Freefall: Why Our Housing Safety Net Is Failing the Lowest-Income Renters During COVID-19

President Roosevelt famously described “one third of a nation ill-housed”in his 1937 inaugural address following his re-election1 and later that yearchampioned legislation that created a federal public housing program.2Eight decades later, while much progress has been made in expandingthe nation’s access to safe and affordable housing, only one in three of ournation’s 11.2 million extremely low income renters has access to an affordable home.

Elizabeth J. Mueller, Heather K. Way, and Jake Wegmann