A 2020 Case Study: NAA and COVID-19 Advocacy Special from the National Apartment Association
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s 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
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Apartment News
COVID-19 federal advocacy to date.
National Emergency and Congress’ First Response
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 Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, the Families First Coronavirus Response 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
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February 2021
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 Advocacy — continued on page 30
