Housing woes

With millions of tenants, homeowners, and small property owners struggling to survive during the Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of tenants, organized by low income people of color, are taking action across the country to demand that Congress and state governments act immediately to require corporate landlords to pay for the cancellation of rent, mortgages, and utilities, and to provide financial relief to small property owners facing foreclosure.

These corporations are sitting on billions of dollars and will keep getting richer through tax breaks and giveaways, including in the federal stimulus packages. They can easily afford to cancel monthly housing-related expenses and debts for millions of Americans whose jobs and incomes have been destroyed by Covid-19. Making them pay will help stabilize the housing market, the national economy, and communities across the country. Relief can’t come soon enough.

This is the fairest and most pragmatic way to address the financial crisis that so many households face right now. It’s likely that many Americans will have no ability to pay rent, mortgages, and utilities for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic. Those who can’t afford housing-related costs today won’t be able to afford them for the foreseeable future.

Well before the Covid-19 crisis hit, many American households, especially households of color, were spending huge proportions of their income on housing, leaving little left over for other necessities, and nothing for savings. For example, one in four Black households spent more than half their income on housing (compared to one in ten white households). Many cities were already experiencing housing affordability crises, with renters and owners struggling to pay rents and mortgages and homelessness skyrocketing, while corporate landlords and lenders prospered. The pandemic is turning the housing affordability crisis into a national catastrophe.

That’s why the full cancellation of housing-related expenses and debt is so important. Low-income Americans can’t afford to stay home from work, even if they’re feeling sick, unless their rent, mortgages, and utilities are canceled. And if low-income and unemployed people lose their homes to eviction or foreclosure, they will not be able to ‘stay home’ at all. Corporate landlords must provide the relief millions need

With Congress deadlocked on a new stimulus package, President Trump attempted to give the impression that he’d taken executive action to extend the current eviction moratorium. In reality, his memorandum merely directs federal agencies to ‘consider’ measures to prevent evictions.

But even extending the moratorium wouldn’t be enough. Moratoriums do not alleviate the growing financial burden of unpaid rent, mortgage, utility, and other housing-related bills that will come due in the near future. Tenants are demanding that Congress and state governments instead make corporate landlords pay for the cancellation of all housing-related expenses incurred during this pandemic, so households – and the economy more generally – can begin to recover financially.

Excerpted from: 'Make Corporate Landlords Pay the Bills During the Pandemic'

Commondreams.org