Giving Compass' Take:

• Here are five ways that communities can rapidly respond to the COVID-19 "housing apocalypse" that will help individuals navigate this potential housing crisis. 

• What are the main drivers of support that communities need to house themselves? How can donors respond? 

• Learn why COVID-19 makes affordable housing more urgent. 

With the dramatic drop in income for countless people due to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people fell behind in making rent or home mortgage payments. The direct payment from the federal government helped many people for a month or two. The emergency short-term measures like mortgage forbearance or restrictions on evictions have pushed back the disaster, but those measures are likely to end soon. Now, cities and rural areas are filled with people who are in a deep financial hole, without cushion, and facing frightening consequences of not making payments.

On the other side of the table, many landlords are also in a difficult position — especially small-scale property owners who purchased houses as investment properties. Unable to collect rent, they may be falling behind on their own mortgage payments and risk having the properties foreclosed on. Meanwhile, financial institutions that hold the mortgaged fear having those loans default in ways that result in them holding a multitude of properties that few people can afford to live in. And city leaders dread the idea of having even more properties purchased by large out-of-town financial investors who care little about the city or neighborhoods.

After spending months scanning the globe to find promising innovations to support increases in naturally affordable housing, our team identified five strategies that communities could embrace to greatly reduce the damage of navigating forward through the crisis.

The five elements of a rapid response for communities are:

  1.  Establish a Crisis Resolution Center for renters who are unable to pay their rent and for the landlords who are struggling to collect rent.
  2. Deploy a Community Care Coordination platform to manage individual success plans and connections to resources.
  3. Launch a coordinated home-sharing and room rental program
  4. Support efficient bartering to make housing improvements
  5. Support and enable incremental Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) development

Read the full article about addressing the COVID-19 housing apocalypse by Bill Barberg at Shareable.