Tens of millions of American families have been dreading the arrival of September, and now it’s here.
The rent is due — and eviction could be right around the corner.
“Rent — it’s the greediest of bills,” says the New York Times.
“For many families, it grows every year, arbitrarily, almost magically, not because of any home improvements; just because.” When landlords hand a renter a new lease with a stiff rent hike,” they may claim it’s due to high demand or rising costs. But what they mean is: “Because I can.”
“And unlike defaulting on other bills, missing a rent payment can result in immediate and devastating consequences, casting families into poverty and homelessness,” The Times says.
September will be the second straight month many Americans have been unable to come up with rent for their homes or apartments; a federal moratorium on evictions that helped as many as 20 million households expired on July 31. The sharply divided Congress hasn’t been able to come up with a replacement or agree on an extension.
Some renters have had landlords willing to wait, for the time being. Others, like those in Florida, have been shielded by state moratoriums.
Yet even in Florida, thousands faced being forced from their homes in August.
In three counties alone — Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade — landlords filed 2,170 eviction cases between Aug. 1 and Aug. 27, “far more than in any of the four prior months since the moratorium took effect April 2,” says Fort Lauderdale’s South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, is being coy about whether he’ll grant renters another month of protection, although he did say “probably” when asked about it on Friday.
The biggest reason for the coast-to-coast rent crisis is obvious: the economic downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the business shutdowns and mass layoffs it triggered.
“Before the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 800,000 people around the nation were threatened with eviction each month,” the Times reported. “Today, with unemployment levels unseen since the Great Depression … millions of renters are at risk of losing their homes by the end of the year.”
A Census Bureau report “paints a picture of a nation veering toward widespread financial uncertainty,” says Bloomberg News, noting that the agency conducted a weekly poll of Americans’ “financial, physical and mental well-being.”
Their responses show many are “foregoing medical care and … struggling with food insecurity,” with a third of respondents saying they felt “anxiety most days or every day of the week.”
That’s particularly true in the South, and — as so often — among Black and Latino renters nationwide.
According to the Times, 31% of Black renters said that they were unable to pay July’s rent, versus 28% of Latino renters and 14% of white.
