Jenny Kye: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today’s webinar on Federal Housing Updates for Aging Advocates. My name is Jenny Kye. I am the director of Federal Housing Advocacy with Justice in Aging. Also presenting today is Chantelle Wilkinson, who is the vice president for Strategic Partnerships and Campaigns with the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
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If you’re not already familiar with Justice in Aging, we are a national legal advocacy organization that uses the power of law to fight senior poverty by securing access to affordable health care, housing, economic security, and the courts for older adults with limited resources. And we focus our efforts primarily on people who have been marginalized and excluded from justice such as women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people with limited English proficiency. Our commitment to justice is central to what we do, and we believe that to advance justice in aging, everyone should have access to what they need as they age without discrimination.
If you’re not already on our email list, we encourage you to join our network so that you can receive all of our materials. You can sign up by going to our website, which is justiceinaging.org, or you can also send an email to info@justiceinaging.org.
We do have a guest presenter today. Chantelle Wilkinson is joining us from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Chantelle is the coalition’s vice president of Strategic Partnerships and Campaigns. Before this role, Chantelle served as the coalition’s Opportunity Starts at Home multi-sector campaign director, and Chantelle came to the NLIHC from New York where she worked as a budget analyst for the state legislature and helped enact housing and transportation policies. So thanks, Chantelle, for joining us today.
For today’s agenda, first we will talk about some background information and why federal rental assistance is important for older adults. And then we’ll provide a high-level overview of some policy developments, and we’ll talk about both administrative advocacy and congressional advocacy opportunities. And then Chantelle will share about the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Opportunity Starts at Home Campaign, which is a multi-sector campaign to advance federal housing solutions for low-income renters. Our overall goal for today’s webinar is to give you a high-level overview of some key federal housing updates and ways to get involved with federal housing advocacy.
First, we’ll talk about federal rental assistance. Federal rental assistance is really more important than ever for older adults, and this is because older adults are the fastest-growing group among people experiencing homelessness. And older adults are also significantly overrepresented among extremely low-income renters who are the most likely to experience housing instability. A major reason for this is because a lot of older adults are living on fixed incomes like SSI or social security benefits, and these benefits have not been keeping up with rents, which have risen pretty dramatically.
On this slide, I have included some figures about the maximum federal SSI benefit and the average social security retirement benefit. These numbers are from January of this year, so they’ve likely changed by now. But the bottom line is that for older adults who are living on SSI, they are really priced out of every rental market in the country. Even for older adults who are living on Social Security retirement, those retirement benefits are really very modest. Someone who’s getting the average Social Security retirement check would have to spend almost 80% of that check in order to pay the rent for an average one-bedroom apartment.
We’ll be talking a lot about federal rental assistance today. And when we say federal rental assistance, we, for purposes of this presentation, are referring to a collection of different programs, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s housing and homeless assistance programs. So some examples of these are the Housing Choice Voucher Program. These are also sometimes called Section 8 vouchers, Section 202 senior housing, and permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness. HUD administers the vast majority of federal rental assistance, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they also have rural rental assistance. The common theme among all of these programs is they provide deep housing subsidies to help people pay their rent and afford housing. These programs serve households who are extremely low income or low income, and households in these programs, they generally pay about 30% of their household income towards rent. And then the housing subsidy covers the rest of rental costs up until a certain limit.
Federal rental assistance serves a significant number of older adults. These programs, they support over two million older adults. For reference, this is about the same number of older adults who are served by the SSI program. Over 40% of households across HUD’s major rental assistance programs are headed by older adults age 62 and over. I think a lot of people intuitively understand that federal rental assistance improves housing security, but I think sometimes people overlook its impact on economic security. This impact is particularly important for older adults because federal rental assistance lifts more older adults above the poverty line than any other government program besides Social Security. The anti-poverty effect of federal rental assistance is actually the greatest for older adults when compared to other age groups.
So even though federal rental assistance is critical and effective, unfortunately there is just not enough federal rental assistance to meet the need. This is because federal rental assistance has been chronically underfunded. Unlike a lot of other public benefit programs, federal rental assistance programs, these are not entitlement programs. So in other words, not everyone who is eligible can receive assistance. Among older adults, only about one in three older adults who needs federal rental assistance receives it. And in a national survey of Area Agencies on Aging, over 70% of the respondents reported that the lack of federal rental assistance was a major challenge for older adults. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the reality that when older adults apply for subsidized housing, they’re usually looking at really long wait lists and waiting for years, or sometimes wait lists are just closed altogether because there are just so many applicants. So it’s really vital that eventually in the future we expand federal rental assistance to meet the need. But it’s also critical that for now we, at least, at a minimum, preserve current levels of assistance.
