Pew Charitable Trusts

Many residents of federally assisted multifamily—also called affordable rental—housing lack access to broadband service and face persistent challenges in getting a connection.

Pew aims to mitigate the effects of increasingly frequent and destructive natural disasters by boosting investment in mitigation, ensuring that infrastructure is flood-ready, and promoting clean energy resilience. Pew also works with state and federal policymakers, researchers, and other partners to accelerate the nation’s progress toward universal and affordable high-speed internet service—which includes building, linking, and maintaining the infrastructure required to provide broadband connections.

In November 2021, President Joe Biden (D) signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) into law.

The economics of rural broadband are challenging for private internet service providers (ISPs) and governments alike. The small populations spread out over large geographic areas make installing infrastructure extremely expensive and offer a limited customer base to offset the costs.

Although broadband internet access has increased in much of the U.S., nearly 1 in 4 rural Americans still say it is a major problem in their community. Broadband access also remains a challenge for residents of affordable rental housing. These properties may have no internet access or only limited access in community facilities.

The Federal Communications Commission released an updated map detailing broadband availability nationwide that will be used to allocate $42 billion in federal funds to states and territories to help expand access to affordable high-speed internet.

State and territory broadband offices have dramatically increased in size over the past year as they deploy billions of dollars in economic recovery funds and start to manage a historic federal investment in broadband expansion.

Many residents of affordable rental housing nationwide continue to lack access to broadband in their homes, but effective use of a long-standing federal tax credit can help close the gap in those housing units not funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Recognizing the critical importance of high-speed internet access, a HUD rule effective since 2017 requires that broadband infrastructure be installed in new and rehabilitated federally assisted multifamily housing.

Investor-owned utilities—usually large, publicly traded electricity providers that are regulated by state public utility commissions—can have a major impact in delivering broadband to rural communities and other underserved areas by allowing broadband providers to leverage existing utility infrastructure for new high-speed internet connections. Virginia is one of the first states to employ this strategy through its Utility Leverage Program, which aligns the state’s broadband goals with efforts to modernize its electrical infrastructure to successfully expand broadband service into areas tha

Many residents of federally subsidized public and multifamily housing have no access to high-speed internet service. Others may be able to get online only in restricted spaces, such as common areas, or have access in their units that is unreliable or unaffordable. This limited broadband access, meanwhile, can exacerbate long-standing economic and societal inequities.