Covid-19 made 'unthinkable' reforms a reality in the US – now make them stick
The response to Covid-19 has in many ways played out to our expectations. We are seeing the responses we’ve grown to expect in a crisis: intensification of surveillance, rolling back of protections and financial support for irresponsible industries, to name a few. And this is amid inadequate protection of workers, monopolizing of mask equipment, antilabor retaliation, industry opportunism, staggering unemployment and more.
At the same time, other responses have revealed something most of us already knew (or at least suspected) – the arbitrariness of American misery.
Regressive policies and enforcement procedures are being scaled back in surprising numbers. While sectors under federal control – immigration policy, higher education, healthcare, election reform – have had few Covid-related changes, those controlled by city and state governments – criminal justice, housing, transportation, utilities – have had many.
These changes were put in place to slow viral transmission and stabilize the economy, not to benefit social welfare. But what’s interesting is how much overlap there is between them. Sector by sector, the pandemic has unintentionally sparked changes pushed by reformers for decades. What couldn’t be done in years has now happened in a matter of weeks. Policy changes that before Covid were dismissed as unreasonable are now seen not only as reasonable but as necessary.
It shows us how absurd so many of our rules were to begin with. But does it also show us how easy they’ve been to change all along?
Many of these changes still don’t go far enough, come with caveats and fine print, are subject to absurd means-testing, or are only temporary. For those of us who believe that America needs serious change – and that this is the time to do it – what will it take to make many of these temporary changes permanent? These aren’t necessarily the changes we want, but they give us a glimpse of what’s possible.
We are collecting more of these examples at pandemicpolicy.us. You can fill out the Google forms sheet here.
Freezing mortgage payments and evictions
To prevent people from leaving their homes during the outbreak,many cities and states – such as Florida, New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, Oakland, Seattle and Philadelphia – are temporarily suspending mortgage payments and residential evictions. All but 10 states have passed emergency tenant protections.
The same cannot be said for measures to suspend rent, which affects far more people nationwide. Organized rent strikes have popped up around the country, with 60 ongoing strikes in California alone.
Eviction suspensions help, but they don’t eliminate the rent burden – tenants will still have to make up payments, even with lost income. That means that evictions are still on the horizon, only delayed.
Free shelter
For people without housing, there’s been a movement to provide shelter, albeit temporary, in vacant or currently empty spaces, such as nursing homes in Connecticut and hotels in San Francisco. Other shelters have been made in New Orleans, Virginia, Los Angeles and throughout the rest of California.
However, for the unhoused – who are already among the most vulnerable to infection – these expanded shelters are only temporary (and have problems of their own), while existing shelters are unsafe and overcrowded. Meanwhile, landlords have been recorded kicking people out of their homes after testing positive.
Halting water, gas and electricity shutoffs
Access to water is always essential, but especially in managing a pandemic. In cities like Detroit, where water access has been a longstanding issue, water shutoffs have been suspended and service is being restored. Similar suspensions have occurred throughout almost 90 other cities and states.
Water access remains a problem elsewhere. Two-fifths of Americans currently rely on water utilities which have not suspended shutoffs. In Flint, the government has cited the pandemic in its decision to delay the longoverdue replacement of lead pipes.
Many electric and gas companies are suspending shutoffs as well. More than 20 states have issued government orders to halt disconnections, and utility companies in places such as Georgia, Nevada, California, New York and New Jersey have chosen to suspend disconnections.
Protecting internet access
With the magnified importance of digital connectivity, internet service providers have also agreed to suspend service shutoffs and in some cases have removed data caps as well as speed caps used by ISPs to purposely slow down internet speeds. The Federal Communications Commission has also requested that internet service providers find a way to provide free broadband to those who normally don’t have access.
In all of these cases, these services are recognized as essential, and so consistent access to them has been prioritized throughout the crisis. But they are no less essential even under “normal” circumstances. So why is access limited then?
Reducing arrests and prosecutions
With the goal of increasing social distancing and slowing the spread of Covid in overpopulated prisons, the pandemic has inadvertently sparked changes that criminal justice reformers have been pushing for years.
Police departments in cities such as Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Denver and Nashville have reduced arrests, whether by opting not to go after low-level misdemeanors, issuing civil summons in lieu of arrests, or choosing to warn people rather than arrest them.
To reduce “jail churn” – the large numbers of people going in and out of local jails – many district attorney offices have decided not to prosecute low-level offenses that are not considered a threat to public safety. They have also released people from pre-trial detention, where about 550,000 unconvicted people sat in US jails in 2020, most because they were too poor to post bail.
Releasing people from jails and prisons
Meanwhile, across the US, jails and prisons have halted new admissions and have released people not considered a threat to public safety, such as detainees held on minor offenses in Alabama, 1,700 people convicted of non-violent misdemeanors with fewer than 30 days left on their sentence in Los Angeles, incarcerated pregnant mothers in Chicago, and 900 non-violent inmates, including the sick and elderly, from a Cleveland jail considered so “inhumane” that it prompted an FBI investigation last year. “Where we are right now is where we should have been all along,” said the presiding municipal judge.
But if all these people aren’t a threat to public safety, why are they being arrested and detained in the first place?
Streamlining social services bureaucracy
Access to social services in the US is notorious for its byzantine bureaucratic maze of means testing and other barriers. To reduce contact, programs like Snap and WIC no longer require in-person interviews. In Utah, work requirements for Medicaid have been suspended.
