Ensuring Housing Stability and Protections for the Nation’s Renters: Avenues for Federal Action

Abstract

What would it take to ensure housing stability and protections for the nation’s renters? This essay reviews the current literature on landlord–tenant laws, eviction court policies, the provision of legal aid, and the residential security of renter households. It then lays out avenues through which the federal government—particularly the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)—might work to improve renters’ stability. These include targeted efforts to improve engagement with both tenants and landlords, robust implementation of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing provision of the federal Fair Housing Act, especially around source of income discrimination, and facilitation of reforms to state and local housing policies. These are pragmatic steps that HUD can and should take, either unilaterally or in coordination with other agencies, without the need for Congress to grant additional authority or appropriate significant new funding.