A huge wave of evictions is gathering pace across the US, with tens of millions of people facing the looming prospect of being ejected from their homes with the expiry of federal government protections. A moratorium on evictions from most federally backed housing, along with a $600-a-week unemployment benefit, helped ensure many Americans avoided being made homeless from an economic crash sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. But these protections expired at the end of July and a slew of evictions are starting to unfurl across the country, while party leaders are at an impasse over further economic relief and a slew of stopgap measures from Donald Trump are on an uncertain path. A picture shared widely on the internet described “eviction cairns” in New Orleans, showing belongings heaped beside the road, reportedly from a family of six that had been evicted from their home after being unable to pay rent. According to the Aspen Institute, a non-profit thinktank, at least 30 million Americans out of the 110 million who live in rental housing are at risk of eviction by the end of September. The organization warned the Covid-19 crisis will cause “long-term harm to renter families and individuals, disruption of the affordable housing market and destabilization of communities across the United States”. The lapsing of eviction protections means that many people, unable to afford rent or mortgages, have been plunged into a precariously vulnerable situation. “There’s tremendous urgency,” Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told NPR. “There are millions of renters who can’t sleep at night because they don’t know what they’re going to do if they become homeless.”The fresh disaster to stem from the pandemic is set to reach all corners of the US. A study by UCLA found that as many as 120,000 households in Los Angeles county, including up to 184,000 children, will probably become homeless when evictions resume. Meanwhile, in South Carolina, 52% of renters cannot afford their rent and risk eviction, with about 185,000 evictions possible across the state by the end of the year, according to Stout Risius Ross, a consultancy firm.“A lot of the safety net things that people relied on are gone,” said John Pollock, coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel. Stripped of federal assistance, and with many states also scaling back help, many people are having to rely upon savings or credit in order to retain their homes. On Saturday, Trump signed an executive order on evictions that the White House said would address the situation.

All data is taken from the source: https://www.theguardian.com/
Article Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/11/evictions-us-coronavirus-protections


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