Free food and childcare
Elsewhere, services have been expanded, such as public childcare centers in San Francisco or providing free meals in New York and Los Angeles, outgrowths of initiatives put in place after school closures deprived many students of meals they relied on. (Interestingly, America’s free meal programs took off with the Black Panther party’s Free Breakfast for Children program, which not only provided meals to students but also organized communities.)
Meanwhile, food banks are struggling to keep up with increased demand – with cities such as Pittsburgh seeing a 543% increase – while shuttered restaurants and decreased demand for prepared food has led to food waste and produce languishing in fields against the usual backdrop of inadequately protected and paid workers.
Direct cash transfers
There have also been a number of cash transfer program proposals to provide financial relief (a breakdown of the proposals is here), many of which would have been unheard of just a few weeks ago.
Unfortunately these proposals took the form of the recently passed Cares Act, which is both insufficient and means-tested. Its passage, however, further demonstrates that the “how will you pay for it” question is more about stopping progressive policies than genuine concern.
People with foreign medical degrees can provide hospital care
As hospitals lack beds and equipment and millions of Americans lose their jobs – and thus their health insurance – the inadequacies and cruelty of the American healthcare system (if not already obvious) is now undeniable. However, to keep up with increased need, outdated restrictions have been relaxed or lifted.
In New York, people with foreign medical degrees are now allowed to provide hospital care – foreigntrained medical workers with advanced degrees are often relegated to lowwage, precarious work, such as driving for Uber, because their degrees aren’t recognized in the US. Restrictions on medical workers working across state lines have been relaxed as well, while archaic restrictions on blood donation from gay men have been eased (though not entirely removed).
Price of insulin capped
As the world scrambles for Covid-19 treatments, the pharmaceutical industry has tried to secure exclusive rights on anything that looks promising. Gilead, notorious among other things for its $84,000 hepatitis C treatment, applied for and received orphan drug status for its possible Covid-19 treatment remdesivir, a status normally reserved for drugs that treat rare illnesses (Gilead later walked back the claim).
At the same time, Eli Lilly capped insulin costs to $35 in response to the pandemic. Normally, Eli Lilly’s (and other manufacturers’) insulin is so unaffordable that people die from rationing it to save money.
Remote working and paid sick leave
To maintain productivity throughout the pandemic, many employers previously resistant to remote work arrangements are suddenly open to them. The expansion of remote work has been a long-denied demand of disabled workers, but only now are employers willing to consider it.
Companies such as Amazon, Walmart, Instacart and Uber have revised their sick leave policies to include employees who are typically denied such benefits. But in basically all cases, this sick leave is accessible only after testing positive for Covid-19 (a difficult requirement given the scarcity of tests) and in the absence of other necessities like protective equipment and hazard pay.
Companies such as Uber persistently resist classification of their drivers as proper employees, and this very limited expansion of benefits is not really a substantial change away from that policy. At the very least, however, the recently passed Cares Act expands unemployment benefits to independent contractors.
Many academic books accessible for free
Education has been fundamentally reshaped as schools move online, with educators scrambling to adjust teaching styles and materials to remote learning. Many university presses have made their titles accessible for free in response. But most notable is the admittedly tiny – but unprecedented – shift in the system of indebtedness that American higher education system is built on.
Debt collection suspended
New York has suspended state debt collection, including student and medical debt. At the federal level, initially a far more modest suspension of interest accrual for federal loans was announced, but was updated to suspend payments and collections as well.
This still pales in comparison to measures taken by other countries, such as Venezuela, which announced country-wide six-month rent and credit payment freezes. In the US, private lenders are not required to take any such measures.
Yet these moves seem to at least tacitly acknowledge the social harms of widespread debt burdens. This has not, however, stopped the debt collection industry from trying to claim itself “essential”.
Free public transit
City living is hugely influenced by access to reliable and affordable transit. Increased access to mobility has long been an important issue, but only now are we seeing changes.
With pushback against fare hikes and ailing infrastructure already an issue before Covid, cities such as Houston, Cincinnati, New York and Santa Monica have suspended bus fares, and some bike-share services are offering free rides, such as in Detroit, Memphis and Kansas City. However, this is against a backdrop of insufficient protective measures for transit workers, some of whom have already died from Covid-19 infection.
More bike lanes and pedestrianized streets
In New York City, where cycling increased by 52% after physical distancing measures, two new temporary protected bike lanes have been put in place. Though no other US cities have followed suit, outside the US, Bogotá opened 47 miles of temporary bike lanes, and Mexico City just announced a plan for a fourfold increase in bike infrastructure.
Many cities have opened streets to pedestrians by implementing car bans, such as Philadelphia, St Paul, Cleveland and Denver, to provide space for cyclists and pedestrians to maintain social distancing, part of an ongoing movement to pedestrianize roads permanently.
Fewer deportations
There’s been little change on the immigration front, but US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) recently announced it would “temporarily adjust its enforcement posture” to arrest only “public safety risks and individuals subject to mandatory detention” – in other words, they would stop rounding up and deporting people just for being undocumented.
Advocates and federal judges in Los Angeles and Pennsylvania ordered the federal government to release detainees, but there’s been no answer from the Trump administration.