******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ********************
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*****************************************************************
NY Times, May 28, 2020
An ‘Avalanche of Evictions’ Could Be Bearing Down on America’s Renters
By Sarah Mervosh
EUCLID, Ohio — The United States, already wrestling with an economic
collapse not seen in a generation, is facing a wave of evictions as
government relief payments and legal protections run out for millions of
out-of-work Americans who have little financial cushion and few choices
when looking for new housing.
The hardest hit are tenants who had low incomes and little savings even
before the pandemic, and whose housing costs ate up more of their
paychecks. They were also more likely to work in industries where job
losses have been particularly severe.
Temporary government assistance has helped, as have government orders
that put evictions on hold in many cities. But evictions will soon be
allowed in about half of the states, according to Emily A. Benfer, a
housing expert and associate professor at Columbia Law School who is
tracking eviction policies.
“I think we will enter into a severe renter crisis and very quickly,”
Professor Benfer said. Without a new round of government intervention,
she added, “we will have an avalanche of evictions across the country.”
That means more and more families may soon experience the dreaded
eviction notice on the front door, the stomach-turning knock from
sheriff’s deputies, the possessions piled up on the sidewalk. They will
face displacement at a time when people are still being urged to stay at
home to keep themselves and their communities safe, with the death toll
from the virus now having passed 100,000 in the United States.
That fear of eviction has been eating away at Sandy Naffah ever since
she lost her income as the virus led to economic shutdowns. Ms. Naffah,
who had been juggling two part-time jobs — teaching elementary school
students how to read and working as a beauty consultant at a mall —
quickly fell behind on the $800 she pays in rent each month for a
one-bedroom apartment in Euclid, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland.
She is now staring down a precarious future, desperately hoping that a
one-off federal stimulus check and unemployment benefits — both of which
she said she had yet to receive — will keep her afloat and stave off
eviction.
“It’s a ticking clock,” said Ms. Naffah, who is in her 50s. “I can’t
continue to go on this way, otherwise I will be out on the street.”
In many places, the threat has already begun. The Texas Supreme Court
recently ruled that evictions could begin again in the nation’s
second-largest state. In the Oklahoma City area, sheriffs apologetically
announced that they planned to start enforcing eviction notices this
week. And a handful of states, like Ohio, had few statewide protections
in place to begin with, leaving residents particularly vulnerable as
eviction cases stacked up or ticked forward during the pandemic.
Christie Wilson, 37, was among them. After fleeing a dangerous
relationship, she said, she spent several months sleeping in her car
last year before a veterans program helped her pay for a two-bedroom
apartment in Decatur, Ga. She had recently become responsible for the
$1,143-a-month rent herself, she said, and had lined up a job at a
warehouse.
But after two days on the job, she said, she was laid off as the
coronavirus outbreak intensified in March.
A few weeks later, she found an eviction notice on her door. She now
fears losing her apartment, where, in the fragile stability of recent
months, she has enjoyed small luxuries, like listening to gospel music
on her patio in the mornings and spending Mother’s Day in her own home
with her teenage son.
The real estate company managing her apartment said that it had followed
protocol in filing for eviction, and that employees were working with
Ms. Wilson to waive fees and help connect her to nonprofit groups. If
she has to move out, she worries she would end up in a homeless shelter,
where preliminary testing has shown high rates of infection.
“There would be no six-feet distance — we’d be sleeping on top of each
other,” said Ms. Wilson, who is racing to pay back more than $2,000 in
back rent before Georgia courts reopen next month.
Though about 90 percent of renters made full or partial rent payments by
late May, down only 2 percent from last year, lawyers and landlords
alike fear that the trend will not last. More than 38 million people
have filed jobless claims since March, including a high proportion of
people living in households making less than $40,000 a year. In a survey
released this month by the Census Bureau, nearly a quarter of
respondents said they missed their last rent or mortgage payment or had
little to no confidence that they would be able to pay on time next month.
The devastation has drawn comparisons to the Great Recession, when
millions of people lost their homes during a foreclosure crisis. But
this time, renters are likely to be on the front lines.
“We sort of expect this to be more of a renter crisis than a
homeownership crisis,” said Elora Lee Raymond, an assistant professor at
the Georgia Institute of Technology who focuses on affordable housing
and real estate.
Even before the current joblessness crisis, eviction was troublingly
common in American life. Researchers estimate that about 3.7 million
eviction cases were filed in 2016, a year when the unemployment rate was
4.7 percent.
“Now we have 14.7 percent,” said Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at
Princeton and the author of the book “Evicted,” who is leading an effort
at the university’s Eviction Lab to track cases nationally. Without
intervention, he said, “I don’t see how we wouldn’t have a wave of
evictions.”
A $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill backed by House Democrats includes
a proposal to dedicate $100 billion for rental assistance, a measure
that could bring broad relief, but Republicans have criticized the
package as too costly, and it is unlikely to pass in its current form.
And some argue that the federal government has already intervened
effectively, in the form of the stimulus checks and a $600 weekly boost
to unemployment payments.
Many low-wage workers are making more money on unemployment than they
were when they were working, said Ken Rosen, an economist at the
University of California, Berkeley. “It’s happening, not through the
housing system, but through the unemployment compensation system,” he said.
But there is a looming question about what happens next. “People may be
paying their rents, but at what cost?” said Tara Raghuveer, the director
of KC Tenants, an advocacy group in Kansas City, Mo. “I know several
people who are taking out title loans. They are paying their rent on
their credit card.”
Many landlords say they are working with their tenants, waiving late
fees and advocating that the government cover missed rent. “We are in
uncharted waters,” said Tom Bannon, chief executive of the California
Apartment Association, who added that most landlords were not eager to
evict residents when there was little guarantee of a replacement.
Still, landlords have bills to pay, too. When tenants cannot pay their
rent, landlords with mortgages remain responsible to the banks, who
answer to investors. “I call it the responsibility chain,” Mr. Bannon
said. “There is this link, and if there is a break in the link, the
ripple effect is pretty significant.”
Among the first to face eviction have been those who were already
struggling before the pandemic.
Stephen Jenkins, 64, was let go from his assembly job in January, making
it difficult to pay his $900 monthly rent in Springfield, Ohio. By
March, he said, his savings had run out, and he asked his landlord if he
could pay late after his Social Security check came through.
His landlord, who declined to comment, filed for eviction.
In the weeks since, Mr. Jenkins said, his wife lost her hostess job at
Bob Evans when restaurants shut down. They have not been able to move
out as few realtors are showing homes because of the virus.
The stress is giving him health problems, and he is anxiously counting
down the days until his eviction hearing, now scheduled for Wednesday.
“I haven’t slept through a night since March,” he said. “I wake up at
three or four in the morning worried about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
_________________________________________________________
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at:
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com