism for a very few elite, social housing seems to be the best long-term solution.  Social housing is something that we’ve seen work in other countries, and the wealth gap narrows as a result.

Along with social housing, we want to create strong, universal tenant protections, including the ability for tenants to organize and unionize to build power. We want to put vouchers directly in the hands of tenants and their families, so they can manage their own finances. We want to make deep investments in building housing that is accessible to many and can be owned by nonprofit entities or community land trusts or cooperatives. That would prevent Wall Street landlords from gobbling up distressed or vacant properties, which is what we saw happen in the 2008 foreclosure crisis.

Yes, we worked closely with Rep. [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez as she wrote the “A Place to Prosper” Act as a part of her “A Just Society” bill package, and also we helped with crafting the Green New Deal for Public Housing. We also worked with several other members of the House, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on several progressive housing bills collectively called the People’s Housing Platform.

Housing justice is racial justice. It’s not possible to separate the two from each other. When you think about who has been red-lined, when you think about who’s been excluded from certain communities, when you think about who’s been under-resourced, it is communities of color.

It’s the same when you think about who lost the most wealth during the foreclosure crisis, the generational wealth that a home can provide. Who ended up owning those homes? It was a handful of very wealthy corporations that ended up owning homes that used to belong to black families. Now these corporations are turning back around and renting those same homes to black families at astronomical prices.

All that said, though, I don’t know a single person in this country, whether they are white or a person of color, that doesn’t know someone who’s paying too much in rent, who doesn’t know someone who is struggling to keep their home or stay in their home. This is a universal issue that we’re all dealing with.

Yes, we have a huge opportunity to do some significant and substantial course correction in housing, an opportunity that we haven’t had since the 1930s. Not just CPD but a number of our national partners and our affiliates are trying hard to push this opportunity as far as we can.

Now that the country is talking about infrastructure and deep investments in long-term solutions, it’s definitely a moment to talk about investing in public housing for retrofits. It is definitely a moment to talk about the job creation that comes with investing in housing and to repeal the Faircloth Amendment that blocks any increase in public housing. And it is definitely the time to institute universal rent control and just cause eviction.