US coronavirus cases hit record daily high and experts warn
daily death rates will triple by mid-January
US coronavirus cases hit record daily high and experts warn
daily death rates will triple by mid-January
There were 88,521 new cases of the
coronavirus reported in the US on Thursday, according to data from Johns
Hopkins University -- 9,540 more cases than Wednesday.
In total, there have been more than 8,947,980 cases and at least
228,677 deaths in the US -- 971 of them on Thursday, JHU data shows.
"This is the hardest point in this pandemic right now --
the next two months," Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the US
Food and Drug Administration, said during an interview on CNBC's "Squawk
Box" Thursday. "We can't give up our guard right now."
Thursday's average marks an 82.68% increase in new cases over
the last month, Johns Hopkins says. This week alone, the
nation added a record-setting 536,131 cases. Total coronavirus cases
could top 9 million Friday.
On Thursday, nine states reported their record high single-day
of new cases ever:, Johns Hopkins reported: Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan,
Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota and Ohio.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy told CNN Friday that he attributed
the rise in Covid-19 cases to the cold, "fatigue" and indoor private
gatherings.
Murphy said he would consider a statewide curfew "if we had
to," although he doesn't want it to come to that. In Newark, nonessential
businesses must close at 8 p.m., among other restrictions.
The
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University
of Washington School of Medicine says it is most likely that by the middle of
January, 2,250 Americans will be dying every day from the coronavirus -- three
times more than the current rate.
And it could get much worse.
"If states do not react to rising numbers by re-imposing
mandates, cumulative deaths could reach 514,000 by the same date," the
IHME said in its latest forecast.
"The fall/winter surge should lead to a daily death toll
that is approximately three times higher than now by mid-January. Hospital
systems, particularly ICUs, are expected to be under extreme stress in December
and January in 18 states."
And hospitals are already under increased strain. As of
Thursday, more than 46,000 people were hospitalized, according to the Covid
Tracking Project, with all but 11 states seeing a rise in
hospitalizations this week.
States
continue to break daily case count records
Forty-three states have shown an increase in cases compared to
last week, with five holding steady and two -- Oklahoma and Louisiana --
reporting a decline, according to JHU.
New Mexico reported 1,082 new coronavirus cases Thursday -- a
record -- and a top health care executive there sounded the alarm about the direction
of Covid-19 spread in his state.
The Truth About Obiden
The truth and reconciliation commission we really need.
“When this nightmare is over,” tweeted Robert Reich, “we need a truth and reconciliation commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.” The diminutive Clinton-Obama retread, with a JD from Yale, was expanding on an idea from MSNBC mouthpiece Chris Hayes.
He accused people who don’t take face masks seriously of “getting people killed,” and “the most humane and reasonable way to dealt with all those people, if we survive this, is some kind of truth and reconciliation commission.” Back in 2018, Hayes’ colleague Donnie Deutsch proclaimed that Trump voters were “like Nazis” and “If you vote for Trump, you’re the bad guy.”
The Democrats’ truth and reconciliation commission would be a series of Stalinist show trials, designed to make all Trump supporters non-persons, by any means necessary. This threat obscures the need for a real truth commission to look at actual lies, obstructions and deceptions. A good place to start would be the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
That was a convenient place to conduct gain of function research the National Institutes of Health banned in 2014 because of the prospect that a manipulated virus could escape the lab. The NIH sent more than $7 million to the Wuhan lab including $3.7 million in 2019. Spending U.S. taxpayer dollars calls for public accountability, but Dr. Anthony Fauci has been evasive about China’s role in the release of the coronavirus. A truth commission could find out what Fauci knew and when he knew it, and also have a chat with Nancy Messonnier of the CDC.
In February, when a reporter asked if China had been telling the truth, Dr. Messonnier deferred to the World Health Organization, a publicity agent for China’s Communist dictatorship. A truth commission could find out what Messonnier knew, when she knew it, and why she declined to answer a legitimate question.