So that was some background, and now we’re going to move on to talking more about policy developments that may affect access to federal rental assistance. We’ll talk about administrative advocacy opportunities first. We are expecting to see several rules or proposed rules from HUD in the coming months, because HUD will be doing a lot of rulemaking. When we talk about rulemaking, we’re talking about HUD making changes or proposing changes to its regulations that govern various HUD housing and homeless assistance programs. One caveat is that we don’t know the exact content of these rules because they haven’t been published yet, and we also don’t know exactly when they will be released. But what we do know is that these rules are in the pipeline, and also some of them are based on proposals that the Trump administration tried to enact during its first term years ago.
With all of this rulemaking, HUD will be soliciting comments on these proposals from the public. Submitting comments is important for a variety of reasons. One, and the biggest reason, of course, is to make sure that we oppose harmful changes. But it’s also really important that HUD hears from a wide variety of stakeholders including aging and disability advocates. So many of you have really important on the ground experiences and knowledge that HUD may not hear about unless you comment. So we wanted to talk about these proposals today to get them on your radar, so that hopefully you can think about submitting comments in the future.
One action that we are expecting from HUD is for HUD to try to revoke its 30-day notice rule. This is a rule that the Biden administration finalized at the end of last year. This rule is important because it strengthens eviction protections in HUD-assisted housing. It does this by giving tenants more time to resolve non-payment cases before a landlord files for eviction. So in other words, in cases where someone is behind on their rent and at risk of eviction, this rule gives them at least 30 days to try to work out an agreement with the landlord or get legal assistance or other assistance to hopefully avoid eviction. But we are expecting for HUD to issue what’s called an interim final rule, or an IFR, to try to revoke this rule. Even with an IFR, there’s usually an opportunity to submit comments, and it’ll be important to oppose HUD trying to revoke this rule because tenant protections are really critical for preventing homelessness. This is especially true in the context of subsidized housing, because if people are evicted from subsidized housing, they usually not only lose their home, but also their subsidy as well.
We are also expecting HUD to try to weaken its equal access rule. This is a rule that ensures equal access to HUD programs including HUD-funded shelters for LGBTQ+ individuals, including people who are transgender. But we are expecting to see a future proposed rule that will likely allow shelter providers to discriminate against people who are transgender and deny them access to shelters, because sometimes these shelters are single-sex facilities that have shared sleeping spaces and shared bathrooms. We don’t know exactly when this proposed rule will come out. It’s been in the works for a while, but when it does come out, Justice in Aging, we will have template comments available for aging and disability organizations. And that is something that we’re currently working on.
As you probably know, immigrants have also been a big target of the Trump administration. So we are expecting to see a proposal from HUD to take away HUD housing assistance from mixed status households. Mixed status households are households that include people with different immigration statuses and at least one person whose status makes them not eligible for HUD housing assistance. But currently, mixed status households, they can still receive HUD housing assistance for the eligible members on a prorated basis. But we are likely to see a proposed rule from HUD that will prohibit mixed status households from living in HUD-subsidized housing. This would put these households, which include intergenerational households, at risk of eviction and homelessness. We also think that the proposed rule will require people to provide more paperwork to verify their citizenship and immigration status. These new documentation requirements will likely be particularly burdensome for older adults and people with disabilities who generally have a harder time navigating red tape and all of these administrative barriers.
And then finally, we’re also expecting HUD to try to impose work requirements and time limits in HUD housing assistance programs. Currently, there are generally no work requirements and time limits in order to get HUD housing assistance, but we are expecting to see a proposed rule from HUD that will likely give public housing authorities and HUD-assisted property owners the discretion to impose work requirements and/or time limits, which we think will be two years. We are likely to see in the proposed rule exemptions for people 62 and over and people with disabilities. But we know that even with exemptions, many older adults and people with disabilities are likely to lose their housing assistance under this type of rule because, again, this just creates a lot of new administrative barriers and red tape. We’ve also seen how work requirements play out in other contexts like Medicaid, and it just always results in people losing their assistance.
