Evictions caused nearly 11,000 excess COVID-19 deaths in six months in the US
Researchers from major universities in the US have determined that the lifting of state and local eviction moratoriums earlier this year contributed to an increase in COVID-19 incidence and mortality throughout the country, leading to 433,700 excess infections and an estimated 10,700 excess deaths.
The results are a damning indictment of the entire political structure in the US which has allowed thousands of evictions to proceed in states and cities across the country. Unable to guarantee safe housing for all, the demands of the capitalist system, which subordinates all aspects of life to profit making, have resulted in the unnecessary and cruel deaths of thousands of people, while at the same time prolonging and exacerbating the spread of COVID-19.
The authors, which include researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, San Francisco; Johns Hopkins University; Boston University and Wake Forest University School of Law, found before moratoriums were lifted, the incidence rate, that is the number of growing cases, and the mortality rate ratios were relatively constant, “suggesting little evidence of pre-existing trends in states that went on to lift their moratoriums.”
However once states began allowing evictions to proceed, within ten weeks researchers calculated an increased incidence rate and a mortality rate 1.6 times higher compared to the previous weeks. Within 16 weeks states that had lifted their moratoriums saw an incidence rate 2.1 times higher while mortality jumped even more, 5.4 times higher, leading to thousands of deaths.
The study, which is awaiting peer review, focused on 43 states and the District of Columbia between March 13 and Sept. 3, 2020, that is, prior to the current massive “third wave” of infections following the deadly reopening of schools. The last two months have seen a massive resurgence of the virus, overflowing hospitals and morgues, forcing some governors and mayors to implement haphazard lockdown measures (without pay) and undemocratic curfews. Last week alone, over 10,000 people in the US succumbed to COVID-19.
Using publicly available data, the researchers write that they “used models [to] calculate cases and deaths associated with the lifting of eviction moratoriums as a difference between predicted counts under observed moratorium conditions versus predicted counts under a counterfactual scenario in which no state lifted its moratorium during the study period.”
The study focused on all the states that instituted a moratorium, beginning as early as March 13 and as late as April 30. Only 16 states and D.C. maintained an eviction moratorium for the entire duration of the study, while seven states, Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming, never implemented a state moratorium and thus were excluded from the study.
By the time the study concluded, 27 states, with Republican and Democratic governors alike, had lifted their respective moratoriums, leaving the limited federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) eviction moratorium, which began on Sept. 4 and expires on Dec. 31, 2020, as the only safeguard for millions of people who could be facing eviction in the next month. November data from the US Census Bureau estimates that of the 11.5 million adults who live in rental housing, 1 in 6 did not pay rent in October.
The researchers found that the median length of state moratoriums was only 12 weeks, which left ample time for landlords to evict tenants in between September CDC’s eviction moratorium going into effect and the lifting of state moratoriums, many of which expired at the end of July, along with $600-a-week enhanced unemployment benefits.
The authors are unequivocal in their findings: “Lifting eviction moratoriums was associated with increased COVID-19 incidence and mortality in US states, supporting the public health rationale for use of eviction moratoriums to prevent the spread of COVID-19.” The authors noted an increased rate of mortality and incidence over time which they suggest is due to the fact that displacement due to eviction can cause “crowding” as family members move in together or evicted tenants move into homeless shelters, leading to increased infection. The authors hypothesize the increased mortality rate is due to increased homelessness as the result of eviction.
Acknowledging that their study relied on public-health data, which is increasingly being withheld by government officials, the researchers note that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths “likely underestimate true incidence and mortality.”
Breaking down individual states by excess cases and deaths, the data reveals the deadly consequences of failing to provide basic shelter for thousands of people while the pandemic rages. Texas, which had the second most COVID-19 fatalities in the US last week at 806, had the highest number of excess deaths due to evictions through Sept. 3, an estimated 4,456 people. This was followed by South Carolina, whose moratorium expired on May 14, leaving residents unprotected for 16 weeks, contributing to over 37,500 new COVID-19 cases and an estimated 1,090 fatalities.
