Editor’s note: As we go to print, in a cruel, inhumane move, the U.S. Supreme Court has voted down the national eviction moratorium, despite COVID’S rise and despite that millions more renters will be thrown into the street.
As politicians debate how to keep afloat an economy damaged by the COVID crisis and mass job losses, the ending of the national moratorium on evictions (which may be extended beyond its current July 31 expiration date to the end of September) is threatening millions of renters with what has been described as a ‘tsunami of evictions’. With foreclosures and evictions already on the rise, tenants’ groups and a few legislators are organizing to extend protections and put in place policies to prevent this looming calamity.
The extreme financialization of housing as a hyper-profitable commodity, rather than as a basic necessity – shelter – has driven rents and housing costs far beyond the reach of millions of working families. According to the Kansas City Tenants Union “The nation’s housing crisis has reached emergency levels. A person working full time, paid minimum wage, cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment in any county in the United States. More than half of all Americans spend over 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities. Twelve million households dedicate over half their wages to housing. Today, more than three million families and individuals experience homelessness, including more than one million children.”
Even before the COVID crisis and the mass joblessness it created, the pressure on workers – as jobs are automated away and wages stagnate, or healthcare-for-profit drives people into medical bankruptcies – is causing more people every day to lose their housing and fall into the streets. There they are criminalized for living in vehicles, tents and doorways
According to the online site invisiblepeople, “We favor vacant luxury lofts over affordable homes. Racist policies are infused into our lending practices. And we’ve created a system where the law is almost always on the side of the corporate landlord who holds all the chips. Seventy percent of Millennials report not being able to afford to purchase a home.” Home-owning in the past was a central pillar of the ‘American dream.’ Now people struggle to not become homeless.
Corporate landlords are moving to weaken California Governor Newsom’s rent relief and anti-eviction proposal, as tenants’ groups and others demand that the moratoriums be kept in place and extended. Groups across the country such as the Keep Families Housed Coalition, Tenants Together, tenant unions, and eviction defense groups are organizing to protect tenants from abuse and evictions, while pushing for policies and laws that recognize housing as a human right and a social priority.
People are calling for the government to guarantee people’s housing, and to house the homeless, for the good of all.