Like Fauci, Messonnier’s bio shows no advanced degrees in molecular or cell biology, which one would expect of a virologist. The CDC does reveal that Dr. Messonnier began her career with the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service which according to its defenders “works day and night domestically and globally to ensure epidemics in other countries do not hit American soil.”
A truth commission could find out what the EIS knew, when they knew it, and why they failed to prevent the Wuhan virus from arriving on American soil and causing such damage and death across America. Did anybody in the EIS, CDC or NIH perhaps lose their job over this massive failure? The truth commission could provide answers for the American people, still in the dark on many other matters.
Hunter Biden’s laptop reveals that the “Big Guy,” got a piece of the action from Hunter’s ventures in Ukraine, China and elsewhere. As it turns out, the FBI also had this same laptop, so why did they not reveal the contents when Democrats were trying to take down Trump over a phone call? A truth commission could get to the bottom of it, and maybe enlighten the public on another batch of emails.
Former First Lady Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ presidential candidate in 2016, had more than 30,000 emails that legislators wanted to see. Clinton’s demolition crew bleached them out and smashed up the devices. Clinton violated several laws but FBI boss James Comey said no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges. A truth commission could see if the NSC has copies, since they can read everybody’s emails. Hillary’s would doubtless prove enlightening.
She was so concerned about the emails, our intelligence committee has told us, that she launched a scheme to spy on candidate Trump and smear him as a puppet of Putin. A truth commission could get to the bottom of that and fully expose the Crossfire Hurricane operation against President Trump. That done, they could turn to lingering mysteries about POTUS 44.
From David Garrow’s Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, the people know that Dreams from My Father, Obama’s founding narrative, is “without question,” a novel, and the author a “composite character.” On the other hand, many of the composite character’s records remain locked down.
In 2008, the State Department fired some contractors who looked into candidate Obama’s passport file, which contains key biographical information and reveals how the holder has traveled abroad. In 1981, the future president traveled to Pakistan after visiting relatives in Indonesia. It would be interesting to see the passport records on that trip, but a powerful senator found that troubling.
“I am deeply troubled that State Department contract employees sought access to Sen. Barack Obama’s passport files,” said Sen. Joe Biden, at the time head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Delaware Democrat became Obama’s vice president and now wants to be president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, with Obama campaigning on his behalf.
A truth commission could tap Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to reveal the passport files. That would settle the matter, and a lot more. After all, the American people have a right to know the whole truth about all their presidents, particularly the one formerly known as Barry Soetoro. So as Obama advisor Robert Reich put it, bring on “every politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.”
THE LOOTING OF AMERICA
KAMALA HARRIS AND HER GOLDMAN SACHS BANKSTER STEVEN MNUCHIN
A tidy corrupt partnership
https://kamala-harris-sociopath.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-looting-of-america-kamala-harris.html
She also declined to prosecute OneWest, run by now-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from 2009-2015, after her own prosecutors said they discovered over a thousand violations of foreclosure law committed by the bank. (OneWest donated $6,500 to Harris' attorney general campaign in 2011, and Mnuchin himself donated $2,000 to her Senate campaign in 2016.)
GRIFTER AND PHONY CHARITY FOUNDATION FRAUDSTER HILLARY CLINTON’S LONG SERVICE TO AMERICA’S MOST EVIL BANKSTERS
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-democrat-party-grifter-and-pay-to.html
The judge found these releases, together with the publication of Clinton’s secret speeches to Wall Street banks, in which she pledged to be their representative, were “matters of the highest public concern.” They “allowed the American electorate to look behind the curtain of one of the two major political parties in the United States during a presidential election.”
“Clinton also failed to mention how he and Hillary cashed in after his presidential tenure to make themselves multimillionaires, in part by taking tens of millions in speaking fees from Wall Street bankers.”
VIDEO:
THE FRAUDULENT CLINTON FOUNDATION EXPOSED.
PAY-TO-PLAY FROM THE FIRST DAY!
