Spotlight on Housing: The looming eviction crisis
Over the course of just a few weeks in March and April of 2020, as businesses and organizations shut down to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, hundreds of thousands of families across New York City lost their main source of income. These losses increased many New Yorker's risk of falling behind on rent, and data from the Poverty Tracker shows that more than 1 in 4 renters in New York City report having missed a rent payment or being in arrears in 2021. Government policies, like eviction moratoria, rental assistance programs, and other pandemic-related relief policies have so far prevented a swell in eviction filings, but these policies and programs have expired, exhausted their funding, or will soon end.
As New York State’s eviction moratorium ended on January 15th, 2021, New York City is at risk of a massive increase in evictions and homelessness. But there are policy solutions that can address both short-term needs related to pandemic arrears and the long-term issues related to housing affordability in New York City.
Key Findings
High rates of rent burden leave New Yorkers struggling to make monthly rent payments and vulnerable to eviction for years.
New Yorkers who lost employment income because of the pandemic are significantly more likely to be at risk of eviction now than they were in 2019. Their likelihood of falling behind on rent rose from 28% to 41%.
Lifting the eviction moratorium will also likely have an outsized effect on low-income New Yorkers and on Black and Latino New Yorkers, deepening economic and racial segregation in the city.
Even before the pandemic, roughly 41% of New Yorkers in rental housing and 67% of renters living in poverty were rent burdened. The average low-income New Yorker in a market-rate rental unit spent more than half their income on rent.
Note: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) identifies families who pay more than 30% of their gross income on rent as rent burdened, noting that rent burdened families “may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care.”
In the News
Economic impacts of pandemic and threat of eviction far worse for minority New Yorkers: study, New York Daily News
As N.Y. eviction moratorium comes to an end, lawmakers push Hochul to support ‘good cause’ bill, New York Daily News
Nonprofits call for greater access to city vouchers as evictions loom,The Real Deal