Please Stop Relying on Eviction Moratoriums
The eviction moratorium ended and then came back, but evictions will likely continue beyond the pandemic without some more work
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that everyone should have access to housing if they want it. Unfortunately, as COVID-19 cases began to surge in 2020, people were losing jobs and, with them, their ability to pay rent. Studies suggested that the coronavirus was spreading more quickly amongst the homeless, so in order to prevent both a growing homeless population and more COVID cases, the CDC issued a ban on all evictions.
After being extended twice in March and June, the ban expired at the end of July, making August rent (as well as all the back-rent not paid) suddenly due again. The previous ban had expired because the Supreme Court had ruled that any additional extensions would need to be passed by Congress, but opposing viewpoints (classic) and an impending vacation because of the August congressional recess meant that no legislation got passed. In order to help out these renters that were caught off guard and still in high-transmission areas, the President and the CDC then took the controversial action of issuing another ban, which they claim does not contradict the court’s decision because it’s a new ban, not an extension of the old one.
Now that the moratorium has effectively kept renters in their homes for another 60 days, I feel like we need to take a look at what other effects these policies have.
Second Order Effects of Rental Protection
One of the arguments against eviction moratoriums is that it drives small landlords out of the market. Most people think that since property has been such a boon and a good investment, landlords must all be rich with multiple streams of income. However, it turns out that most of the 10-11 million individual landlords in the US own just one or two rental units, netting under $25,000 on average per year. Sure, some may be making this off a rental they purchased recently with their cushy salaries, but some may also be renting out a home they inherited or bought decades ago, and need as much money as they can to get by.
The government surely thought of this and is supporting these landlords, right? Unfortunately, while the government did set $46 billion aside for rental aid, only about $3 billion has been spent, since states and cities have just been slow in setting up the logistics of getting that money to the tenants so they can pay these landlords. As more and more months go by without rent, some landlords have been/will be forced to give up their properties, which either leads to that property being swallowed up by a corporate landlord, or just being bought by someone, thus reducing the number of available rentals.
Furthermore, for those landlords who decide not to pull out of the market, but are still struggling to make their mortgage payments, many are signing up for mortgage forbearance programs, which allow borrowers to pause or reduce their payments for some time. The mortgage forbearance program that was instituted to help out will end on September 1st. Does this not seem like we’re just kicking the can down the road?
It’s important to remember that back payment is due for the renters and the landlords. They don’t just get to wipe away the payments (unless you were a renter lucky enough to get money as part of that $3 billion), it just means you have to figure out how to pay it later. How? I have no idea, since getting your job back post-pandemic doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly be able to pay many months’ worth of back-payments.
Evictions aren’t new
Keeping people in their homes is, of course, a great idea, and people being able to socially distance indoors possibly prevented more coronavirus cases. However, the moratorium just seemed like a short-term solution that wasn’t fully fleshed out. It’s easy to say that the government just needs to do better; better guidance regarding how to get money to renters, better messaging for renters, and properly addressing the issue early enough to not let the moratorium lapse seemingly out of nowhere.
But the bigger issue is that this problem wasn’t fit for a short-term solution at all. Evictions, in general, are already a huge problem, that affects an entire society: residential instability can be traumatizing for children, leading to poor performance in schools, etc, homelessness puts a big burden on cities, both on the financials and on services like hospitals and shelters. Really, having so many evictions due to lack of payment should just be indicative of larger issues regarding affordable housing. I wrote an article about multi-family housing as a way to provide more affordable housing, and other ideas like social housing (government-controlled rentals) and ending exclusionary zoning laws (rules preventing affordable housing from being built in certain neighborhoods) are all things that I think we should be looking into to make sure evictions don’t continue to cause harm even after this pandemic is over.