After South Carolina, and continuing the trend of southern states that went double digit weeks without a moratorium, Louisiana recorded 959 excess deaths through Sept. 3 with nearly 30,000 excess cases after its moratorium expired on June 15. Following Louisiana, Mississippi recorded 804 excess deaths with 22,010 excess cases after going 12 weeks without a moratorium. Alabama had the fifth most estimated excess deaths with 621, after a statewide moratorium expired on May 31.
As the study makes clear, state eviction moratoriums did not prevent all evictions. Landlords could still use alleged lease violations to justify the removal of tenants.
The CDC moratorium likewise has not stopped thousands of evictions from going forward. It also doesn’t absolve tenants of any past due rent or late fees that might have accrued, meaning potentially millions of evictions, and with them, millions of cases and tens of thousands more deaths loom with the moratorium expiration at the end of the month. Stout’s Investment Banking estimates that by January, renters will be behind as much as $34 billion.
Despite the extreme public health disaster, some landlords, such as Taylor Verhaalen of Stout Management Company, which oversees nearly 9,000 units across 56 buildings in Las Vegas, Nevada, have already begun taking tenants to court in spite of the federal moratorium.
“We’ve left it up to the courts to interpret how they’re going to enact the CDC moratorium,” Verhaalen told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Verhaalen declined to state how many eviction filings the company had already submitted since the expiration of an Oct. 15 statewide moratorium.
For tenants to be eligible to be included in the CDC moratorium, renters have to sign a declaration form, under penalty of perjury, which states they have used their best efforts to seek government assistance, will not have earned more than $99,000 in annual income and would be unable to pay full rent because of a layoff, reduced wages or work hours, or “extraordinary out-of-pocket medical expenses,” which in the US can be virtually anything from a check-up to trying to obtain a COVID-19 test.
Even for tenants who have provided a declaration, Verhaalen says he will still be filing eviction cases against them. “Our intention was that the judges would look at the paperwork submitted by the tenants and do some type of validation to make sure they had financial hardship,” he said. “So far, that hasn’t been the case.”
While it hasn’t been the case yet in Nevada, judges throughout the country have begun to push back on the CDC moratorium as more landlords bring eviction filings to court. In September, a North Carolina judge ruled that because a tenant was not in federally subsidized housing, the moratorium did not apply to them, even though the moratorium does not discriminate between federal and private renters. And on Nov. 24, a federal judge in Missouri rejected a request to halt evictions after a tenants rights group claimed Jackson County officials had violated the CDC moratorium.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Emily Benfer, a law professor at Wake Forest University, said, “We are seeing variations in the way courts are applying the CDC order, and we are also seeing a lack of knowledge among tenants and property owners. Advocates are working overtime to inform tenants of their rights under the CDC order and, in many places, evictions are going forward.”
The confusing myriad of expiring protections for tenants has allowed landlords to take advantage of tenants resulting in thousands of people illegally evicted under previous CARES Act protections. In Maricopa County, an Arizona Republic investigation found that more than 900 evictions were filed against tenants who fell under CARES Act protections, with most of those renters wrongfully charged hundreds of dollars in late and legal fees.
There are more than enough homes and resources for everyone on the planet to have safe accommodations while avoiding the virus; the fact that safe housing remains unobtainable for millions of people in the richest country on the planet underscores the need for the abolition of private property and the implementation of an internationally coordinated scientific plan to fight the virus.
Last week, the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, which tracks 26 major US cities, found, so far, landlords had filed 114,808 evictions throughout the pandemic, with nearly 4,000 evictions last week alone. The continued processing of evictions will continue unless the working class intervenes independently through coordinated action through rank-and-file workplace and neighborhood safety committees to stop the medically dangerous and socially unnecessary practice.
Young people speak out about the unprecedented collapse in their living conditions since the pandemic began
A majority of the United States’ young adult population has been forced to place its life on hold as the pandemic has erased the opportunity to move out of their parents’ homes or otherwise gain independence. This is the reality that has been exposed by a recent Pew Research Center report showing 52 percent of people between the ages of 18-29 are living at home with their parents.