Is it a signal that she's back in the game because she's selling her president-ability to the world's global billionaire crowd and laying the groundwork for more funds? There are all kinds of ways for foreign billionaires to get money to the U.S. without consequences, after all. What's more, it's pretty much the biggest base of support she has, which is at least one reason why she lost the 2016 election.
“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service”
into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political
machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of
a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the
Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes.
The basic components of the operation are lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street and Fortune 500 audiences, corporate campaign contributions, and donations to the ostensibly philanthropic Clinton Foundation.”
"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they
do it wholly at the expense of the American people.
And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain
power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends.
They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has
no core beliefs beyond power and money. That
should be clear to every person on the planet by
now." ---- Patricia McCarthy
THE LOOTING OF AMERICA:
BARACK OBAMA AND HIS CRONY BANKSTERS set themselves on America’s pensions next!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/04/obamanomics-assault-on-american-middle.html
The new aristocrats, like the lords of old, are not bound by the laws that apply to the lower orders. Voluminous reports have been issued by Congress and government panels documenting systematic fraud and law breaking carried out by the biggest banks both before and after the Wall Street crash of 2008.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and every other major US bank have been implicated in a web of scandals, including the sale of toxic mortgage securities on false pretenses, the rigging of international interest rates and global foreign exchange markets, the laundering of Mexican drug money, accounting fraud and lying to bank regulators, illegally foreclosing on the homes of delinquent borrowers, credit card fraud, illegal debt-collection practices, rigging of energy markets, and complicity in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.
PATHOLOGICAL LIAR BARACK OBAMA MOCKS TRUMP
Obama orchestrated the greatest transfer of wealth to the rich in U.S. history!
http://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2018/09/pathological-liar-barack-obama-mocks.html
THE WALL STREET BOUGHT AND OWNED DEMOCRAT PARTY
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/09/democrats-and-bankster-billionaire.html
SERVING BANKSTERS, BILLIONAIRES and INVADING ILLEGALS
THE CRONY CLASS:
Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/12/obamanomics-at-work-depressed-wages-and.html
“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”
GET THIS BOOK!
Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY
Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s OBAMANOMICS TO SERVE THE RICH AND GLOBALIST BILLIONAIRES.
Nearly 10,000 eviction actions filed across the US since September despite CDC moratorium
According to a recent report by NBC News, some 10,000 families face eviction from their homes due to a surge in filings by big residential landlord companies since the beginning of September.
If approved, these evictions will be carried out across the country in several states hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and despite a federal moratorium on evicting those affected by the virus.
In Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, large corporate landlords such as Progress Residential, have filed eviction proceedings for thousands of residents as a dramatic explosion in the homelessness crisis looms due to the devastating economic impact of the pandemic and the expiration of local, state and federal restrictions put in place earlier this year.
Millions of American workers have lost their jobs and some 12.6 million have suffered heavy cuts in income since March, resulting in millions of families falling behind on monthly rent.
One worker interviewed by NBC News, Cristina Valez, lost her job and was facing an over $2,000 rent bill she could not afford. Her landlord, Progress Residential, she says was unsympathetic and uncooperative in working with her considering her economic situation.
Landlords are not required by law to inform tenants of any protections they may have and can proceed with evictions when rent is late.
“There’s got to be something for people affected by COVID and being furloughed,” Valez told NBC. A representative for Progress replied, “There’s nothing we can do” and served Valez with a bill for over $4,000 in rent and legal fees or else an order to vacate the premises. “I told them I was affected by COVID, but it didn’t matter to them. They are not very patient,” Velez said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) moratorium on evictions, which went into effect in early September and expires at the end of December, landlords cannot evict tenants affected by COVID-19 as long as they can show that the pandemic has negatively impacted their ability to pay rent.
In order to be protected, the CDC stipulates the tenant must prove that they meet 5 criteria: that they sought government assistance, make less than $99,000 a year, have suffered a “substantial loss of income” due to the pandemic, they must show they are making an effort to pay as much of the rent as they can, and that eviction would leave them homeless.
