When evictions loom, pets also put at risk
When Esther Deshommes moved her family halfway across the country in June, she never considered leaving their two cats behind.
Deshommes, 36, is a tutor and her husband is a barber. Both lost their jobs early on in the pandemic and with savings drying up, they decided to move with their three children from Rockland County, New York, to stay with family in St. Louis.
But they hit a snag: Deshommes’ stepfather is allergic to Nova and Luna Bear, their two tabby cats, and pet-friendly apartments in St. Louis that were within the family’s budget of $1,100 per month were limited.
“My 6-year-old looked at me, crying,” Deshommes said, “and he said, ‘Mom, you don’t leave family behind.’”
Pet adoptions reached an all-time high in the United States in the early months of the pandemic with animal foster applications increasing 500% in some cities. Many animal shelters were cleared out.
“I don’t think we’ve seen people open their homes to shelter and foster animals like this ever before,” said Kitty Block, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. “It felt unprecedented.”
But despite the surge in pandemic puppies, antipet policies at most rental apartments have held firm, particularly for those available to lower-income renters. Ten months into the pandemic, there’s a tremendous housing crisis afoot that could affect both twoand four-legged residents. Without another extension on a federal eviction moratorium, nearly 40 million Americans could face eviction by the end of January, and with them, millions of pets are at risk of being surrendered to shelters.
“There are 173 million pets in American homes,” said Julie Castle, CEO of animal welfare organization Best Friends Animal Society. “If you have 30 or 40 million Americans at risk of losing their homes, well, do the math. We could be staring down a really bad situation with people being forced to choose between their home and their pet.”
The Deshommes family story has a happy ending: Nova and Luna Bear went to a foster home organized by the Animal Protective Association of Missouri and the family eventually found an affordable apartment and moved in, felines in tow.
But many pet-owning renters uprooted by the pandemic have had a tougher search. Andrea Halsey lost her job as an inhome elderly care provider. With schools switched to remote learning and her fiance working long hours in construction, Halsey, 24, was unable to find a new job while caring for her sons, ages3and5.
Their savings quickly dwindling, the couple decided to move from Illinois to Pennsylvania, where Halsey has family and where they believed rental costs would be cheaper. They moved in August but have yet to sign a lease and are still staying with relatives. The reason? Pet deposits and pet rent for their 43-pound Siberian husky, Jax, has made it nearly impossible for them to find a new home.
Halsey has no intention of parting with Jax. But she knows that without him, her family, whose rental budget is up to $1,000 a month, would have already found their own place. They have looked at more than 20 apartments. In several cases they were rejected when the landlord found out the weight and breed of her pet. In others, they weren’t able to come up with the required cash, which often included a pet deposit of several hundred dollars on top of a security deposit, pet rent, and first and last month’s rent.