According to the study, this is the highest share of young people living at home since the end of the Great Depression in 1940. As shocking as it is, this number belies the actual social crisis that is hidden beneath it.
The psychological impact of the chasm that has opened up between expectations for the future and the objective conditions facing millions of people is reflected by a national survey conducted by researchers from four universities and published this month by the COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding. The survey on mental health conditions for people in Generation Z, or young adults between 18 and 24, is a damning depiction of the mental and psychological destruction being wreaked on this generation.
According to the research, about 47.3 percent of young people experienced some sort of depressive symptoms during the last few months. The most common causes for depression seen in this age group are closure of schools (51 percent), working from home (41 percent), and suffering a pay cut. This compares to only 3.4 percent of people in this age group in 2013-2014 reporting suicidal thoughts, anxiety or sleep disruption.
“I’ve never been in a situation in my life when I was financially comfortable,” said Dasilva, whom has been forced to live with relatives along with her husband since spring. In a conversation with the World Socialist Web Site, she explained that her family in Michigan, where she lives, has caught COVID-19. This includes her aunt, uncle and cousin.
Prior to the pandemic, Dasilva and her husband were part of the performance industry. However, as live music venues, theatre and other creative arts have been upended, she admits that she has “no idea where I see myself in five years.”
In addition to her financial situation, Michigan has once again become hard-hit by the coronavirus. The state ranks ranked eighth in the country with almost 390,000 COVID-19 cases and over 9,500 deaths since March.
Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer re-imposed a 3-4 week shutdown of restaurants and bars across the state last month without any new financial aid for those affected. While being largely ineffective to stem new outbreaks—since the auto factories and other large workplaces remain open without any significant restrictions—the shutdowns will continue to devastate the retail and service industry, which largely employs young people.
David, a 21-year old student and grocery worker in Virginia, told the WSWS that the “state of the economy scares me.” During the first weeks of the pandemic, millions were laid off on a weekly basis, leading to tens of millions of people unemployed or underemployed. Even as millions are cut off from the last remnants of unemployment benefits which expire at the end of this month, hundreds of thousands continue to apply for assistance from their states on a weekly basis.
“Being stuck with parents, it used to be something that people would get made fun of for,” David said sarcastically. “Now we can see that this is a real concern for society.” Speaking about his own personal circumstances, David explained “I live with my parents but my mother was furloughed for three months” during spring. “She didn’t get paid anything during this time, she is labeled an ‘independent contractor,’” a term businesses often affix to workers in order to avoid paying them unemployment or healthcare benefits.
“I had to pay the bills. While the bill collectors lowered the cost of the mortgage and things like that, I was the only one working” in the entire house, he said. On top of this, David’s grandmother, a food stamp recipient, passed away during summer. Not only did this further traumatize family members, “but she was the only other person in the house getting any sort of financial support,” he said.
“I’m an essential worker,” he said in conclusion. “I was going to quit my job to pursue a career [in visual arts], but that field isn’t hiring right now. I don’t know when things will be normal again. I don’t know when I’ll be able to see my friends. This is a struggle.”
As misery among the working population grows millions are turning toward politics of a decidedly left-wing and anti-capitalist variety. According to a survey conducted by YouGov this year, the support for socialism among young people has increased significantly. Among the Gen Z group, support grew from 40 percent in 2019 to 49 percent this year. The report also indicated that 60 percent of Millennials are looking for an alternative to capitalism.
Mark, another young worker that was laid off in September, said that his plans to move out of his parents’ house “pretty much vanished” when COVID-19 emerged. “There aren’t any jobs beyond entry level, with horrible $10-12 per-hour pay.”
Speaking about the living situation for his friends, he said “those that can afford it are living together as roommates.” Even this poses difficulties, due to the fact that “landlords are increasing rent.” Mark explained that he had heard stories about states setting up courthouses simply to deal with the growth in evictions as moratoriums on owed rent expire.
“The unemployment benefits [made available by the CARES Act] were super helpful,” he said. “But when the expanded $600 weekly pay ended in July, jobs didn’t come back.” Mark said he had a job lined up with the local county government but the pandemic forced the office to furlough workers.