So if you would like to stay updated on commenting opportunities, again, encourage you to sign up for our email list. We have a weekly newsletter, called From DC, that goes out every Friday, and we provide updates about what’s going on at the federal level across all of our issue areas. From DC is also available on our website as a blog. And then we also periodically send out alerts to our network about important advocacy opportunities. So as these proposals and other proposals are released, we’ll be providing more details to our network.
Now, we’ll shift to talking about congressional advocacy opportunities and funding for federal rental assistance. Federal rental assistance is funded through an annual appropriations process in Congress, and federal rental assistance was not part of the reconciliation bill that recently passed in Congress. So all of the decisions around funding for federal rental assistance for next year are taking place right now because Congress is negotiating fiscal year 26 spending bills right now. So it’s an important time to contact Congress, if you’re able to, to urge them to provide funding for federal rental assistance. It’s important that members of Congress hear from their constituents, and they should be accountable to their constituents.
And then, again, so many of you have important on-the-ground experiences and stories you can share about older adults who are struggling to afford housing or stories about how crucial federal rental assistance is for keeping older adults housed. Those types of stories are particularly compelling and persuasive for members of Congress. Sometimes we hear that members of Congress are more interested in hearing about these types of stories than they might be in hearing about research or data. And then, of course, it’s important to remind Congress that federal rental assistance is important for older adults and people with disabilities, and that federal rental assistance is part of the safety net for seniors.
We won’t get into all of the weedy details about the current proposals in Congress, but the big picture is that the current proposals do not provide enough funding for federal rental assistance. They would essentially cut funding, and this would result in fewer households receiving federal rental assistance. I also wanted to note that in order to maintain the same levels of assistance, the programs actually need more funding every year just to keep up with inflation and increasing rents. And then, of course, the proposals come amidst the massive cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food assistance that Congress recently enacted through the reconciliation bill, or H.R.1. And we know that those massive cuts to those programs will just increase poverty and homelessness. So I think federal rental assistance is going to become even more important for low-income households because many will end up losing other supports like their Medicaid and their SNAP benefits. So we need to do what we can to prevent similar cuts to federal rental assistance.
I just wanted to highlight a few programs in particular. The Housing Choice Voucher Program is the country’s largest federal rental assistance program, and its serves more older adults than any other federal rental assistance program, about 800,000 older adult households. But right now, the proposals in Congress do not provide enough funding to maintain current levels of assistance. These cuts would affect up to 71,000 older adults and 106,000 people with disabilities, including older adults with disabilities. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, they have a great resource that I’ve linked to on this slide, and this resource includes a state-by-state breakdown of how these cuts would affect people in each state. So, encourage you to check that out.
I also wanted to highlight the threat to Emergency Housing Vouchers. The Emergency Housing Voucher Program was created during the pandemic, specifically to provide vouchers for people at risk of or experiencing homelessness, and many communities targeted Emergency Housing Vouchers to older adults and people with disabilities. This program was supposed to last until 2030, but the program has run out of money early. So it is set to run out of funding next year. But the current proposals in Congress do not renew funding for this program. This is a problem because almost 60,000 households are still using these vouchers, and if Congress doesn’t provide more funding, then all of these households will lose their vouchers and then most likely lose their housing as well. Currently, the estimates are that if this happens, then, in some states, homelessness could increase by up to 20%.
And then lastly, I wanted to highlight HUD’s Fair Housing programs, and in particular, its Fair Housing Initiatives Program or FIHP program. This is not a federal rental assistance program, but fair housing is critical for ensuring equitable access to federal rental assistance and to housing in general. HUD’s FIHP program provides funding to frontline nonprofits doing fair housing work. So for example, legal aid organizations, protection and advocacy agencies, other standalone fair housing organizations. These FIHP programs, they provide legal representation or other types of assistance to people experiencing housing discrimination. But unfortunately, the Trump administration and the House, they are trying to eliminate this program altogether. And this is part of the Trump administration’s broader attacks on fair housing. But it is really critical that we preserve the FIHP program because the FIHP programs, they really do the majority of fair housing work across the Country. These nonprofits, they handle over 75% of all fair housing complaints. Each year, the majority of fair housing complaints involve disability discrimination, which is an issue often faced by older adults.