However, according to a clarification by the CDC, landlords can proceed with the legal procedures of an eviction as long as tenants are not forced out before the end of the year and landlords are also not required to tell residents of the federal ban.
Landlords can also challenge their tenants’ claims of COVID-19 impact and deny their claims without an appeal process in place. This caveat was implemented in part due to landlord lobbying groups directly appealing to the Trump administration.
This whitling down of the formerly broad-based ban on evictions by the CDC has essentially placed all the power in the hands of landlords, resulting in the current deluge of evictions.
Diane Yentel of the nonprofit National Low Income Housing Coalition told NBC News the whittling down of the formerly broad-based ban on evictions “puts more power back in the hands of landlords at the expense of low-income renters.” Yentel said of the CDC’s clarification, “It creates new burdens for renters and creates new holes in protections for renters.”
The clarification was posted on October 9 and almost immediately there was a jump in eviction proceedings with some 2,000 having been filed across five states during the week of October 12.
For their part, the landlord companies carrying out these evictions have told reporters that they are doing everything according to the law and the rules of the CDC moratorium.
Landlord lobbying groups have fought such bans since the beginning of the pandemic, calling them an overreach and an obstruction on landlords’ ability to make profits. In September, according to a recent report, some 6 million households were unable to make rental payment.
Many of the largest landlord companies are controlled by private equity firms whose stock holdings have soared in value since the beginning of the pandemic. One of these big firms, Invitation Homes, owns some 80,000 homes across the country and has filed 122 evictions over the last six months while its stock has climbed 80 percent according to the nonprofit Private Equity Stakeholder Project which has compiled statistics on private equity firms buying up community properties across the country.
Progress Residential has filed 97 evictions since the beginning of the CDC moratorium. The company is itself owned by an equity firm called Pretium which is run by former Goldman Sachs partner David Mullen, a credit and mortgage manager who was investigated by a Senate committee following the housing crisis of the late 2000s.
Progress Residential defends its actions as being fully within the law while at the same time many of the actual evictions do not comply even with the laws as favorable as they are for the landlords.
According to renters’ advocacy groups, most judges accept the terms of an eviction even if it technically falls within the stipulations for protection. For the vast majority of those facing eviction finding a new home will be increasingly difficult as evictions often appear on the resident’s credit report and landlords often use such black marks to refuse to rent.
Since the CDC now allows landlords to file eviction proceedings, they are able to use this as an intimidation tactic, forcing residents to move who may otherwise have been protected by the moratorium without going through the full eviction process.
For millions of workers across the country the threat of homelessness is ever present and with the moratorium set to expire at the end of the year the crisis is set to explode even further. For many workers even the threat of an eviction represents a plunge into deeper poverty as landlords are free to pile on late charges and legal fees in addition to the past due rent.
The housing crisis and spike in poverty are only exacerbated in the backdrop of a pandemic that has shown no sign of slowing as the current “third wave” of infections wreaks havoc leading to deeper strains on an already brutalized working class facing sickness and job loss and homelessness, while the big banks and corporations were handed trillions of dollars in bailout funds.
As the decay of American capitalism accelerates, it will be reflected in increasingly degenerate displays of greed and opportunism by the ruling class.
Gig workers hired to evict people from their homes as millions struggle to pay rent
A startup company by the name of Civvl is seeking to recruit temporary “gig” workers to assist landlords in evicting tenants who have been unable to pay rent in the midst of the economic depression triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
Civvl is owned by OnQall, a developer that provides a platform for a number of other app-based services. However, Civvl is markedly different from the other apps, some of which are used for house-cleaning and mowing lawns.
The startup, described by VICE News as “Uber, but for evicting people,” has posted ads across the US looking for gig workers to join eviction crews to assist in what the company’s website calls “debris removal.” In other words, it is hiring people to clear out the possessions of evicted people.
Like opportunistic vultures, the company’s owners seek to take advantage of an economic crisis in which millions are unemployed and cut off from federal assistance. Desperate workers—in many cases struggling to pay rent themselves—are now to be utilized by the startup to evict other struggling people for the purpose of turning a profit.