“The coronavirus proves that under the current system, capitalism can’t deal with the issue of joblessness,” he concluded. “It makes you wonder what things will be like when there are no expanded benefits for people.”
California Highway Patrol evicts homeless families on Thanksgiving eve
Sparking anger and outrage in Los Angeles and across the US, up to 100 police with the California Highway Patrol (CHP) were recorded violently evicting dozens of homeless families the night before Thanksgiving and throughout the following evening. CHP troopers were filmed beating protesters leading to dozens of injuries, while over 20 were reportedly arrested.
Several homeless families moved into vacant publicly owned homes in the East Los Angeles neighborhood of El Sereno Wednesday morning. Citing Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom’s November 21 shelter-in-place order, issued in response to skyrocketing COVID-19 cases in the state—nearly 18,000 cases were reported on November 23—activists and families with Reclaim and Rebuild our Community (RRBC) decided to take up residence in the abandoned homes, currently owned by California Department of Transportation. In their November 25 statement the group wrote: “This action is a last resort because the system has failed all of us ... by creating this housing crisis which has worsened with COVID and the economic crisis.”
While estimates vary, with several reports completed before the onset of the pandemic, roughly 155,000 people in California are estimated to be homeless on any given night. In their press release, RRBC notes that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority estimated that as of June 2020, 66,436 people in the city were homeless.
After announcing their intentions to reclaim a fraction of the more than 170 vacant homes owned by the government department, known as Caltrans, dozens of people, including children as young as three months old and seniors over 70 years old moved into the homes Wednesday morning.
After several hours an initial group of roughly 30 CHP troopers in riot gear showed up Wednesday evening to begin evictions, however over 100 community members and protesters formed protective lines around the homes to face police and demand that they leave.
Outnumbered, the police were forced to back off before returning roughly two hours later with more cops equipped with batons, assault rifles and a battering ram to continue the evictions. After deploying tear gas, the police began arresting protesters as they moved from house to house. Over angry shouts from protesters and screams from children, police used a battering ram to break down a home and then carried a hogtied child out of the house, before arresting her and the rest of her family.
After watching police evict families from their recently reclaimed homes, Claudia Lara, a member of RRBC, told the Los Angeles Times, “...it is inhumane. It’s really irresponsible. Housing is a human right, and all families deserve to have safe shelter, especially during the global pandemic.”
Caltrans spokesman Matt Rocco released a statement justifying the forced removal because the vacant homes were, “unsafe and uninhabitable.” The statement confirmed that, “Caltrans requested the CHP remove trespassers so that the properties can be re-secured and boarded up.” The CHP has refused to comment on their brutal eviction actions.
The homes have been subject to an over 60-year legal battle between residents and the state. They are located along the 710 freeway corridor and were acquired by the state via taxpayer dollars and eminent domain beginning in the 1950s as part of a now abandoned highway expansion. Residents of the working class El Sereno neighborhood continued to live and pay rent to Caltrans even as the legal battles between residents and Caltrans continued for decades.
Once the project was formally abandoned in 2018, renters who had been living in the properties for over 18 months were supposed to be given the first opportunity at repurchasing the homes from the state. This has failed to materialize for hundreds of families who have been denied an opportunity to submit an offer due to purposeful bureaucratic red tape and Caltrans-created hardships designed to force residents out.
As part of the state’s attempts to evict remaining tenants, for decades Caltrans has refused to conduct repairs and maintenance on the rented homes, while at the same time requiring tenants to constantly reapply for low-income leasing contracts. Tenants have reported that Caltrans frequently claims to “lose” or “never receive” their applications, justifying rent hikes of up to 10 percent every six months. As part of the state’s contract, in order to sell the properties, Caltrans is liable for any and all repairs needed in order for the homes to pass inspection. Decades of purposeful mismanagement on the part of Caltrans slumlords means repairing the homes and then selling them would cost more than simply demolishing them.
The criminal actions by Caltrans, enforced by the “special armed body” of police, demonstrate that the issue is not the lack of housing, but the capitalist system, which subordinates all aspects of society to the profit interests of the ruling class. According to 2017 US Census data, there are over 100,000 vacant homes in Los Angeles, over 30,000 more than what is required to house every single person in the city, while six public agencies, including Caltrans and the Los Angeles School District, collectively own 14,000 vacant properties in the city.
