The Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Homelessness Response
Priorities from Asian Americans
About
Why was this document created?
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold, old patterns are reasserting themselves with historically marginalized communities being left out of the planning and response process. These patterns have resulted in predictable gaps in the pandemic response that have left our most marginalized neighbors at unacceptable risk. There is a clear need for further guidance to local jurisdictions who are planning for the response and recovery of the pandemic, in order to ensure that the priorities of historically marginalized communities are centered in the response.
How was this document created?
The National Working Group on Historically Marginalized Communities
The National Innovation Service (NIS) Center for Housing Justice team, along with other national leaders, started by creating a national working group on historically marginalized communities. The working group brings together a small group of national and local policy experts and advocates alongside direct service providers and people serving the communities most impacted by the pandemic. It includes representatives from mid-sized cities, rural areas, and denser cities.
Listening Sessions
Population Specific Briefs
After conducting the listening sessions, the NIS Center for Housing Justice created population-specific briefs to summarize the ideas of each of the ten communities and offer suggested actions that local jurisdictions can take in response to the concerns and priorities raised by people who are being marginalized. This document focuses on the concerns and priorities of Asian American community members participating in the listening session.
How is the document organized?
The brief is organized around 4 categories:
Space
Stuff
Staff
Systems
The four categories are based off of Dr. Paul Farmer’s Space, Stuff, Staff, and Systems Framework, a regular theme for Farmer across his work to address global health crises. These four categories are used in this brief to identify and organize essential elements within what people are experiencing and how best to respond to these experiences. You can read more about his framework here.
Under each of the 4 categories there are two sections:
What we heard
What we should do
The what we heard section summarizes the direct response of Asian American listening session participants. The what we should do section offers up suggested actions from the NIS Center for Housing Justice that local jurisdictions can take in response to the concerns and priorities raised by Asian Americans in the listening session.
To download an interactive pdf of the information below, click here.
Space
What We Heard
Create affordable housing that allows extended families to live together. Many Asian American families live together as an extended family, including family members who live with them temporarily and then get their own place. Many affordable housing units restrict the number and type of family members who can live there, privileging nuclear family units with parents and young kids. Moreover, they do not allow for family members who need a temporary place to stay.
Build good quality affordable housing. The need for quality affordable housing has come to the fore in the context of COVID-19, which has made it even harder for families to be living in cramped spaces and in buildings with noise and other issues. It’s essential to invest in good quality affordable housing development to support families to not just have a place to stay but also to thrive. As one person put it in describing the difficulty of getting housing, she couldn’t have imagined before coming to the U.S. that she would be experiencing something like this.
Ensure physical safety of people on the street, including in relation to hate crimes. People are fearful of being robbed or attacked on the streets on their way to and from work and getting groceries, and that fear has intensified as a result of the increase in attacks on Chinese Americans in the context of COVID, as well as the recent looting and violence related to protests. People are also concerned about the fact that many people are not wearing masks on the street. There should be better enforcement of mask wearing, better street sanitation, and more police patrolling Chinatown in San Francisco, as well as other policies to ensure people’s physical safety.
What We Should Do
Create flexible subsidies that can support larger unit sizes paired with fluctuating family sizes. This could mean setting landlord-tenant agreements so that the units could be kept at a lower occupancy for a portion of the year to allow for family members to move in and move out. Another approach could be to enter into agreements with tenants and landlords to support safe doubling up when families need to share space for short periods of time. A third party special advocate organization who is trusted among Asian American community members could help broker and support these agreements between the parties.
Develop affordable housing in the most impacted communities and target housing and rental assistance to those most impacted by structural inequity. People experiencing homelessness and leaders in the field agree: housing fixes homelessness. Communities should use CDBG-CV dollars to invest in neighborhoods with high numbers of vacant houses or housing below code in order to create additional housing options for people experiencing homelessness and ESG-CV dollars to target rental assistance to members of marginalized communities to be used in the communities being revitalized and in any neighborhood of their choice. Simultaneously communities should end the decades-long practice of divesting in operating funds. Include long-term operating fund/reinvestment clauses in any new development occurring alongside CDBG-CV dollars. These investments would also allow communities to begin to think about alternative housing development and sustainability models and structures including affordable housing that is fully owned and operated by individuals and housing collectives in the community, removing private landlords from the engagement.
Where municipal governments are divesting in police and policing, support the creation of community-led accountability and safety efforts. The housing sector can play a role in clear communication and support for community-led efforts that puts community safety and accountability back into the hands of people and neighbors.
Stuff
What We Heard
Offer multilingual and culturally appropriate job training services. People want job training services that are in their languages and that allow them to develop the skills and get licensed for jobs that are available in their communities, including jobs in hair salons.
Continue grocery cash voucher and COVID-19 response-inspired grocery and meal delivery services. Grocery and meal delivery services have been hugely helpful to people in the context of COVID-19, and they should be continued past the pandemic. Having fresh groceries is culturally very important to people, particularly seniors in the Chinese American community. Moreover, cash voucher programs that help people buy groceries are very helpful.
