As per a Boston Business Journal article, tens of thousands of Americans may become homeless as the statewide eviction&foreclosure moratorium just expired last Saturday, October 17.
According to an estimation from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, approximately 60 thousand renter households across Massachusetts are faced with imminent eviction, but this may be an optimistic estimation, as the housing advocacy group City Life/Vida Urbana puts the number of potential evictees at 100,000.
The statewide eviction and foreclosure moratorium was put in place initially as a method to deal with the situation in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, or, to be more exact, with the government imposed restrictions on small and medium businesses which put a lot of people in dire straits financially speaking.
State Governor Charlie Baker is now contemplating an extension of the moratorium, with winter and the flu season approaching, which may lead to a second surge of coronavirus cases. However, Mr. Baker already extended the moratorium twice before and he did not signal his intention to do it for the third time.
The situation in Massachusetts is not singular, as 2020 was a nightmare year for renters across North America. Currently speaking, there are local, state and federal eviction bans in many states, that offer temporary protection from eviction.
At the time of the writing of this article, there’s an estimated 32 billion dollars in back rent that will come due, and up to 8 million renters facing eviction filings. That’s more than twice the number of tenants facing eviction in a normal year, according to data via the Princeton University Eviction Lab.
Most landlords are “mom and pop” operators, and they also have mortgages to pay, which puts everybody under unprecedented financial strain, as many renters are now in their 8th month of nonpayment.
It looks like January is going to be a mess, as low-income households have lost jobs at four times the rate of higher-income earners in the pandemic.