In terms of a timeline, the current spending bill in Congress expires at the end of September. So Congress will be trying to negotiate new spending bills. Until then, Congress may pass short-term extensions of funding and extensions of this year’s funding. These types of extensions are called continuing resolutions, or CRs. This would essentially give lawmakers more time to try to negotiate spending bills for next year. Or we may see a government shutdown if Congress can’t come to any sort of agreement at the end of this month. So no one really knows what is going to happen. But until Congress does pass spending bills for next year, it is going to be important to contact Congress and to urge Congress to reject cuts to federal rental assistance and to provide the highest levels of funding possible for all of these programs.
We’ve included some tools here on this slide to help you contact Congress. Again, it’s really important that Congress hears from aging and disability advocates and to remind Congress that older adults and people with disabilities rely on all of these programs that we’ve highlighted today, and to let them know that any cuts to these programs will harm older adults. I think sometimes there’s a misconception that as long as Congress funds Section 202 senior housing, then older adults are taken care of. But that’s not true. Congress really needs to fund all of the housing and homeless assistance programs if they care about older adults.
So that was all I had. Now I will hand things off to Chantelle who will talk about more ways to get involved with federal housing advocacy through the Opportunity Starts at Home Campaign.
Chantelle Wilkinson: Thank you, Jenny. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. I’m really excited to be here today to talk about how aging advocates can join the housing movement. As Jenny mentioned, older adults are facing a growing threat of aging into housing instability and homelessness, and for extremely low-income older adult renters, this is even more of a threat. So I just want to double down on the point that Jenny shared around federal resources really not meeting the need, and only a fraction of people that need the assistance actually get access to that assistance. This is exactly the reason why we’ve come together as advocates through the Opportunity Starts at Home Campaign to advance affordable housing policies.
Now, millions of extremely low-income renters are priced out of housing, or simply can’t access affordable housing. Our research shows that seniors, older adults make up more than a third of extremely low-income renters. So when housing is unaffordable, renters are often severely cost burdened. That means that they spend more than half of their income on housing. You’re choosing between rent. You’re choosing between healthy foods and medication and so many other essential things. This is really often missed when people talk about those that are experiencing housing instability. Many are older adults that have contributed significantly over your lifetime and have met so many contributions in your community. So when you’re met with limited resources, as you continue to age and lead the workforce, we have this gap in housing that really needs to be addressed by the government, by the federal government. That’s what we advocate for. So, just want to just bring in some of the words of our partners here at Justice in Aging: the country’s lack of affordable housing is the primary driver of homelessness among older adults.
Can we go to the next slide? We can just jump into what the Opportunity Starts at Home Campaign is all about. Back in 2018, a group of us came together. Really, the mission around this campaign is to build a movement with stakeholders from many sectors to generate widespread support for federal policies that correct long-standing racial inequities and economic injustices by ensuring quality housing for people with low incomes. If we can go to the next slide to talk about why these partnerships are important.
One is that there’s substantial research that supports the intersections of our issues, and we’ll share a lot of that resources, a lot of our many different resources towards the end of this presentation, so that you can take a look at them. You can also use those resources to advocate. So there has been decades of research that shows that whether we’re talking about health or education, whether we’re talking about equity, whether we’re talking about economic mobility, whether we concentrate it in different populations like older adults, like veterans, we see that housing is particularly important to so many different things, different people that we care about, different essentials that we care about and have in our community. So that’s one.
Two is that having a multi-sector coalition where advocates are diverse, you have advocates from all different sectors join into one coalition, then it really just enriches our content across the board. We can bring in research from different sectors. You all go to talk and advocate to policymakers in different ways that bring in all of the different sectors and why housing is so critical. So across the board, we find that our partners are exchanging information, we’re creating a space for partners to talk to each other so that we can both advance our goals and priorities. And that’s why it’s so important for us to come together.
And that third point, which I talked about just a little bit there, was around piquing the interest of policymakers that may not be very interested in talking about housing. So when we can go to a policymaker that’s maybe very interested in education or health or, again, a population, we can go there and we can talk to that policymaker and say, “Well, if you really want to advance this legislation and you really feel like it would make an impact, this is how housing would really get you there.” Something that we would say in the campaign is that our partners really understood that housing became not just a nice-to-have for their mission, but really a need for their mission and essential so that their mission could be accomplished. And that’s really why our partners have joined Opportunities Starts at Home. We can go to the next slide and talk about how we do this work.
