By Julianne Goodfellow, VP of Government Affairs
Julianne Goodfellow is Vice President, Government Affairs, with primary responsibility for data privacy, technology, property operations and regulatory reform from both an industry and federal policy perspective.
Long-awaited reform to address the United States Postal Service’s financial solvency has finally been delivered. In a win for multifamily, Congress passed a bill that maintain existing mail delivery policies allowing for flexibility in how mail is delivered to residents in apartment communities.
While NMHC has long argued that there should be national policies regarding delivery, we also have expressed significant concern over any blanket mandates that would require all apartment communities to convert to centralized delivery, given that some existing apartment communities rely on existing service practices, including door to door delivery.
With broad bipartisan support, Congress passed the USPS reform package that cuts costs and increases transparency. It now awaits President Biden’s signature and addresses the biggest hurdles for USPS financial stability: It ends the prefunding mandate for USPS employee benefits and moves future USPS retirees to Medicare.
Left unresolved, and key for our industry, are issues of the monopoly of the mailbox and the challenges apartment communities face at the deluge of packages delivered. Instead, the bipartisan bill codifies six day a week delivery and creates a national dashboard tracking national delivery times.
More information on postal service reform and package delivery can be found here.