The startup’s own website declares it to be the “FASTEST GROWING MONEY MAKING GIG DUE TO COVID-19.” The website assures its clients that “Civvl gets them out!” amid photos showing furniture and other possessions being hauled out into the streets with police standing by.
As Civvl’s Craigslist ads explain, “Unemployment is at a record high and many cannot or simply are not paying rent and mortgages.” It continues: “We are being contracted by frustrated property owners and banks to secure foreclosed residential properties. ... There is plenty of work due to the dismal economy.”
Amid a stream of bad press, the company adjusted the language on its website to indicate that it does not, in fact, carry out the evictions. However, this appears to be contradicted by the fact that among the positions listed is that of “process server,” a person who would be contracted with serving court documents and posting eviction notices on properties. Other services include that of “eviction standby.”
As for the legality of the evictions, the company makes clear in its terms of service that it is merely carrying out the dirty work of the landlord, who assumes all legal responsibility.
Many have expressed outrage over such blatant profiteering from the growing misery of masses of people. VICE News spoke with Helena Duncan, a Chicago housing activist and paralegal. “It’s f*cked up that there will be struggling working-class people who will be drawn to gigs like furniture-hauling or process-serving for a company like Civvl, evicting fellow working-class people from their homes so they themselves can make rent,” she said. Others expressed their indignation on Twitter with one user tweeting: “These people are just evil.”
The absurdity and criminality of this state of affairs will not be lost on workers. A CNN report on evictions from September 2 featured the eviction of an elderly Houston woman who could no longer afford to pay her rent. As the landlord’s mover hauled out her possessions, he lamented, “Maybe today it’s her, tomorrow it’s me.”
The CDC has imposed a moratorium on evictions effective through December 31, 2020. However, this hasn’t stopped landlords from resorting to illegal methods to evict their tenants, including utility shutoffs and intimidation tactics.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) moratorium has been subject to different interpretations among varying state and local governments, leaving many low-income and vulnerable tenants at risk for eviction and homelessness.
Avery Kreemer, the founder of Ohio Eviction Watch, recently spoke to the WSWS on the eviction crisis in the state. He explained: “Each county and each court will interpret the moratorium differently,” said Kreemer. “One of our reporters lives up in Akron, and someone from the Legal Aid Society told her about a woman who lives on the county line. The court she lives under decided she was not covered under the CDC order, but if she had lived two miles to the west she would have been protected under that court.”
Despite the CDC moratorium, many renters are unaware of the protections available to them, and landlords take advantage of this ignorance to carry out illegal evictions. In some states, tenants must fill out a declaration in order to remain exempt from eviction. In other states, such as Maryland, tenants may be required to provide documentation to assert that they qualify for exemption.
Phillip DeVon, an eviction prevention specialist at the Chicago-based Metropolitan Tenants Organization (MTO) told VICE, “One thing we know just from experience, especially with housing: just because something is technically legal, doesn’t by any stretch mean that it’s right, ethically speaking.” Regarding Civvl, DeVon said, “With this particular company, it sounds like they’re doing what landlords often do, which is prey upon a lack of knowledge and information about people’s rights.” He added, “It’s very dishonest. … It’s like, ‘Oh, don’t call us a hitman. We don’t pull the trigger! We just connect you with someone who’s willing to.’”
The eviction crisis in the US, as part of the broader social catastrophe brought about by the pandemic depression, is rapidly assuming monstrous dimensions. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which is tracking growing rates of unemployment, hunger and general hardship, some 11.8 million adult renters—or nearly 1 in 6—were unable to pay their rent last month.
The CBPP acknowledges this to be a significant undercount since younger, less educated, and Black and Hispanic renters—demographics that are statistically more likely to be struggling to pay rent—were less likely to respond to the survey. The advisory firm Stout Risius Ross conducted an analysis that concluded that as many as 34 million people may be at risk for eviction.