Opportunity Starts at Home has a coalition now of over 140 national partners that are part of our campaign. If you look at the screen here, you’ll see a lot of the members that are part of our steering committee, which is our core group of folks that are engaged in the campaign. You’ll see that so many of the groups that are listed here are not bread and butter housing organizations. You have the Food Research & Action Center, the National Women’s Law Center, Children’s Defense Fund, Catholic Charities USA, the National Resources Defense Council, the National League of Cities, national Education Association. Just really looking at this list of folks, there’s 20 groups that are on the steering committee, which we see as our governance board. But these groups really do show how we’re not showing up as housing advocates alone, that we’re wearing all these different hats with our partners in the room.
So many of our partners join us in this advocacy, in changing the narrative across the nation to, again, really double down on the fact that housing really impacts so much of what we care about. And then we also have a larger table, our roundtable. Our roundtable consists of over 120 national groups that are part of the movement. This is the flexible entry point that we’ve created for so many groups to just join the work that we do. Something that we would call for the number of folks that are on this call, that if you are a part of a national organization and you are interested in being a part of the campaign, please contact us. We are always looking for new national groups to bring into the fold.
And then the other part of the campaign that’s really essential is our state partners that work to build state-level multi-sector coalitions, and they use those coalitions to influence federal policy as well as state policy. So maybe you’re not able to engage on the national level, we can connect state partners to the state partners that we have in the campaign. We can even connect individuals who are interested in being part of the coalition to our state partners too to just gain more information, to always stay updated, to always know what the advocacy opportunities are where you live. So that’s our really big coalition building that we’ve done in the campaign since 2018. If we can go to the next slide.
I want to talk about how this shows up. You’ve heard me talk now about showing up with policymakers. Sometimes that looks like sign-on letters, and sometimes that looks like events like this one. This is a congressional briefing that we did in partnership with Justice in Aging and also our partners at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, where we featured a film No Place to Grow Old that really highlights exactly what we’re talking about today: older adults experiencing homelessness. And we really use this briefing to really urge policymakers to do something about this issue, to enact effective policies that would address this growing threat to older adults. We were able to show a small clip of the film as well as have a panel discussion where we talked about this critical issue, sharing the research, sharing the narrative, and really sharing with Congress what they need to do about it. We can go to the next slide.
You heard a lot from Jenny about the policies, so I won’t take too long to talk about the policies, but just want to share what we’re doing through the campaign. The campaign really focuses on a very broad level to bring as many partners as we can to this space. As housing advocates, we want to stay centered, and we stay the experts in housing policy. But as we’re bringing educators along and doctors along and social workers along, just any other sector you can think of, we really do shoulder a lot of the capacity to push some of the policies across our network. So you’ll see that our policies are very broad, but a lot of what Jenny talked about, some of those policies fall within the agenda as well.
Our long-term goal is, through federal housing policies that expand resources and correct long-standing structural and racial inequities, we will ensure that people with the lowest incomes can afford a good home, which adds to their quality of life through better health, greater educational attainment, and stronger earnings. And then we have three buckets in which we do that work. If we can go to the next slide.
The first is how we bridge the gap. So we say that this is the demand side of the issue that we tend to talk about and really focus on targeting. So bridging the gap between rents and incomes through rental assistance. Rental assistance subsidies are needed at scale to ensure units are affordable for low-income renters. So where there are places in our nation where there is affordable housing, we want to make sure that people can access that housing. We’re talking about vouchers or a renter’s tax credit. Federal assistance is really needed to bridge the gap between rents and incomes for older adults, because the need is growing. There was 5.9 million renters over the age of 62 that were eligible for housing assistance in 2021, and that was nearly a double amount from what we saw in 2011. So when we’re saying that we really see an increase in the need for older adults to have rental assistance, this is the kind of stuff that we’re talking about and the kind of stuff that’s showing up in the data and the research.