Despite the rampaging pandemic, where over 19,000 in California have died to date, government officials are winding up a government grant program, Project Roomkey, which transferred federal funds to local hotels to provide housing for the homeless. Despite protecting thousands of people from COVID-19, and innumerous other social ills, by providing readily available shelter, due to deliberate congressional inaction, funding for the program has begun to dry up, causing hotels to stop participating in the program. According to the California Department of Social Services, by mid-November nearly 30 percent fewer hotels were participating in the program compared to August.
“It’s the worst time to do this,” said Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness in an interview with Politico. “These are obviously extraordinary times, and it’s starting to get cold, it’s starting to rain a little bit, then you’ve got a pandemic raging out of control combined with flu season. And then you’re really going to turn people out into that environment? It’s just inhumane.”
Tomoquia Moss, founder of All Home, told Politico she predicts between 10 and 20 percent of Roomkey residents will exit the program without anywhere to go, leaving up to 5,000 people unsheltered.
The scenes of brutality that played out in El Sereno over the last 48 hours will be repeated throughout the country unless urgent action is taken. The loss of millions of jobs, coupled with the expiration of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction moratorium at the end of December, according to a new report issued by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, has left an estimated 6.7 million households facing eviction in the next couple of months, amounting to some 19 million people.
The working class in the US and the world over is facing an emergency. Urgent measures must be taken to stop the spread of the pandemic and save thousands of lives, including by providing safe housing for everyone. The resources to do this already exist, they are simply being hoarded by a greedy, venal, ruling class. Their ill-gotten wealth must be expropriated by the working class fighting on a socialist program to democratically reorganize society to meet human need rather than the demands of private profit.
Thanksgiving in America: Massive food lines and evictions as benefits expire
As this week’s Thanksgiving holiday approaches, a social catastrophe is unfolding across America on a scale not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As of Sunday, there were more than 12.2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US and nearly 257,000 deaths. The past week has seen an average of more than 170,000 cases per day, an increase of 59 percent from the average two weeks earlier.
Hospitals are being overrun by the surge of cases. Thousands of nurses at hospitals across the country are coming down with the virus, leaving hospitals short-staffed and placing patient care in extreme danger. In El Paso, Texas, a unit of 36 National Guard troops has been mobilized to work through a backlog of close to 240 bodies, victims of COVID-19, at the county morgue. The bodies will be loaded onto refrigerated trucks.
The Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism website, reports that as of November 17 at least 197,659 inmates in state and local prisons had contracted the virus and 1,454 had died, a likely undercount due to poor reporting.
As the rise of hospitalizations continues unabated, working-class families across the country are facing a crisis of hunger and poverty alongside the sickness and death from the pandemic. Tens of millions of workers have lost their jobs or been hit by cuts in pay or work hours.
Food lines that already stretch for miles, evictions and foreclosures, and the loss of health benefits are set to increase exponentially when what remains of government assistance runs out immediately after Christmas.
The hunger relief organization Feeding America warns that some 54 million US residents, or one in six, currently face food insecurity. Many families with children were already facing hunger before the pandemic hit.
In Arlington, Texas, 6,000 families arrived for a distribution of frozen turkeys outside a sports stadium on Friday. On November 14, people in Dallas waited up to 12 hours to receive a turkey, 20 pounds of nonperishables, 15 pounds of fresh produce and bags of bread. Photos of the lineup at the food bank showed thousands of cars backed up across four lanes, spanning several miles.
On Saturday in Los Angeles, some 1,000 people lined up on foot for a food distribution at a church.
The moratorium on evictions imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expires on December 31. Since the order does not cancel or freeze rents, all back rent will come due January 1. An estimated 11 to 13 million renter households are at risk of eviction, according to investment bank and global advisory firm Stout.
