Tuesday, August 31, 2021

THIRD WORLD USA
750,000 households face eviction by January with possible 'severe' public health consequences, Goldman says

jzeballos@businessinsider.com (Joseph Zeballos-Roig)
 The Maricopa County constable signs an eviction order on
 October 7, 2020 in Phoenix, Arizona. 
John Moore/Getty Images

Goldman Sachs projects 750,000 households face eviction by January with potentially "severe" COVID-19 consequences.

The Supreme Court struck down the federal eviction moratorium last week.

Democrats and the White House are prioritizing fixes to an emergency rent relief program.

Goldman Sachs projects that landlords could evict 750,000 households by the end of 2021 after the Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down a federal eviction ban. They also warned there could be "severe" public health consequences from the coming wave of evictions."


The Goldman analysts estimated 3.5 million households are struggling to catch up on rent, the group said in a note released Sunday. Collectively, those households owe landlords around $17 billion in unpaid rent, Goldman projected.

Goldman wrote that while the coming evictions may dent household consumption and job growth, the public health consequences are probably more "severe" and it may increase virus infections. COVID-19 cases from the Delta variant have surged nationwide, along with hospitalizations in many parts of the US.

Up until July 31, renters who hadn't made monthly payments were shielded from eviction due to a moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That went in tandem with an emergency rental assistance program designed to provide renters with federal aid so they can stay in their homes.

But the money has been slow to get to beleaguered renters in most states and cities due to bureaucratic snags and onerous documentation requirements, among other problems. It helped spark a last-minute Democratic push to extend the moratorium so renters could have more time to receive federal relief, but it collapsed because of resistance from moderates.

Faced with withering pressure from progressives, the Biden administration enacted a limited moratorium in counties struggling with high infection rates earlier this month. But the Supreme Court struck that down on Thursday evening in a 6-3 ruling.

Video: Federal ban on evictions expires as renters face rising covid cases (The Washington Post)


Conservative justices banded together and ruled that the public health agency had overstepped its authority, which could pave the way for additional federal overreach.
In the wake of the ruling shutting down the federal eviction ban, only seven states and the District of Columbia have eviction moratoriums. Housing experts warn a looming wave of evictions could hit low-income Black Americans the hardest.

"Evictions will occur where unemployment rates are highest-that is, where poor and mostly black service industry workers live," Paul Williams, a fellow at the Jain Family Institute, wrote Monday on Twitter. He added most homeless shelters are already at capacity.

On Friday, the White House appeared to concede Democrats couldn't muster the votes in Congress to renew a federal eviction ban. Instead, it was prioritizing ironing out the problems in the rental relief program.

"If there were enough votes to pass an eviction moratorium in Congress, it would have happened," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at a daily news briefing. "It hasn't happened."

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri joined 61 House Democrats in calling for Democratic leaders to assist in extending the moratorium.

"The impending eviction crisis is a matter of public health and safety that demands an urgent legislative solution to prevent further harm and needless loss of human life," the letter said.

Read the original article on Business Insider


Original Investigation 
Public Health
August 30, 2021

Eviction Moratoria Expiration and COVID-19 Infection Risk Across 

Strata of Health and Socioeconomic Status in the United States

JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(8):e2129041. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.29041
Key Points

Question  Is lifting a state-level eviction moratorium associated with the risk of individuals in that state being diagnosed with COVID-19?

Findings  In this cohort study of 509 694 individuals living in the United States, a difference-in-differences survival analysis found that residents in states that lifted eviction moratoria had an increased risk of receiving a COVID-19 diagnosis 12 weeks after the moratorium was lifted relative to residents in states where moratoria remained in place. These associations increased over time, particularly among individuals with more comorbidities and lower socioeconomic status.

Meaning  These findings suggest that eviction-led housing insecurity may have exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

Importance  Housing insecurity induced by evictions may increase the risk of contracting COVID-19.

Objective  To estimate the association of lifting state-level eviction moratoria, which increased housing insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the risk of being diagnosed with COVID-19.

Design, Setting, and Participants  This retrospective cohort study included individuals with commercial insurance or Medicare Advantage who lived in a state that issued an eviction moratorium and were diagnosed with COVID-19 as well as a control group comprising an equal number of randomly selected individuals in these states who were not diagnosed with COVID-19. Data were collected from OptumLabs Data Warehouse, a database of deidentified administrative claims. The study used a difference-in-differences analysis among states that implemented an eviction moratorium between March 13, 2020, and September 4, 2020.

