“Unless the federal government invests in eviction prevention, we are not only risking widespread eviction and homelessness, we are guaranteeing negative health outcomes, greater unemployment, educational decline, and long-term harm for renters, property owners and communities,” Emily Benfer, a Wake Forest University law professor and co-author of the Aspen Institute report, told CNN.
If and when the eviction wave comes, Black and Latino families will be hit especially hard. Already, around one in four Black and Latino renters has been unable to pay rent compared with just 13% of white renters. The South will also be hammered: The two states with the highest percentage of renters facing eviction are Mississippi and Louisiana. Alabama, Florida, and Georgia also rank highly.
Already, the federal moratorium in the CARES Act has expired, and as some state and local eviction moratoriums have expired, landlords have moved quickly to evict people. In New Orleans, “[l]egal aid attorneys say they’re fielding triple the number of eviction cases as compared to last year,” Bryce Covert reported in The Nation.
Some states, including New York and Minnesota, have created rental assistance funds. But the amount of money in those funds is a fraction of the overall need—again, the federal government is the only entity that can come close to fixing the problem. And again, despite Trump’s talk of executive action on evictions, Republicans are not interested in doing more than putting a short-term (until November, say) Band-Aid on the problems of low-income people.
Source: http://feeds.dailykosmedia.com/~r/dailykosofficial/~3/ZRQKnDnaACw/-Tens-of-millions-of-people-face-eviction-if-Congress-doesn-t-act-now-to-help-renters