November 17. 2020

Coronavirus (Covid-19)

This is a follow up to the July 30, 2020 article "U.S. Housing Market On The Brink Of Crisis Due To Coronavirus." A report released this week reveals many Americans could be evicted from their houses, condos and apartments in January 2021, due to the financial loss stemming from the coronavirus (Covid-19).

Congress needs to do more to help them (Homelessness In America Is Increasing Due To Coronavirus). An unprecedented financial crisis is on the way due to president-elect Joe Biden's forthcoming policies, some of which he has already announced. The federal government is in danger of financial wipeout.

Not helping the America people this year will only mean having to bailout huge corporations again, much like what occurred during the Obama administration Biden was a part of, but infinitely worse this go around, due to the virus and other looming fiscal factors.

STORY SOURCE

A 'huge wave of evictions' is possible in January

Mon, November 16, 2020, 7:43 AM EST - Tammy Phelps had high hopes and big plans for 2020. She had planned to buy her own home and move out of the rental where she and her five children had been living since her divorce five years ago. She and her boyfriend were planning a wedding. But then the coronavirus upended it all.

The outbreak in March resulted in the sudden evaporation of her job as an administrator for an executive travel company. By August, when the $600 a week supplemental unemployment insurance stopped, she was having trouble affording her $1,250 a month rent. By October, she found herself sobbing in a courtroom in Omaha, Nebraska, trying to hold on to her rental home and keep her family from becoming homeless because she owed $3,750 in back rent.

"I've been paying every dollar I've been able to each month," Phelps said. "Stimulus money and some set aside for an emergency -- we nickel-and-dimed-it -- got us through the first six months. We are eating ramen and I'm paying whatever I can to my rent."

Tammy Phelps was able to stay in the home she rents because of the CDC's eviction protection order. But at the eleventh hour, it was an unlikely government institution that came to her aid: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her legal aid adviser told her about an eviction protection the federal agency had put in place that she qualified for. Once she was before a judge during her eviction hearing, Phelps presented the CDC order that allowed her to stay in her home.

The emergency CDC order, which went into effect on September 4th nationwide, temporarily prohibits new and previously filed evictions from occurring in an effort to prevent further transmission of the coronavirus.

It is invoked when a tenant gives their landlord a signed declaration asserting that they meet specific requirements -- including that they earn less than $100,000 a year, have experienced a significant loss of income and have made their best effort to find rental assistance and pay their rent...