The National Multifamily Housing Council’s Rent Payment Tracker found that 90% of apartment households had made a full or partial rent payment by Aug. 20, based on its survey of 11.4 million professionally managed market-rate apartment units across the country.
This marks a 2.1 percentage point, or 237,056-household, decrease from the share of renters who made a rent payment through Aug. 20, 2019. Last month, 91.3% of renters had made a payment by July 20.
“Lawmakers in Congress and the administration need to come back to the table and work together on comprehensive legislation that protects and supports tens of millions of American renters by extending unemployment benefits and providing desperately needed rental assistance,” says NMHC president Doug Bibby. “The industry remains encouraged by the degree residents have prioritized their housing obligations so far, but each passing day means more distress for individuals and families, and greater risk for the nation’s housing sector. If policymakers want to prevent a health and economic crisis from quickly evolving into a housing crisis, they should act quickly to extend financial assistance to renters.”
