America faces housing catastrophe as 40 million on the verge of eviction
IT is safe to say that Shayla Black’s life is not what she imagined when she left her job in the magazine industry in January, feeling like she needed a change.
Before long, her quest for new opportunities was upended by massive job losses driven by the Covid-19 crisis.
As Ms Black’s finances started to dwindle and the rent continued to accrue at her second-story Harlem apartment, the 28-year-old found herself having to make some difficult choices.
“You’re just told in a society, like, you pay your rent by any means necessary,” she said. “I was ready to pay my very last to pay my rent. But how would I pay my electric? How would I get food?”
This autumn, her landlord slipped a notice under her door: Either pay thousands in back rent or risk eviction, it said – despite a national moratorium prohibiting evictions for non-payment of rent.
“No-one should ever have to experience the threat of being pushed out of their home,” Ms Black said.
“Especially in the middle of a pandemic.”
Ms Black is one of millions on the verge of being evicted with the federal eviction moratorium set to expire at the end of January, unleashing what advocates say could be a housing catastrophe of historic proportions.
Without federal intervention, they fear, as many as 40 million people could be displaced amid an ongoing and still worsening pandemic.
“We’re facing potentially the worst housing and homelessness crisis in our country’s history,” said Diane Yentel, CEO and president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition in Washington, DC.
The eviction moratorium approved by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention was originally set to end on December 31.
It was expected to be extended through January by Congress under a $900 billion (£664bn) Covid-19 relief package that also includes offering $25bn in emergency rental assistance.
“The least the federal government can do during a once-in-a-century pandemic is assure each of us that we’re not going to lose our homes in the middle of it,” Ms Yentel said.
The $25bn, she said, was not nearly enough to meet the actual need, but it was a step in the right direction.
A study by global investment firm Stout estimates up to 14 million households could already be close to eviction, with a rental shortfall of more than $24bn – a number compounded by the economic fallout of the pandemic, which has put many out of work and at risk of displacement for the first time in their lives.
The situation has been particularly dire for Black and Latino households, which are disproportionately affected by job loss and infection rates.
“The vulnerability is much greater, and that’s the real issue,” said Abigail Staudt, managing attorney for the
Legal Aid Society of Cleveland’s housing law practice.
“We have an unprecedented number of people who are housing-unstable.”
The CDC eviction moratorium was supposed to protect these Americans as long as they met certain conditions.
But critics say the order’s vague wording has led to inconsistent implementation and allowed determined landlords to find loopholes.
Moreover, tenants often are not aware of the order and, without legal representation, many are not equipped to follow through in court.
Since spring, 43 states, along with the District of Columbia, issued their own temporary moratoriums, but as of this week, only 14 were still in place with another handful also set to run out at year’s end.
For Christopher Green of Rochester, New York, the moratorium has been a mirage. “It’s not helping a lot of people that actually need it,” he said.
Rats and squirrels have left gaping holes in the walls of the apartment where Mr Green, 24, is spending the holidays on edge with his two brothers, unsure whether they will still have a place to call home in coming weeks.
What started as a plea to address the rodent issues – and to fix jagged window frames that have left his own and his daughter’s hands cut – has instead turned into a back-and-forth with the landlord over Mr Green’s ability to pay rent after losing his jobs as a line cook and seasonal delivery worker due to Covid-19.
He said he tried to invoke both state and federal moratoria at a court date, but a judge told him he did not have enough proof that he had lost work because of the pandemic, and therefore his situation did not apply.
Now, his bags are packed with nowhere to go as he waits to see how his landlord, who could not be reached for comment, will proceed.
“I’m just walking through it day by day, every day,” Mr Green said.
Even before the pandemic, about 21 million renters were already considered “cost-burdened”, according to Harvard University’s Joint Centre for Housing Studies.
That is, they were paying more than 30% of their income toward rent. Of those, 11 million spent more than half of their pay on housing.
“The situation for renters has been bad for a long time,” said Chris Herbert, the centre’s managing director. “The pandemic has compounded an existing problem and really highlighted the weaknesses in our safety net.”
Mr Herbert made the remarks during a panel discussion held last month in conjunction with the release of a centreissued report on the nation’s housing.
States have tackled the problem to varying degrees, with some urging eviction courts to suspend operations except for emergencies while nonetheless allowing landlords to file proceedings short of kicking their tenants out.
That means that, once the moratorium does end, said Ms Yentel of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, evictions will happen quickly “because in many cases all the proceedings will have happened, and the only step left to take will be removing the person from their home”.
“An eviction can have a long-lasting effect on people’s housing histories and access to credit moving forward,” said Martha Galvez, a senior research associate for the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing & Communities Policy Centre.
“It can take people a long time to dig out from under that.”
No-one should ever have to experience the threat of being pushed out of their home