Housing is growing more precarious as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches into its eighth month. nnThat’s what housing advocates are saying, and the data back them up. A report issued July 14 by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition found that millions of households around the country do not earn enough to cover rent and other costs, placing them “at imminent risk of eviction and homelessness.” This, in turn, at a time when social distancing and self-isolation have proven to be our best defense against a fast-spreading virus that has claimed the lives of 140,000 Americans by the time the report was released.
Low-wage renters, in particular, are finding themselves facing down the threat of eviction, thanks to massive job loss triggered by the virus. And these were the renters who already were most vulnerable.
Odelia Hernandez, who lives in New Brunswick, N.J., is currently out of work. Her husband is working, but they are struggling to pay the high cost of rent in what is one of the most expensive states in the country.
“My husband works two full-time jobs,” she said through an interpreter during the New Jersey report release hosted by the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey. “His paycheck barely covers rent and expenses.”
They pay $1,700 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in the city, which is home to Rutgers University, two regional hospitals and the headquarters of healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson. Her landlord is now charging them for parking and water use, which had been included.
“Unfortunately, most landlords do not live here,” which makes it difficult to communicate when tenants find problems in the apartment.
“Landlords are taking advantage and squeezing every last cent,” she said. “We’ve been here many years, and we’re just doing our best to work hard and we are not asking for anything. Just fairness.”
The NLIHC report identifies what it calls a “mismatch between the wages people earn and the price of decent rental housing in every state, metropolitan area, and county,” by calculating a “Housing Wage,” or what a “full-time worker must earn to afford a rental home without spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs.” The wage, the study found, was more than twice the national minimum wage and was well beyond even the $15-an-hour wage being sought by groups like Fight for $15.
“In no state, metropolitan area, or county can a full-time minimum-wage worker afford a modest two-bedroom rental home, and full-time minimum-wage workers cannot afford modest one-bedroom apartments in 95% of US counties,” the organization says in its press release. “Almost 8 million extremely low-income renters are severely housing cost-burdened, spending more than half of their incomes on housing. Such cost burdens lead too often to housing instability and homelessness.”
Black and brown people are most at risk, the report says, because they generally earn less, which makes it more likely that they will spend more than 30% of their income on housing. According to the report, one of every four white households are “housing cost-burdened” compared with more than four of 10 Black and Latino households.
“Structural injustices, unequal access to housing and healthcare, and greater exposure in low-wage and frontline jobs have resulted in people of color disproportionately contracting COVID-19 and being at high risk of losing their homes and becoming homeless during the pandemic,” the NLIHC says.
State and federal eviction moratoriums held off the flood temporarily. Renters already were in a precarious situation when the pandemic hit, COVID has led to a tsunami of job loss that has caused millions to fall behind on their rent. Moratoriums are not rent forgiveness. They only keep the machinery of law at bay for a proscribed length of time. When they are lifted or expire, renters still have to come up with not just the new rent but all back rent. Given the economic realities we are facing, that will be impossible.
That’s what Vanessa Bulnes told me when we talked for a story I wrote for The Progressive. The Oakland, California, child-care worker is 61 and out of work. She’s missed several rental payments, because her unemployment check and her husband’s Social Security were not enough to cover her expenses
“It’s not that we don’t want to pay rent,” she said. She can’t. “If there is no rent forgiveness, even if I go back to work in June, I will owe for April and May. We are behind on rent.”
And that’s the rub. housing needs to be seen as more than a commodity. It has to be viewed as a right, because everything flows from stable housing — physical and mental health, security, the ability to work and raise children, to participate in civic culture. But we can be denied housing if we struggle to find work?
It’s time we considered housing a human right and ensured that everyone, no matter their economic circumstances, is guaranteed a safe and secure place to live.
Hank Kalet is a journalist and poet in central New Jersey. Email, hankkalet@gmail.com; Twitter, @newspoet41 and @kaletjournalism; Instagram, @kaletwrites; Patreon, https://www.patreon.com/Newspoet41/
From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2020
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