Unemployment, which is closely tied to difficulties paying rent, is still at record highs. The CBPP, having analyzed the Census Bureau population survey, concluded that some 31 million people were unemployed, or lived with an unemployed family member. Among them are 7 million children. The CBPP further acknowledges this to be an undercount, since it doesn’t include workers who have been furloughed, workers who have given up on looking for a job, and people who are caring for sick relatives and/or their children because of closed schools. If the family members of these workers are counted, some 54 million people—1 in 6 in the country—live in households with a disenfranchised worker.
The owners of Civvl clearly anticipate the avalanche of evictions that is coming. Its website states frankly, “Moratorium ends Dec 31, 2020,” and urges landlords to “Secure your booking and act fast.”
While the company is rightly receiving widespread condemnation, it would be mistaken to characterize this phenomenon as an anomaly. The entire capitalist system is predicated on violence and exploitation.
The appearance of a startup such as Civvl is merely the odious expression of an old maxim, made infamous by Democrat Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The opportunism of Civvl is reflected on the grand scale by pharmaceutical companies such as Regeneron, which is set to make a fortune from its Covid-19 treatment. Even though the project was federally funded—to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars—the treatment will likely be unaffordable for a great majority of the population, even as the company’s executives—already the highest paid in the industry—are due to receive billions of dollars.
In an economic system that subordinates everything, even human life, to the accumulation of wealth, it is perfectly logical to take advantage of a situation in which millions of human beings may be expelled from their homes. A bourgeois political economist would undoubtedly praise the entrepreneurial spirit displayed by Civvl’s owners, as well as the genius of their business model: utilizing unemployed poor people to remove other poor people from their residences.
The despicable attempts by this startup to prey upon the misery afflicting millions of working people is mirrored by the machinations of a ruthless financial oligarchy that has taken advantage of the pandemic crisis to engineer a multitrillion-dollar bailout to itself. The ecstatic booming of the stock markets and the exorbitant increase in the wealth of the richest 1 percent are to be contrasted with the growth of severe poverty and misery among the masses of the working class.
This is not an aberration, it is the inevitable result of capitalism, and it is how the system is designed to function. As the decay of American capitalism accelerates, it will be reflected in increasingly degenerate displays of greed and opportunism by the ruling class.
Ten percent of US households face eviction by year’s end
On January 1, the Center for Disease Control emergency evictions moratorium will expire, raising the existing US eviction and homelessness crisis to unprecedented proportions.
While tens of thousands of evictions have been filed throughout the pandemic, according to a recent report by the Aspen Institute, 30-40 million more Americans could be at risk of eviction by the end of this year. This is a staggering 10 percent of the American population.
In addition, millions of Americans are at risk of being evicted from homes for non-payment of mortgages. According to mortgage analytics firm Black Knight, 3.9 million households were not paying their mortgages as of late August.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, over 20.8 million renter households—almost half of all US renter households—were “rental cost-burdened,” a term defined as households who pay over 30 percent of their income towards rent. Twenty-five percent of rental households were spending over 50 percent of their income on rent before the pandemic. The higher a household’s rental cost-burden, the more likely they are to become evicted.
Some states, such as Ohio, are more vulnerable to the eviction crisis due to insufficient COVID-19 protections, high poverty rates and high pre-pandemic eviction rates.
Avery Kreemer, the founder of Ohio Eviction Watch, recently spoke to the WSWS on the eviction crisis in the state. Ohio Eviction Watch seeks to establish a central database for eviction information in the state by requesting and publishing data from various courthouses around the state. As a result, Kreemer hopes to illuminate the full scope of a crisis that is both growing and underreported.
“Our state legislature has been ineffective with anything regarding Covid-19 measures,” Kreemer noted. “Since March, proposals for eviction and foreclosure prevention haven’t gotten much traction in the House or Senate. This is important because the CDC eviction moratorium only goes into effect if there isn’t a pre-existing protection in that state.”