The other piece of the agenda is to expand the stock of deeply affordable housing. So increasing the supply of deeply affordable housing in markets necessary where there are vacancies. So in places where we need to build housing, we are advocating to build, and to build deeply affordable housing, so that those that are extremely low incomes, they can access that affordable housing. Sometimes you’ll see programs target maybe 50% area medium income, 80% area medium income, but we really advocate for 30% area medium income. So that’s looking at the incomes across a particular area. And if you fall within that 30% of the medium amount of income in that area, that’s really what we’re targeting. Those people tend to really be struggling to afford housing. So we’re really talking about folks that I like to say that’s not really living paycheck to paycheck, that doesn’t really paint that picture, but folks are really just paying what they can, where they can.
And then the last piece of the agenda is really around our emergency assistance, so to stabilize households by providing emergency assistance to avert housing instability and homelessness. This bucket would really provide temporary assistance to stabilize households experiencing a major economic shock that would otherwise make them spiral in needing extensive or prolonged housing assistance. Something to note is that this campaign is so powerful that before, in 2019, we had a bill that we’ve advocated for, and it’s still part of the campaign, called the Evictions Crisis Act.
This was even before the pandemic where we got emergency assistance when it was necessary because we were in a pandemic. But even before then, we were advocating for a national program that would really give folks that temporary one-time financial assistance that would help them, because we know that you can get a medical bill, there could be a broken down car, maybe just a big expense that you were not expecting, that now, if you’re already competing with the essentials in your household, can really create a situation in which you are spiraling into needing more assistance. So even before emergency assistance was talked about on a national level, we were bringing it up through this bill and supporting this bill, helping to draft that bill, because we saw a great need that we need to address the demand side of the issue, the supply side of the issue, but we also needed to make sure that we were preventing the issue as well. If we can go to the next slide.
Just talking about how housing really touches all that we care about. We know that the students in our communities do better, that everyone is healthier, that there’s more equity and more opportunities. And for older adults, we see better health outcomes, stability, and really the support needed to live fulfilled lives. So we have that wheel that we like to share often through the campaign just to show how housing is at the center to all these different areas that we care about. You can go to our website, it’s opportunityhome.org, where you’ll find a sector page with all these fact sheets that we’ve created with experts in different sectors to really compile that research. And we see this as a critical resource for advocates when you’re going to talk to policymakers, when you’re contacting those offices to really utilize that as some additional talking points when we’re trying to advance affordable housing policy. So that’s available. And again, we’ll share some other resources just in a second.
But I want to go to our next slide to talk about the ways that you can get involved in the campaign. One is to advance the OSAH policy agenda. If you go on our website, opportunityhome.org, you’ll also see that there’s a Take Action tab. In that tab, you’ll see specific action items that you can take as an individual advocate to send letters to Congress in support of some of the bills that we support through the campaign. And then there’s other ways of just sharing that policy agenda in your meetings in your community as well. So you can go to our website, you could print the agenda out, you can share it and disperse it in the places that you find critical.
Join the roundtable. Again, if you are a national organization that is looking to be a part of a broader coalition with an emphasis on housing, we definitely want you to join us. All you have to do is just kind of reach out to us, and we could set up a meeting. We usually do a call just to make sure that there’s spaces of collaboration for us or get an idea of where your organization might be with housing policy. And then we take it from there.
The other thing I want to talk about in terms of being a part of the roundtable, and just a part of the coalition in general too, is just different ways that folks can tap in. So I share the congressional briefing, but also we have a podcast that we work on too. That’s why you see that, that’s that graphic on this slide as well. So if you go to SoundCloud or iTunes or Spotify, you’ll see the Opportunity Starts at Home podcast, where we’re sharing again that research, doing a deeper dive in the research that we have around housing for folks to access as well. And there are so many resources on our website from a number of different articles, from the fact sheet to sharing the work that our state partners are doing, sharing the many research that we find. And it’s continuous. So even if you see some things on the fact sheet, we do that all year round where we’re always trying to make sure that we’re tapped into the new research that’s available to us, so that we can use it in our advocacy.
Another thing for folks to get involved, as I mentioned too, is to connect your state affiliates to our state affiliates. If you are a part of a state organization and you want to get involved in the state level, we can also make that connection as well with our state partners. And we can also connect you to our state partners if you have questions, if you are wanting to look for more direct assistance in your particular area. Again, you can feature us in conferences and meetings and publications and webinars. We’re always available to come and speak to any group about the campaign to join the campaign. If you just need more information about the campaign, we’re available. There’s podcast collaborations that we do with people, that if you have the research, if you’re conducting research and you need it on a platform that connects housing and another sector, we could platform that. We have the fact sheets, as I mentioned.
