07/30/2020

America's Next Housing Crisis: How the Pandemic is Pushing Renters to the Brink

FORBES Sam Chandan, PhDContributor

For millions of America’s renting families, threats to housing security are a persistent fact of life, even at the best of times for the broader economy. A significant unplanned expense or a temporary interruption to employment can mean the difference between a rent payment made and a payment missed. The relative health of the labor market proves crucial in maintaining a measure of housing stability in the United States.

The historic increase in joblessness brought on by the pandemic has pushed us to the brink of a new rental crisis, forestalled in the short term by a combination of payroll protections, enhanced unemployment benefits, rent subsidies, and a national patchwork of eviction moratoria. The most far-reaching of these programs, a moratorium on evictions at properties with federally backed mortgages and the $600 per week unemployment benefits supplement, have now expired. Communities of color are particularly at risk without these reinforcements, impacted disproportionately by the pandemic and job losses and with more limited savings...click here to read more.