Impending Tide of Evictions Threatens Low-Income Populations

Continued job loss and the  lack of a coordinated government response have created income instability that is likely to result in large numbers of evictions for low-income renters, especially people of color. 

Forbes notes that the National Multifamily Housing Council’s rent payment tracker shows that 94.2% of households in market-rate apartments covered their rent either in full or in part last month. But among tenants in Class C apartments which typically house low-income popultaions and those working in industries hardest hit by COVID-19, only 26 percent have covered their housing obligations for June. 

The Washington Post writes that of the 110 million Americans living in rental households, 20 percent are at risk of eviction by Sept. 30, according to an analysis by the Covid-19 Eviction Defense Project, a Colorado-based community group. African American and Hispanic renters are expected to be hardest hit. With unemployment benefits running out and local and state eviction moratoriums being raised, experts fear more evictions and, subsequently, more homeless families, who will be even more at risk of contracting the virus. 

Beyond the absurd and cruel logic of evicting people when many cities are renewing stay-at-home advisories, a massive wave of evictions will have reverberating effects. For NBC, Emily Benfer, a law professor at Wake Forest University, explains"... if [state eviction moratoriums] are lifted before federal financial support is in place, the United States will plummet into a major eviction crisis that will have negative consequences for all of society — because when the rent isn't paid, mortgages and property taxes go unpaid, so states, cities, school districts, landlords, banks, the housing market, entire communities suffer as a result."