If the eviction moratorium ends, where will families go?
To be fair, there's no instruction manual on how to prepare for this.
No booklet exists to tell Memphis families facing eviction because a pandemic obscenely mismanaged by the Trump administration - a pandemic that robbed them of their jobs and their joy - where to turn.
No how-to on what to tell their children when they have to wait in line for groceries at food banks instead of at Kroger.
Now more people in Memphis, a city that, even before COVID-19 struck, was more than 30,000 units short of affordable housing, will likely see more families faced with living with relatives, or in hotels, or in their cars. More than 10,000 eviction notices have been filed here, as an end to the federal moratorium on evictions looms.
This time last year, people in families comprised 284 of the 1,449 people who said they were experiencing homelessness in Memphis, according to Memphis' Community Alliance for the Homeless 2020 census.
That was the second largest group next to individuals.
But was before COVID-19 crashed into everyone's life. And Tracy Burgess, development director for Dorothy Day House, Memphis' only long-term shelter for families, is worried about the grim inevitability many families may face if Congress doesn't extend the moratorium.
“It's hard to get an accurate account of families experiencing homelessness, because families hide,” Burgess said. “They will bounce from friend to family, from friend to family, as long as they can, until they run out of options.
“They'll stay at a hotel for years on end and not be considered homeless.”
Sadly, Dorothy Day House can't be one of their options now. The three houses accommodate three families each – and they're full, Burgess said,
Nonetheless, Dorothy Day House is receiving about 50 calls a week from families seeking an emergency place to live, she said.
Before COVID-19, it received 25 calls a week.
And while it was a struggle to shelter families then, there's little doubt that the pandemic will intensify that struggle – especially if the needs of that family don't mesh with the shelter help available, Burgess said.
“I knew a family who had older teenage boys, who couldn't find a shelter to accept them,” she said. “They had to stay in their car…
“Some families choose to separate in order to get emergency housing…”
Of course, families like the one Burgess encountered have been fighting homelessness in Memphis long before COVID-19 came around to sicken people and the economy that supports them.
And the main reason comes back to the lack of housing that they can pay for; a predicament driven largely by Memphis being shackled to a Department of Housing and Urban Development block grant funding formula that treats it as if it's same size as it was 80 years ago. That's insane.
Which is why, while Memphis needs more shelter options that won't require families experiencing homelessness to split up, this pandemic should also force it to turn its collective gaze to the frayed, PRE-COVID-19 patches in the social and economic fabric here.
Meaning that as this city, as well as the nation, works to get COVID-19 under control, it should also look to get the problems it exposed and intensified under control.
So, no – no instruction manual exists on how to prepare a community for the economic and social fallout wrought by a pandemic. But a community can act on the fissures that it exposes – like the lack of affordable housing for families to move into.
As opposed to being forced to seek a spot at a shelter. Or a hotel. Or bedding down at night in the backseat of their car.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Tonyaa Weathersbee at 901568-3281, tonyaa.weathersbee@commercialappeal.com or follow her on Twitter @tonyaajw.