And then the other thing of just joining the Listserv and receiving our monthly newsletter, that’s our way of tapping into our network. So anytime there’s an advocacy opportunity, anytime something new comes out of the campaign, we tap into our network through that monthly newsletter. Just keeping folks in community, and updates, and what’s going on in this housing space at the very least. We can move to the next slide and just talk about the resources that we have if you want to learn a bit more.
So there’s Within Reach, which is our policy agenda. So what I kind of went through to today, you’ll find that. Again, you’ll find that on our website. Out of Reach looks at the disparity between wages and rents across the nation. That comes out of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. It’s an annual report that you could find on nlihc.org, the website of the coalition. The Gap is also another annual report that comes out of the National Low Income Housing Coalition that looks at the housing shortage across the nation as it relates to extremely low-income renters. So again, something else that you can find on nlihc.org. I believe these slides will be available, so you might just be able to tap into the link, but if you wanted to read it now, just sending you where to go.
We have an Aging Advocates and Housing Advocates fact sheet that we worked on with our partners to just compile the research. That’s one of those quick resources that we find that advocates, especially if you’re engaging in any advocacy days or anything like that, you can take that resource with you. If you have conferences, meeting also, those are very quick resources. They’re only about two pages or so, front and back, and it has a number of different stats that you can pull from and just share with others. If you are interested in seeing the briefing that we did with our partners, we do have it recorded so that you can tap into that as well. I believe there’s one more slide with resources, right, Jenny, before we go into Q&A? Yes. I think some of these already hit on. So yeah, I’ll turn it back to you, Jenny.
Jenny Kye: Thanks, Chantelle. Yes, so here are some additional resources. Some are from Justice in Aging and some are from the Opportunity Starts at Home Campaign. So now I think we will move into questions. I did want to note that any questions that we don’t get to on today’s webinar, we’ll follow up with by email. Also, of course, you’re also welcome to email me or Chantelle.
The first question we’ll talk about, we got some questions about accessible housing, whether there are any threats to accessible housing, and commenting on addressing the need for accessible housing. So I wanted to again highlight the importance of fair housing programs and that FIHP program that funds non-profits doing fair housing work, because a lot of the work they do and a lot of housing discrimination and fair housing cases involve the need for accessible housing, and older adults who need home modifications or a ramp installed and need legal assistance in order to get those things. Also, those organizations, they do fair housing testing. So what they do is they will investigate different properties to make sure that those properties are adhering to different laws around accessibility. So those organizations really do a lot of work around accessible housing, which is just another reason why it’s really important that we fund that program and make sure these organizations can continue doing their work.
Chantelle, can you talk more about how advocates can connect with OSAH’s state partners and share more examples of what the state multi-sector campaigns look like and what they do?
Chantelle Wilkinson: Yes, happy to. The OSAH’s state partners, let’s start with, we have 31 state partners now. We don’t have a state partner in every single state. That is the goal. We fund our state partners. So as we get more funding through the coalition, we’re able to fund more state partners, and we’ve been able to really expand that very quickly in the last seven years. So we really have a goal the next couple of years to really make sure that we can achieve our goal of having a state partner in every state. What the state partners do, we give them a lot of flexibility to create their own kinds of coalitions. Some state partners, they have a coalition that reflects ours where they have maybe a steering committee, they have another table of folks that engage, and then they’re also just bringing in different folks from other spaces.
We have some state partners that maybe do some sub-grants to some other groups that are not housing groups, so that they come together as one, leading housing coalition group, and they do the work that way. We’ve also seen our partners maybe collaborate with one other partner, one housing partner, and maybe another partner in a different space. And then they become the core team that’s going out to build the coalition in the state. Each one of the states are tasked with building out the coalition in the state. So no matter how they built maybe their core coalition of partners, that coalition is still working to ensure that the multi-sector nature of the campaign is reflected. So they’re bringing in other groups no matter what. They just may do it differently, may have a different model than we have from the national campaign. But the biggest goal that they have is to build a multi-sector coalition.
Some of them find that different sectors are a bit easier. I think across the board, health tends to be an easier space for us to build partnerships with because a lot of them talk about the social determinants of health, and that’s something that’s really recognized in their sectors. And then some find that other sectors are a little harder to bring along, but they do a lot of work to educate and try to bring them along in very flexible ways. So people who are interested in connecting with our states, one is, if you are a state partner in that state, you can become a part of the coalition in the state.