What We Should Do
Address systemic barriers to employment for Asian Americans and the ways they impact access to permanent housing. Access to income and employment opportunities are one of the largest barriers to obtaining and retaining safe housing for marginalized communities. When targeting CARES Act funds, including rental assistance, to these communities, the models must consider the unique employment barriers these communities face and set flexible time limits on assistance. The assistance also needs to be paired with specialized employment navigation and supports that can establish a network of trusted employers and offer language support when necessary.
Ensure safe access to food and other critical human needs during and beyond the pandemic. Access to basic human services such as groceries and meals can be difficult for non-English speakers and other marginalized communities. As CARES Act dollars are used to develop new service delivery models, communities must address the unique challenges faced by marginalized communities and ensure safe access to food and other basic needs, this may include delivering meals and groceries, cash support for groceries, and supporting safe transportation options to food assistance centers. Jurisdictions should also work with their state governments to immediately suspend any additional state-level regulations on SNAP, TANF, or EBT benefits via emergency powers while working with legislators to create longer term changes.
Staff
What We Heard
Provide services that maintain people’s pride. People are often reluctant to ask for help out of a sense of pride and can dig themselves into a deeper hole because they try to do everything themselves. The staff providing services should ensure that people feel respected and capable.
What We Should Do
Build, support, and fund dignity-based services led by Asian and other communities most impacted by homelessness. As CARES Act dollars are used to develop new service delivery models, dignity-centered care and service delivery must become the standard across all services and systems. Dignity-centered care in this context means a holistic approach that takes into account the reluctance of some members of the community to proactively seek help and avoids shaming or blaming people, offers comprehensive language services based on the language needs of those being served, and utilizes case management approaches that reinforces relationship-based, proactive conversations that are people-centered. Communities should implement new performance management systems that prioritizes feedback from people who are experiencing homelessness, including Asian Americans, routinely engage frontline staff in identifying policy barriers to serving individuals, and inform local and federal policy changes.
Systems
What We Heard
Reduce or eliminate minimum income requirements for affordable housing. For people with limited incomes, particularly single women who work limited hours so they can care for their children and people with seasonal or variable income, it can be extremely hard to find affordable housing where they meet the minimum income requirement. Moreover, minimum income requirements will be especially hard for people to meet in an economy where so many people have lost their jobs. Those requirements should be reduced or eliminated to allow for people who have limited incomes.
Allow people to hold on to affordable housing and health benefits when they get a better-paid job. The maximum income requirements for some affordable housing do not account for minimum wage increases and can make it difficult for people to hold onto their housing, Medicaid or Medicare, and other benefits when they secure a better-paid job. The housing and benefits systems should not penalize people for finding better employment.
Fix and extend the unemployment benefit system. Many people have lost their jobs in fields that will be slow to recovery, such as restaurants and hotels. Some people have had difficulty with the application system and have not yet been approved for benefits, while others fear the end of their benefits in an economy where it will be difficult to get a job. Moreover, students who support themselves through on-campus jobs may still not have access to those jobs in the fall. It is essential that the government continue to provide unemployment benefits to people who are struggling to find work in a depressed economy.
Simplify the COVID-19 response rental subsidy application process. There is funding for rental subsidies to support people who have lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the process for applying for them is difficult and requires information from your building manager or owner and not all managers are responsive.
Suspend payments on student loans indefinitely. People will not be able to pay their loans when they do not have work, and those payment plans should be suspended and reassessed when there is a better economy.
Allow people to become U.S. citizens without full English proficiency. Citizenship makes housing and other things easier, but you need to learn enough English to pass the citizenship exam. People have to work and do not have time to devote to English classes, and the choice, as one person put it, is between citizenship or income. People should be able to take the citizenship exam in their own language.
What We Should Do
Address systemic barriers to accessing crisis and long-term housing for historically marginalized communities. Housing justice agendas must also take into account the historical and systemic racism that have given rise to the housing precarity that many communities are facing today. This includes redlining policies and other explicit policies that were used to limit access to wealth and capital for historically marginalized communities. To begin addressing these issues communities should start with the recommendations under Develop affordable housing in the most impacted communities and target housing and rental assistance to those most impacted by structural inequity.
Create centralized access to homelessness assistance and affordable housing across a community. Homeless assistance and affordable housing programs have differing eligibility requirements, applications processes, and waiting list. This leads to major barriers to accessing housing programs for people experiencing homelessness, with individuals often waiting on multiple waiting lists for multiple years. Coordinated Entry has attempted to solve these issues across homeless dedicated resources but due to lack of adequate resources and lack of coordination with affordable housing programs, the problem remains. As more resources are allocated to homelessness and housing through CARES Act and funds being divested from police, communities must centralize the access to all programs through coordinated entry.