As if the deadly scourge of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic collapse that threw millions of Americans out of work weren’t enough, the nation now faces a looming housing crisis unprecedented in generations.
Their jobs and incomes lost, renters from coast to coast will soon face eviction from their homes.
“I’ve never seen this many people poised to lose their housing in a such a short period of time,” Bill Faith of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio told the Associated Press this week. “This is a huge disaster that is beginning to unfold.”
“Huge” is putting it mildly, says the Washington Post, citing housing experts who say 20-30 million Americans could be affected, left “unable to pay their rent or mortgage due to the coronavirus’s economic blow” and unable to find safe ways to shelter their families from the virus.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress are squabbling over how to avert this crisis seem to be going nowhere. But few are speaking out as forcefully as Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).
“Few things are more essential during this crisis than housing, especially when health officials stress the importance of social distancing at home and frequently washing your hands to prevent the spread of Covid-19,” writes Harris on the social-journalism website Medium.
“Yet tens of millions of Americans now face eviction after Donald Trump and Senate Republicans allowed the national moratorium protecting people in federally-assisted housing from evictions to expire … and landlords can resume evictions in just a few weeks.”
In a tweet, Harris announced Thursday she is introducing the RELIEF (Rent Emergencies Leave Impacts on Evicted Families) Act, which she says will “help stop evictions and keep people housed during this crisis.”
If it becomes law — and that’s a significant “if” — the RELIEF Act would “help stop evictions and foreclosures for one year and halt utility shutoffs,” Harris writes.
According to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, released last week, more than a quarter of American adults 18 or older say they “weren’t able to make last month’s rent or mortgage payment or had little or no confidence they could pay next month’s,” the AP says.
“Nationally, the figure was 26.5% … with numbers in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nevada, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, New York, Tennessee and Texas reaching 30% or higher,” the news agency says.
As Graham Bowman, staff attorney with the Ohio Poverty Law Center, put it:
“The scale of this problem is enormous so it needs a federal response.”
But so far, no such response is on the horizon.