And then if you’re an individual, we can still connect you to our state partner. That way they can let you know how they’re keeping their partners connected with the work that’s going on in the coalition, so you can get a national update that comes from us. But a lot of them are also doing their own communications where they’re sharing with their communities updates around housing. And that becomes maybe even more beneficial for you as you are… It is great to have the national updates and know what’s happening on the federal level where we focus, but our state partners also make sure that we’re bringing in that state level data and information too that kind of helps with every unique location. So those are two ways to get involved with the states.
If you want to just learn more about our state partnerships in general, if you went to our website, opportunityhome.org, you’ll hit the tab that says organizations, and you’ll see where you can find all the state partners. They’re all listed there. If you click on the icons, you can find more information about each one of the state partners on our website. And then we’ve also compiled the information from The Gap report and Out of Reach report. So that’s another resource if you’re looking to really do advocacy around the coalitions, is that this information that we take from The Gap, from Out of Reach, we also use in offices to advocate for housing. And what we’ve done through the campaign is taken that state data and put it into infographics so that our state partners can use for advocacy, but individuals can certainly use that same data for advocacy as well.
Jenny Kye: Thanks, Chantelle. We got a question about the loss in terms of the Housing Choice Vouchers and the funding shortfall. Would that affect current voucher holders or future applicants? So for Housing Choice Vouchers or Section 8 vouchers, the cuts would primarily affect future applicants. But in terms of Emergency Housing Vouchers, the loss in funding for Emergency Housing Vouchers would affect the current voucher holders, and they would lose their vouchers next year if Congress doesn’t provide more funding.
Chantelle Wilkinson: I would just add to that. Again, that stat that I think we’ve referenced maybe twice throughout the presentation, that really only, I think Jenny said a third of older adults that need rental assistance don’t receive it. I think we say, in a broader sense, with all the folks that need eligibility, that is one out of four. But basically saying that really the need is not being met as is. So if we’re cutting resources, then you’re really chipping away from a resource that’s not even available to most people that need it. So just wanted to double down on that fact.
Jenny Kye: Someone asked about just resources about current and future housing policy as policies shift. The National Income Housing Coalition and the Opportunity Starts at Home Campaign, those are certainly great resources. And in the various slides, I think we’ve linked to the websites. And then also at Justice in Aging, as these policies roll out, we’ll be providing more details and analysis about how these policies more specifically affect older adults and people with disabilities. So again, encourage you to sign up for our email lists and visit our websites for more resources.
And then, Chantelle, one question is, do advocates have to have expertise in housing or homelessness to be part of the OSAH Campaign?
Chantelle Wilkinson: No, you don’t. You don’t. What we always say is, if you want to be an individual advocate, if you are an organization that’s represented, an organization that would like to be a part of the campaign, then we’re really just asking that you would like to cross-sector collaborate, that you’d just like to be a part of the coalition. So many of our partners, especially those with Justice in Aging, there’s a lot of connection here because they also stay on top of a lot of the housing policy that’s being done, and also just kind of really helps to bridge our knowledge around how it specifically impacts older adults and seniors too. But with other groups that may not have any expertise in housing at all, they come back to the coalition, whether it’s through the campaign or whether we can connect you to our policy team, our field team that can just share a lot more information so that you can become housing advocates, and you can use that language over and over, develop the skills in talking about how housing impacts so many different things.
So no, you don’t have to be an expert. We really have compiled so much information for folks so that they can feel empowered to use it in ways that they’re already doing their advocacy. But we are also really here to help. Something that’s core to the campaign is that there is dedicated staff to do this work. So in spaces where maybe capacity is an issue, it’s not an issue for us because this is our daily work. This is what we do day in and day out, is coalition, building through the campaign and through other partnerships. So no, you don’t need the expertise. Just contact us, and we’re willing to help wherever we can.
Jenny Kye: Great. So I think that is all we have time for today. Again, we’ll follow up on other questions by email. Thank you so much, Chantelle, for being part of today’s webinar, and thank you to all of you for taking the time to tune in. We hope this webinar was helpful.
Chantelle Wilkinson: Thank you so much.
