Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
42 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE
Despite the Centers for Disease Control’s nationwide eviction moratorium, tens of thousands of Americans have been evicted and more are being served notices every day, perhaps 150,000 households. As the piece below notes, without an extension of that moratorium—which expires Dec. 31—coupled with rental assistance, the eviction figure could rise into the millions in the first month of the new year. While progress is reportedly being made in Congress on a financial relief package that includes $25 billion in rental assistance that would cover up to 18 months of back rent and an extension of the eviction moratorium until January 31, it’s still unclear whether this or any relief package will be passed. And that could be disastrous, as Sarah Kleiner at the Center for Public Integrity writes in Without Financial Assistance, Renters Are on the Brink of Eviction, Financial Ruin:
The National Council of State Housing Agencies, a nonprofit advocacy group, commissioned a study to gauge how many people were behind in their rent in the midst of the pandemic.
The picture was “staggering,” said Stockton Williams, the council’s executive director.
By November, renters were estimated to be $17 billion to $18.8 billion behind in payments to their landlords. The consulting firm that prepared the report, STOUT, estimates by January, renters will be up to $24.5 billion behind.
Race and ethnicity aren’t part of STOUT’s study, but other reports show Black and brown Americans are far more likely than Whites to be behind in rent.
In November, almost a third of Black renters weren’t able to keep up with rent payments, compared to 16% of Hispanic and Asian renters and 13% of White renters, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Pulse survey, which measures financial welfare in the COVID pandemic.
Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that the pandemic widened racial disparities. Black and brown households were already proportionately more cost-burdened by rental payments before COVID-19 struck last winter. By late September, 23% of Black, 20% of Hispanic and 19% of Asian renters were behind on their rents, compared to the 10% share of White renters.
The debt these renters owe to landlords could linger for years, damage debtors’ credit reports and make it more difficult to rent clean, safe housing in the future.
If the eviction moratorium is extended without rental assistance, a key problem will remain, said Anne Kat Alexander, a project leader with Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. [...]
THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING
“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
~~George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy (1984)
At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—Did Gore subvert the democratic process?
Gore endorses Dean. Fans of the Vermont governor exulted. Most everyone else recognized it as yet another major step toward a Dean nomination.
And a small group have loudly complained that Gore has somehow subverted the democratic process.
Which is, of course, ludicrous.
To begin with, the presidential primaries are never a truly democratic process. The people of Iowa, NH, and the restof the February states have had a disproportionate level of influence. Illinois' legions of good Democrats have zero say in the election of our nominee. Neither do those in Minnessota. Or Massachussets.
Or do they?
In the past, they wouldn't have had a say. They didn't in 2000 (did anyone?). But technology has changed all that.