Since first hitting virtually every part of the world almost three years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic has altered life as we know it. The pandemic has impacted the health, jobs, opportunities, and ways of life for people all around the world, and has exacerbated long-standing systemic inequities. It has also had a significant impact on the housing stability of millions of Americans. Despite the hardship caused by the pandemic, some interventions, like Right to Counsel programs, have helped folks stay stably housed. Still, more can be done to increase housing stability throughout the United States.
Paying Rent Continues to be a Struggle for Millions of Americans
Despite the COVID-19 eviction moratorium, an investigation by a United States House of Representatives subcommittee found that corporate landlords still evicted tenants, and did so at three times the rates previously recorded. At an already unpredictable and difficult time, many tenants were forced to face the very real risk of losing their housing, on top of their other pandemic-related stress.
This is not to say that actions taken to mitigate the effects of the pandemic were entirely unhelpful. Government interventions – like stimulus payments, emergency rental assistance, and eviction moratoriums – did provide some temporary relief to families struggling to get by. However, a significant number of Americans continue to experience hardship as a result of the pandemic, even today. While the number of renters who were behind on rent has fallen from a peak of 15 million people earlier in the pandemic, more than 10 million people still reported not being caught up on rent payments in the fall of 2021. In addition, 29 percent of all adults in the country reported difficulty covering usual household expenses in the fall of 2021.
Renters of color and families with children consistently reported higher rates of rent hardship throughout 2020 and 2021. As early as April 2020, 32 percent of Black adults and 41 percent of Latinx adults experienced job loss due to the pandemic, compared with only 24 percent of white adults. Black and Latina women saw the largest drop in their employment-to-population ratios, with Black women in particular seeing jobs come back at a rate that is 1 1/2 times slower than that of white women. During the pandemic, renters of color have reported less overall confidence in being able to pay their next month’s rent and have reported not having paid the previous month’s rent on time at disproportionately higher rates than their white counterparts.
Amid Challenges, Right to Counsel Has Helped to Keep People Housed
This country is facing a housing crisis, and the pandemic has only deepened the hardship Americans are experiencing. Not only are Americans dealing with lost income and increased housing instability as a result of the pandemic, but rents are also rising. Last year, rents rose by an average of 14 percent, leaving more and more families at risk of losing their housing.
When renters face eviction, they are almost always unrepresented in court proceedings. Right to Counsel programs throughout the country are changing that. According to the ACLU, “ensuring a right to counsel for renters in eviction proceedings can play a vital role in helping to address systemic inequity and our nation’s inexcusable failure to invest in affordable housing for all.”
Locally, Cleveland’s Right to Counsel program has been successful in helping many residents access legal representation and avoid losing their housing. In a report on the program, Neil Steinkamp, managing director of the New York-based consulting firm Stout, said, “Approximately 60 percent of eligible households in Cleveland who are facing eviction were represented in 2021. Sixty percent. Prior to right-to-counsel, that was around 1 or 2 percent.” According to the report, lawyers from the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland were able to prevent eviction for 93 percent of right-to-counsel clients who wanted that outcome. And for those seeking rental assistance, they were able to secure it for 83 percent of those clients.
What More Can Be Done to Prevent Evictions and Increase Stability?
Often, tenants find themselves facing eviction at no fault of their own. Instead, some housing providers unfortunately attempt to evict tenants based on no other reason than discrimination. It is important to know that a housing provider cannot legally evict tenants based in whole or in part on a protected class. Selective evictions because of a protected class violate the Fair Housing Act even when the eviction might otherwise be lawful. Even if a tenant is behind on their rent and subject to eviction, a housing provider may not pick and choose which tenants to evict based on any protected characteristic. Tenants can learn more about their rights when it comes to evictions by downloading the Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research’s new brochure on Evictions and Your Fair Housing Rights. The Fair Housing Center has advocates on staff to assist people who may be facing unlawful eviction or discrimination based on their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, disability, or another protected class.
The lasting effects of evictions are devastating, and often impact a person’s future housing stability. When a tenant is evicted, that loss of housing can fuel cycles of multigenerational poverty. Especially after evictions have increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, taking a proactive approach to eviction prevention is more important now than ever. Enterprise Community Partners has highlighted five ways to stop evictions before they happen. Approaches included in the list are: improving housing stability for renters; understanding who is most vulnerable to evictions and intervening early; reducing barriers to safety net programs; shifting the “landlord/tenant” paradigm to a partnership centered on community; and, finally, providing holistic service delivery programs.
Between the effects of the pandemic, persisting systemic racism, rising housing costs, and a number of other social issues facing our world, there is not one simple solution to address the hardships folks are experiencing. However, there are certainly actions that can be taken — on both large and small scales — to increase housing equity and stability. Addressing housing discrimination, racism, and the root causes of housing instability should be key components of any strategy to increase housing stability. Housing insecurity, evictions, and even homelessness, can largely be avoided when tenants are given interventions like Right to Counsel and the support they need to thrive.