Weekly update from the National Housing Conference
|
|
In this issue
March 29, 2020 I
Issue 89-12
- Congress passes third Coronavirus relief package
- FHFA, GSEs announce eviction, mortgage relief plans
- Federal Reserve, FHFA announce new efforts to support liquidity in mortgage market
- Lawmakers introduce additional legislation to help homeless, renters, homeowners
- Chart of the Week: NAHB map shows states where home builders and contractors may continue working
|
|
COVID-19 Housing Resource Center launches this week
Dear Friend,
This week significant progress was made on the housing front with the signing of a $2 trillion emergency spending package to begin to provide relief for Americans who have been adversely impacted by COVID-19. The package includes several measures to help homeowners, renters, and the homeless, detailed below. NHC members worked tirelessly to advocate for these essential resources. Other critical elements of the housing community still face existential threats, including mortgage servicers, securitizers, affordable housing investors and home builders.
We must think ahead eight weeks from now and eight months from now or we will not be prepared to address a housing crisis of potentially unfathomable proportions.
As Carol Galante, faculty director at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in
her recent blog post
on insights from the 2008 housing crisis, “the most important lesson that I learned…is that the inability to predict how bad it could become led the country and its political leaders to be too timid and too indirect.”
I am pleased to announce that NHC’s COVID-19 Housing Resource Center website will be up and running soon. This online clearinghouse of information on COVID-19 will provide timely, accurate and medically vetted information to housing stakeholders, regardless of NHC membership, and the organizations, families and individuals they serve. Our objective is to enhance their efforts to manage and contain the spread of COVID-19, and ultimately recover from this historic crisis, through convening, information sharing and coordination. Early this week, we will send a link to our Board of Governors and National Advisory Council members for beta testing and expect to do a full launch of the site to all housing professionals around the country shortly thereafter.
It is crucial for housing practitioners on the ground to have access to the most reliable and timely information on the pandemic as well as the evolving best practices from those of you who are engaged in slowing the spread of the virus and meeting the needs of the people who depend upon us. Vetting and sharing these practices will be a primary objective of the COVID-19 Housing Resource Center, in addition to consolidating the plethora of information being made available across dozens of stakeholder websites, providing regular briefings and webinars, and sharing information on the priorities and activities of housing advocates.
NHC’s web development team is hard at work building out the website at record speed. We are also hiring graduate student research assistants from universities around the country under the direction of our Senior Advisor Bob Simpson, who many of you know through his distinguished career at Fannie Mae, most recently vice president for affordable multifamily lending and now consulting at Simpson Impact Strategies.
Our first webinar
was co-led by my brother, Dr. Mark Dworkin, the Associate Director of Epidemiology in the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. We anticipate contracting with a similar resource on a longer-term basis. This authority will be responsible for approving links and stories on the website, answering questions submitted by NHC members and vetting best practices and weekly “leave behinds” for constituents.
Finally, on a personal note, I want to share how proud I am of my brother, Mark, who is on the front lines of the COVID-19 response, treating critically ill patients with carefully rationed treatment and protective equipment that would normally be available without a second thought. I know we all have heroes like this among our families and friends, whether they’re doctors, nurses or first responders on the street. Let’s think of them first, as we struggle with our own challenges and workloads.
Be safe and healthy,
David
David M. Dworkin is President and CEO of the National Housing Conference.
|
|
News from Washington I
By Quinn Mulholland
|
|
Congress passes third Coronavirus relief package
After being
passed by the House of Representatives
, President Trump signed into law a massive $2 trillion package to stimulate the economy amidst the Coronavirus crisis on Friday. Leaders in the Senate
reached an agreement
on the bill earlier in the week, and passed it Wednesday night after hours of contentious debate.
The bill includes several measures advocated for by housing stakeholders to help homeowners, renters and the homeless, including
provisions
to ban evictions and provide mortgage forbearance for homeowners with federally backed mortgages. The bill also
commits new funds to several housing programs
, including $5 billion for the Community Development Block Grant program, $1.25 billion in tenant-based rental assistance, $685 million for public housing, and $4 billion in Emergency Solutions Grants for homeless shelters and outreach workers.
|
|
 |
FHFA, GSEs announce eviction, mortgage relief plans
FHFA
announced plans
on Monday to provide protections against evictions for renters in multifamily properties with federally-backed mortgages. The agency said it would offer multifamily property owners mortgage forbearance on the condition that they “suspend all evictions for renters unable to pay rent due to the impact of Coronavirus.” National Multifamily Housing Council President Doug Bibby welcomed this move in a
statement
, calling it “a necessary step.”
Fannie Mae
and
Freddie Mac
subsequently announced their own eviction protection plans on Tuesday.
