Shelterforce: Affordable Housing Providers Fear the Worst Pandemic Impacts Are Yet to Come

New Recommendations Show Comprehensive Regional Housing Strategy Key to Addressing Bay Area’s Housing Woes, Racial Injustices

October 6, 2020

Artist-Activist RyanNicole collaborates with Daveed Diggs, Jenn Johns, Kev Choice, Goapele, Fantastic Negrito, Ruby Ibarra, Zion I, Rocky Rivera, Don Reed and more to shift attitudes surrounding housing in the Bay Area

October 29, 2020

“Affordable housing providers are waiting for the other shoe to drop. So far, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has not been the catastrophe many were preparing for when the United States started shutting down in March.

“There has been a dip in rent collections, to be sure, but not the precipitous plunge off a cliff that seemed plausible in the early days of the pandemic.

“As the pandemic lurches into its seventh month, however, those housing providers are once again expecting the worst.

““As more and more residents are unable to pay rent, it really puts [affordable housing providers’] very operations and mission in a bind,” says Amie Fishman, executive director of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California. “If they don’t collect rents that allow them to pay for operations and services and maintenance, if they go into default or foreclosure, it means the affordable covenants are lost and we lose that asset for the community today and into the future.””