The pandemic has taken a toll on the finances of tens of millions of American households struggling to pay their rents, raising fears of a massive wave of evictions if politicians do not quickly agree on new aid.
The housing crisis “already looks like a tsunami,” says Bambie Hayes-Brown of the Georgia Advancing Communities Together coalition of associations.
These organizations that are trying to help families struggling to find housing in Georgia, in the south of the country, have quickly spent the grants received since the start of the pandemic. “We were inundated with requests,” says Mme Hayes-Brown.
In New York, Mariatou Diallo hasn’t paid her rent since March, when she lost her job in the healthcare industry.
“I am very worried because I have an eight-year-old child and if I am deported, I have no idea what to do,” she told AFP.
According to Census Bureau data, about 30% of Americans currently say they have little or no confidence in their ability to pay the next month’s rent.
Up to 40 million people are at risk of deportation in the next few months, think-tank Aspen Institute estimates.
End of moratoriums
Tenants have sometimes stopped paying their landlord for several months, but the moratoriums on evictions decreed by several states are gradually being lifted.
And the federal government’s $ 600-a-week aid to people who lost their income expired on July 31.
“Without the $ 600, no one can pay the rent,” said Yudy Ramirez, who lost her job as a housekeeper at a Manhattan hotel in March.
She didn’t pay the $ 1,000 a month for her apartment in the Bronx in July and August. The 46-year-old doesn’t know when she’ll get back to work and will soon lose her health insurance.
Like Mariatou Diallo and about fifty protesters, she participated in a rally on Monday demanding the cancellation of arrears before the real estate court in the Bronx.
The threat is even greater in these working-class neighborhoods where mainly minorities live, and where COVID-19 has killed more people and caused more job losses.
In New York, evictions are banned until September 4, but owners can already file cases in court.
New York tenants, however, have the right to withhold payments if there is a problem in the apartment: Yudy Ramirez plans to sue his landlord over repairs to the front door and the bathroom.
But that right does not exist in Georgia, recalls Erin Willoughby, director of the Real Estate Legal Resource Center at Clayton Housing Legal Resource Center.
If tenants do not respond within a week to a letter demanding payment of the rent, the eviction machine immediately kicks in, she laments.
In Arkansas, the last state in the country to penalize tenants for non-payment of rent, they have few rights.
They can at best try to prevent the deportation from appearing in their criminal record, underlines John Pollock, coordinator of the National Coalition for the Right to a Lawyer.
The country faces an “epic catastrophe” if politicians fail to agree, he said.
The White House and Congressional Democrats fail to come to an agreement on a new aid package.
The opposition proposes to spend $ 100 billion on unpaid rents and to extend assistance of $ 600 per week to the unemployed. Proposals deemed too generous by the Republican camp.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to help tenants and landlords affected by the pandemic. But for Mr. Pollock, it “is useless” because it does not immediately bring concrete proposals and resources.