Key Highlights
- 30% of Americans missed housing payments in June, according to survey by Apartment List
- Renters, younger and lower-income households, and urban dwellers most likely groups to miss housing payments
The “historically high” rate of 30% American households that missed their housing payments in June, according to ApartmentList, could look like nothing in July and August. Why? Eviction bans put in place at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak are beginning to expire at the end of June and the extra $600/week in federal unemployment benefits currently being received by 30M unemployed Americans are set to expire at the end of July.
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Then what? Add up the eviction bans and the expired unemployment benefits and experts are warning of a “coming housing ‘apocalypse’” unless state and/or federal governments step in to mitigate this potential disaster.
ApartmentList reports that some 37% of renters and 26% of homeowners are, at the very least, a bit concerned they may face eviction or foreclosure in the next six months. Columbia University researchers estimate that homelessness could increase some 40%-45% in 2020 over the homelessness rate in January 2019.
Governors could either extend or initiate for the first time universal eviction moratoriums for the duration of the coronavirus. On the federal level, the US Senate could, but has not thus far, pass the House of Representatives’ Emergency Rental Assistance and Rental Market Stabilization Act, aka the HEROES Act, that allocates $100B for emergency rental assistance and includes an extension of the nationwide moratorium on eviction filings, hearings and executions for 12 months.
According to Solomon Greene, a senior fellow in housing policy at the Urban Institute, said, “Housing instability has huge health consequences even when we’re not facing a pandemic. Exposure risk is so much more amplified and worsened when you can’t shelter in place because you don’t have a place to shelter.”
Even prior to the COVID pandemic, many experts were saying that the country was facing an eviction crisis. More than 2M people face eviction annually (during the good times), more than the number of homeowners who faced foreclosure at the height of the 2008 mortgage crisis.
Consider totaling the 30% households that missed housing payments (both mortgage and rental payments combined) and the 4.3M mortgages currently in forbearance…there could be a housing apocalypse when eviction bans and $600/week unemployment benefits expire in June and July respectively.
Thanks to CNBC.
Also read: Recession This Year in US Seen as Coin Toss, Key Aspects About Unemployment Benefits, Another 4.34M File for Unemployment Insurance Benefits
