In wake of coronavirus, a looming epidemic of evictions

With the unemployment rate still more than 10 percent and eviction protections lapsing across the country, housing experts say millions of Americans could lose their homes amid the pandemic in the coming months if Congress doesn’t act.

The housing situation for millions of Americans was already precarious before the pandemic, with many paying large percentages of their monthly incomes toward rent and without enough savings to cover a few hundred dollars in emergency expenses. Millions have lost their jobs during the pandemic, and a study released earlier this week found 5.4 million also lost health insurance, which is generally provided by employers. The enhanced unemployment checks of $600 per week from the federal government are set to expire at the end of July — although payments have been delayed in many states — as the patchwork system of eviction moratoriums begins to lift in some areas where they’re still in place.

As the number of positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths resulting from COVID-19 continues to rise in many areas of the country, millions of Americans, without jobs or health insurance, are in danger of being forced out of their homes. Moving in with family or friends would likely mean overcrowding, a risk for spreading the coronavirus. Other families may be living on the streets during triple-digit heat and hurricane season and then, should the crisis continue, freezing winters. (If there is a prolonged recession, an increase in homelessness is nearly certain to follow.) If public schools remain closed, low-income students displaced from their homes would face difficulties participating in online learning and fall further behind their more economically secure peers.

The racial disparity in who the virus has infected and killed has a parallel in the incidence of housing insecurity, and an analysis from the Urban Institute found the pandemic is also widening that gap, which has been exacerbated by housing discrimination and a slow recovery from the 2008 recession. Research by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University supports that assertion.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-wake-of-coronavirus-a-looming-epidemic-of-evictions/ar-BB16OmIi?li=BBorjTa&ocid=DELLDHP