The Household Pulse Survey from the Census Bureau has started up again after a two-month hiatus, so let's take one final look at the status of the rental market before 2021 finally comes to an end:
There's a bit of an uptick in the number of people who have low confidence in their ability to pay next month's rent, but it's in the noise range—and still lower than it was last year.
The Household Pulse Survey may not be super accurate, but it would have to be off by a lot to make a difference in these numbers. At this point, I think it's pretty clear that the end of the eviction moratorium simply didn't have much effect.
Or it simply means states and communities are still working their way through the Emergency Rental Assistance funding.
Once that money runs out…?
Ah yes, good old refusal to update one's beliefs in the face of reality.
Not just for Republicans...
But Kevin! Shirley no one would have camped on the steps of the Capitol just to grandstand?!? There must have been something to it. There must.
Once again - local eviction moratoriums are not yet over, and in fact in my jurisdiction it was just reinstated. Or they have only recently (within the past month or two) expired, making these kinds of charts and conclusions spurious at best.
And Los Angeles, as an example, has an eviction slow-walk (in which landlords must give residents notice and then the residents have 12 months to repay) that is effective indefinitely (until local state of emergency ends).
Just because the CDC moratorium went away doesn't mean that large swathes of the rental market aren't still subject to emergency eviction countermeasures, ranging from extra assistance that wasn't available pre-COVID to delays/holds on eviction suits to full-on bans.
https://www.nolo.com/evictions-ban
Finding this information takes literally 30 seconds on google.
Not to mention that we have no pre-COVID data to compare this to.
...our current data suggest there was roughly 1 eviction filing for every 17 renter households between 2000 and 2016. Approximately 1 in 40 renter households were evicted over this period. To put these numbers into perspective, at the peak of the financial crisis in 2010, estimates suggest slightly over one million foreclosures were completed nationally. By comparison, we see almost a million evictions against tenants every single year. The narrative on housing often focuses on displacement among homeowners, but our findings suggest that there is an ongoing epidemic of eviction and displacement in the renting market. As you’ll see from the graphs below, the national eviction and filing rates have remained consistent over time, with small declines over the last few years.
Eviction rates have remained more or less steady over the past few decades. Apparently rates first started to rise from a lower base starting in the 1960's.
There is some evidence that gentrifaction rather than poverty per se became a driving factor in the upswing.
The end of the ban did get the rental assistance programs ramped up--finally.
As noted by other commenters here, things are bit more complex. The refundable child tax credit probably helps a lot, and even the pause in student loan repayments helps.
Omicron will shut a lot of things down in Jan, but then things will be reopened for Valentine's Day. Nationally, I wouldn't expect a major problem. Locally in some places, and definitely for some individuals, there will be a major crisis with rent and housing.
Then there's this:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-when-investment-firms-acquire-trailer-parks
And that's not pandemic related....
Maybe I'm dense, but I'm unclear how the eviction moratorium status would affect either of these variables. Aren't evictions a consequence of not making your rent, not a cause?
This, too.
The other side of this story in 2021 was that people were taking advantage of the eviction moratorium to just welsh on their rent and screw their landlords, many of whom were just small building owners relying on that income to supplement their retirement, make tax and mortgage payments, etc. I don't know where to get at that data, but is there any evidence of a jump in foreclosures or liens on residential real estate that would suggest that it impacted landlords like this?
1. As someone with Welsh heritage (but even if I didn't), I suggest you discontinue use of "welsh" as a verb (similar to how you wouldn't use "jew" as a verb).
2. While this does happen, it's a small number of people - and people who would otherwise. It's anecdotal, but among our tenants the ones who chose to use the eviction moratoriums to just not pay their rent even though we knew they were still working are also the ones with which we repeatedly have rent payment problems. The tenants who make the effort to pay their rent? No problems related to just not wanting to pay. Speaking on a broader scale, I'd expect that to hold true as well - people who are inclined to be responsible and would be good rent-paying tenants in any case are also going to be people who aren't going to just decide to not pay their rent simply because they can't be evicted right now. They're going to know that someday they're going to have to pay it and paying it as per usual is what they should do.
Blwyddyn newydd dda!
I'm sure this impacted a lot of actual people (millions), but gotta get back to paying the rent sometime.
So last year at this time the Mrs and I were getting over COVID. Don't know what variant I had but assumed it was Beta.
Got vaccinated in late January into Feb
Watched as Delta grew into the big wave while vaccinations started rising
Delta started tapering off and states started relaxing rules and regs
When school stated rates started rising again
Now we have a New variant - Omicron, dos covered in S Africa and reported to WHO in late Nov early Dec. It almost immediately became a VOC
And while ALL of this was happening our economy took off. Unemployment has dropped like a rock. And wages have risen - all on top of the stimulus payments made late in Trumps tenure and early in Bidens.
Its not hard to figure out, really.
People are working - some again, some never left. Boomers have more retirement savings than ever.
It's THAT simple