With
many cities at risk
of mortgage delinquency spikes, the GSEs also
announced
a plan on Wednesday to allow borrowers facing hardship to defer two months of mortgage payments. Meanwhile, several other government agencies and private companies unveiled plans to help struggling homeowners, with USDA Rural Development
announcing
a 60-day foreclosure moratorium and California Governor Gavin Newsom
announcing
five large banks in the state agreed to a 90-day foreclosure freeze.
Industry advocates are also calling for relief for mortgage lenders, servicers, and landlords as more cities
enact eviction and mortgage relief measures
. In response to these calls, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
announced
on Thursday it will provide flexibility for regulated entities, including waiving HMDA reporting requirements for certain lenders.
|
|
|
|
Federal Reserve, FHFA announce new efforts to support liquidity in mortgage market
On Monday, the Federal Reserve
announced
new measures to support the economy, including the purchasing of unlimited amounts of U.S. government bonds and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) “to support smooth market functioning.” MBA President and CEO Bob Broeksmit
praised
the Fed’s announcement, saying it “will not only protect consumers by stabilizing mortgage rates for home purchases, but it will also help homeowners to refinance their loans and support multifamily real estate markets.”
The New York Federal Reserve
announced
on Thursday that it will buy as much as $1 billion in commercial MBS – the first time the Fed has ventured into this market segment.
FHFA also made two announcements last week,
authorizing
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to enter into additional dollar roll transactions and
directing
them to provide alternatives to satisfy appraisal and employment verification requirements. These moves are part of an effort by the FHFA to facilitate liquidity in the primary and secondary mortgage market.
The impact of these actions on the housing market is yet to be seen as mortgage
applications continue to fall
and
non-QM lending disappears
from the market. Several industry groups are calling on the Fed to take further action to help mortgage servicers and lenders, including the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, which
sent a letter
to the Fed on Wednesday requesting emergency assistance for nonbank servicers.
|
|
|
|
Lawmakers introduce additional legislation to help homeless, renters, homeowners
Beyond the $2 trillion stimulus package passed last week, lawmakers on Capitol Hill introduced several other Coronavirus relief measures related to housing. Several lawmakers introduced legislation to protect public housing residents during the crisis. Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.)
introduced
a bill that would require public housing agencies (PHAs) to inform all residents when a COVID-19 outbreak is detected in their building and Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio)
introduced
a bill to require PHAs to establish protocols to mitigate the spread of the disease.
Lawmakers also addressed vulnerable renters. Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.)
introduced
legislation to provide emergency rental assistance through the Emergency Solutions Grant program and Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.)
introduced
a bill to temporarily suspend rent contributions owed by federally assisted renters. Rep. Jesύs “Chuy” García (D-Ill.)
introduced
legislation to enact a nationwide eviction moratorium.
Other housing-related legislation introduced last week included
a bill
from Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) to provide $15.5 billion in emergency grants to homeless communities and service providers and
a bill
from Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) to create a $35 billion Homeowner Assistance Fund as part of
a larger package of bills
introduced by House Financial Services Committee Democrats in response to the Coronavirus crisis.
|
|
NAHB map shows states where home builders and contractors may continue working
The
National Association of Home Builders
released
a map
on Tuesday showing which states have deemed construction workers, including those working on home building, essential. As the map illustrates, the majority of states that have issued an order to close non-essential businesses, with exemptions for home builders and contractors.
|
|
In an interview published on Tuesday, Low Income Investment Fund President and CEO Daniel Nissenbaum and former President and CEO Nancy Andrews examined the evolution of the community development sector. During their conversation, the pair discussed how community development leaders are attempting to change their organizations and the broader structures within which they operate to prioritize racial and gender equity.
Read the interview here
.
PBS recently aired a documentary on East Lake Meadows, a former public housing project in Atlanta. The documentary, which was produced by Ken Burns, delves into the history of the housing project, its demolition, and the broader lessons it provides for public housing across the country.
Watch the documentary here
.
Undark Magazine delved into the issue of mold in public housing around the country in a recent article. Exposure to mold is linked to health issues like asthma, and with climate change increasing the frequency and severity of flooding across the country, according to the article, mold is affecting public housing units from New York to New Orleans.
Read the article here
.
|
|
Monday, March 30
Tuesday, March 31
Wednesday, April 1
Thursday, April 2
Friday, April 3
|
|
The National Housing Conference has been defending the American Home since 1931. We believe everyone in America should have equal opportunity to live in a quality, affordable home in a thriving community. NHC convenes and collaborates with our diverse membership and the broader housing and community development sectors to advance our policy, research and communications initiatives to effect positive change at the federal, state and local levels. Politically diverse and nonpartisan, NHC is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
|
|
Defending our American Home since 1931
|
|
Copyright © 2020. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