As no actual relief dollars have been provided by the government to help families with their rent, landlords have used unscrupulous tactics to illegally evict tenants. They have allowed conditions in rental units to deteriorate, leaving renters a choice between leaving or living with mold or infestations of bed bugs, roaches and maggots. Families forced out of their apartments face living on the streets, doubling up with relatives or friends or sleeping in shelters—all of which increase the danger of contracting COVID-19.
Many families struggling with paying for food and housing face the cutoff of remaining COVID-19 relief funds by the end of the year. Long gone is the $600 federal benefit to boost weekly unemployment benefits. According to the Century Foundation, 12 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits on December 26 when two major pandemic programs expire. Another 4.4 million will have already exhausted these benefits before they expire.
The two programs set to lapse are the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), which provides benefits to self-employed individuals not eligible for traditional state programs, and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program, which extends an extra 13 weeks of benefits to people who exhaust state benefits. Both were established by Congress as part of the CARES Act, which doled out trillions of dollars to corporations and banks.
President Donald Trump makes no secret of his contempt for the US and world population facing death and impoverishment. Focused entirely on his plot to nullify the election and establish a presidential dictatorship, he says nothing about the rising toll of sickness and death or the inability of millions of families to pay the rent and put food on the table. On Saturday, he skipped a discussion on the pandemic at the G20 summit in order to play a round of golf at his Virginia resort.
A week ago, Trump made his first public statement in days to reiterate his opposition to a lockdown of the economy to contain the pandemic and save lives. Days later, Democratic President-elect Joe Biden gave a press conference and declared that a Biden administration would never impose a national lockdown. This followed the call by Michael Osterholm, a member of his own coronavirus advisory board, for a six-week nationwide lockdown and full pay for affected workers.
Both parties have conspired to block any congressional action to provide a new round of jobless benefits and other relief measures for workers and small businesses following the July 31 expiration of the minimal benefits provided under the CARES Act.
The public health disaster and the social crisis are two sides of a human catastrophe that is the result of deliberate policies carried out by the Trump administration and, in all essentials, backed by the Democrats. The bipartisan response to the pandemic is driven not by the goal of saving lives, but by the economic interests of the ruling corporate-financial oligarchy. The sole concern is to protect the wealth of the billionaires through government handouts and free money from the Federal Reserve, ensuring a record rise on the stock market.
The antisocial interests of the financial elite are the main obstacle to any effective measures to contain the pandemic and save lives. Nothing is permitted that infringes on the self-enrichment of moguls such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who has doubled his personal fortune to $200 billion in the course of the pandemic.
And to pay for the bailout and explosion of corporate and government debt, workers are being forced into factories and workplaces that are rife with the virus so as to continue the flow of corporate profit. This is the dirty secret behind the back-to-work and back-to-school drive, the centerpiece of the deadly policy of “herd immunity” openly pursued by Trump and tacitly supported by Biden and the Democrats.
Workers are deliberately being driven to the edge of destitution and homelessness in order to force them back into the factories, workplaces and schools.
The corporatist trade unions are fully supporting the back-to-work and back-to-school drive, while covering up virus outbreaks in the factories and schools and policing the workplaces to block opposition by workers.
There is growing anger in the factories and among teachers. Many are following the lead of the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site and forming rank-and-file safety committees independent of the unions and the Democratic Party to coordinate action in defense of workers’ health and lives.
Only the independent intervention of the working class in opposition to both capitalist parties and the profit system they defend can produce a progressive and humane solution to both the pandemic and the social crisis.
The struggle to save lives and livelihoods is a struggle against the capitalist system. It requires the expropriation of the corporate oligarchy and utilization of its vast wealth to shut down all nonessential production until the pandemic is contained, provide full wages and income protection for laid-off workers, ensure safe working conditions for essential workers and marshal the resources needed to rebuild the health care system and provide free health care for all.
Workers and educators should establish rank-and-file safety committees at every workplace and school to enforce safe working conditions, organize strike action where necessary, and prepare the ground for a political general strike to halt the destruction of workers’ lives and livelihoods.
Economic life must be reorganized along socialist lines through the nationalization of the health care industry, the banks and the major corporations under the democratic control of the working class, so as to base the economy on social need, not private profit.
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