Kreemer argues for additional state-level action for many reasons, one of which being that the CDC moratorium falls short. The CDC order, which went into effect on September 4, does not stop evictions, but postpones them. The order makes it illegal for landlords to evict tenants who sign a declaration that, among other things, they cannot afford rent and make less than $99,000 a year as an individual, or double that amount for a couple filing taxes jointly.
The order does not provide funding for families to pay rent and it does not stop landlords from tacking on late fees or contacting credit bureaus to alert them to missed payments. The order also does not require landlords or courts to alert tenants to the many stipulations required for eligibility under the order including the completion of the declaration form.
Causing further confusion, the order is inconsistent across states. “Each county and each court will interpret the moratorium differently,” said Kreemer. “One of our reporters lives up in Akron, and someone from The Legal Aid Society told her about a woman who lives on the county line. The court she lives under decided she was not covered under the CDC order, but if she had lived two miles to the west she would have been protected under that court.”
According to data from The Eviction Lab, a Princeton University research institute, Ohio’s eviction rate has surpassed the national average for nearly two decades. In 2016, Ohio had an eviction rate of 3.5 percent of rental households, which averages to about 158 evictions per day and 57,980 evictions per year. For comparison, the US national eviction rate in 2016 was 2.3 percent of renting households.
Several major cities in Ohio struggled with even higher pre-pandemic eviction rates. Cincinnati had an eviction rate of over 4.7 percent of renter households (4,174 evictions) in 2016, Cleveland reached 4.53 (4,483 evictions) and Columbus reached 4.45 percent (9,000 evictions).
In a discussion of the pre-pandemic eviction rates in Ohio, Kreemer explained, “What’s interesting about the CDC moratorium is that its focus is to stop the spread of COVID-19, not to stop evictions. It’s strange that we waited for a global pandemic to try to stop evictions.”
The idea for the Ohio Eviction Watch project predates the pandemic. “I was working at the Dayton Daily News last year when a tornado ripped through the area. It hit the poorest parts of the city. As a result, there was a sort of mini housing crisis in Dayton. People’s homes were unfit to live in, businesses shut down, many lost their jobs or lost a way to reliably get to their jobs. We saw an increase in eviction filings.”
Kreemer added, “Issues that caused this [increase in eviction filings] weren’t fixed, no steps were taken to solve it. Summer 2019 in Dayton becomes Summer 2020 across the whole country.”
Asked how the broader political situation relates to his project and the larger issue of evictions across the nation, Kreemer said, “There are many goals in getting through this pandemic. There are health goals and economic goals and there are many ways people propose fixing the economy. But we judge our economy on how it functions for a minority of people. If the stock market is going up it’s going to benefit the people already holding a lot of wealth. If the jobs are increasing, great, but are the wages of those jobs increasing? The strength of the economy isn’t judged based on how many people are being kicked out of their homes.”
The growth in evictions will lead to the further spread of the coronavirus as people are forced to double up in homes, seek out homeless shelters, or fight against their evictions in crowded court houses. Likewise, homeless people are more likely to have health issues that make them more at risk for contracting the virus.
In addition, further analysis of The Eviction Lab data by reporters at CNN shows that some of the neighborhoods facing higher eviction rates are also facing higher rates of medical comorbidities such as heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and obesity, all of which are COVID-19 risk factors.
Even if a household manages to pull together enough rent, coming close to eviction during a time when losing shelter could lead to exposure to a deadly virus puts an enormous amount of stress on an individual or family.
Evictions also cause aftershocks in a community. In reference to the book “Evicted” by Matthew Desmond, one of the many minds behind Princeton’s Eviction Lab data, Kreemer said, “In one part [Desmond] cites studies that researched how communities are destroyed by evictions. A family lives on a specific street, they are well known on that block, maybe their house is a gathering space. They have to leave, and they can’t play an active role in that community. Something immeasurable is lost.”
The eviction crisis is just one side of a general breakdown of social life caused by the criminal response of American ruling elite to the pandemic. As foodbanks across the country run low on supplies and as the number of chronically unemployed hits an all-time high and millions run out of federal and state jobless benefits, the US government continues to do nothing to provide sufficient aid.
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