Exposures  Time since state-level eviction moratoria were lifted.

Main Outcomes and Measures  The primary outcome measure was a binary variable indicating whether an individual was diagnosed with COVID-19 for the first time in a given week with International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision code U07.1. The study analyzed changes in COVID-19 diagnosis before vs after a state lifted its moratorium compared with changes in states that did not lift it. For sensitivity analyses, models were reestimated on a 2% random sample of all individuals in the claims database during this period in these states.

Results  The cohort consisted of 509 694 individuals (254 847 [50.0%] diagnosed with COVID-19; mean [SD] age, 47.0 [23.6] years; 239 056 [53.3%] men). During the study period, 43 states and the District of Columbia implemented an eviction moratorium and 7 did not. Among the states that implemented a moratorium, 26 (59.1%) lifted their moratorium before the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued their national moratorium, while 18 (40.1%) maintained theirs. In a Cox difference-in-differences regression model, individuals living in a state that lifted its eviction moratorium experienced higher hazards of a COVID-19 diagnosis beginning 5 weeks after the moratorium was lifted (hazard ratio [HR], 1.39; 95% CI, 1.11-1.76; P = .004), reaching an HR of 1.83 (95% CI, 1.36-2.46; P < .001) 12 weeks after. Hazards increased in magnitude among individuals with preexisting comorbidities and those living in nonaffluent and rent-burdened areas. Individuals with a Charlson Comorbidity Index score of 3 or greater had an HR of 2.37 (95% CI, 1.67-3.36; P < .001) at the end of the study period. Those living in nonaffluent areas had an HR of 2.14 (95% CI, 1.51-3.05; P < .001), while those living in areas with a high rent burden had an HR of 2.31 (95% CI, 1.64-3.26; P < .001).

Conclusions and Relevance  The findings of this difference-in-differences analysis suggest that eviction-led housing insecurity may have exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction

On September 4, 2020, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) enacted a national eviction moratorium because “the evictions of tenants could be detrimental to public health control measures to slow the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19.”1 The moratorium came at a time when an estimated 47.0% of individuals in renter-occupied housing behind on their payments were likely to leave their homes due to eviction,2 sequalae of the United States’ long-standing housing-affordability crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on employment and income.3

A growing body of evidence suggests that eviction activity may be associated with increased COVID-19 infection rates. For example, a study4 using ecologic data on COVID-19 infection rates and timing of state-level eviction bans found that COVID-19 rates increased after eviction moratoria expired. Other investigations using simulations have since found that households experienced an increased risk of infection not just due to personal experiences but also due to spillover from the transmission processes amplified by community evictions.5

However, limitations in public health surveillance data do not allow for exploration of differential policy effects based on individual-level health and socioeconomic characteristics. Understanding whether expiring eviction moratoria are particularly dangerous for people and local geographies that have already experienced disproportionate effects of the pandemic, including individuals with preexisting health problems and low-income communities, could help to inform how nonpharmaceutical interventions are deployed with an equity focus. For example, shelter-in-place orders, which protect professional class workers but not essential workers from occupational exposures, likely have different distributional impacts than do eviction moratoria, which we expect to disproportionately protect lower-income and rent-burdened populations and places.

We used detailed health care claims data from a large national database in the United States to conduct what we believe to be the first individual-level analysis of how eviction policy affects the hazard of a COVID-19 diagnosis within health and neighborhood-level socioeconomic strata. We used a difference-in-differences research strategy to compare changes in the risk of being diagnosed with COVID-19 before and after the lifting of state-level eviction moratoria vs the same changes in states that maintained these moratoria. We also assessed how associations between eviction moratoria and the risk of COVID-19 diagnosis varied by an individual’s Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) score as well as by zip code–level poverty and rent burden prevalence, to test the hypotheses that (1) individuals with poorer baseline health, as measured by the CCI, will experience higher risk of infection after moratoria are allowed to expire because baseline health status and eviction risk are both socially patterned and (2) individuals in low-income and rent-burdened communities will be at heightened risk of infection after expiring moratoria due to higher risk of exposure to eviction-related COVID-19 transmission driven by local evictions and subsequent crowding.

READ THE REST HERE

 Eviction Moratoria Expiration and COVID-19 Infection Risk Across Strata of Health and Socioeconomic Status in the United States | Health Disparities | JAMA Network Open | JAMA Network


No comments: