Why the Poor Stay Poor in America - A Few Weekend Readings
Welcome to The Poverty Trap: Why the Poor Stay Poor in America. I’m thrilled that you signed up to read my newsletter, and I hope that you will enjoy participating in our community. Everyone deserves the opportunity to thrive in our country, and we can work together to make that happen. Please share this newsletter with your friends and family when you have a spare minute. Thanks! If you have the means, do upgrade your subscription to Paid—your financial support of my writing will help me to continue and expand the newsletter! A Few Weekend ReadingsRising Rents Lead to Rising Evictions Which Culminate In Rising Homelessness — Not A Positive Trio.This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. But wait, there’s a sale going on at The Poverty Trap! For all NEW yearly Suscribers and NEW founding members, you will get 20% off if you sign up today through February 29, 2024. Thanks in advance for your financial support of my work —it’s what allows me to keep researching and writing. “About 40% of those facing eviction each year are children – some 2.9 million, according to a study co-authored by Nick Graetz at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, who said research shows wide-ranging impacts of housing turbulence and eviction on children’s mental health and development.” Christian Science Monitor, February 7, 2024 I’m still researching several longer posts that aren’t quite ready, but I wanted to keep in touch with a few articles I’ve been reading that discuss the convergence of rising rents and evictions, who is impacted the most and why it’s happening now. — I’ll start with a recent Harvard University study everyone is writing about, titled “America’s Rental Housing 2024”. It finds that 50% of renters in the United States pay between 30% and 50% of their income for rent and utilities each month — approximately 22.4 million rental households. Although the rapid rise in the cost of rental housing has stalled, and in some markets declined starting in the third quarter of 2023, the number of “cost burdened” and “severely cost-burdened” renters has soared from pre-pandemic levels:
These additional articles provide interesting analyses of the Harvard study, the first from Business Insider and the second from The New York Times: The Times piece interviewed renters across the country and found their income simply wasn’t keeping pace with the rise in rent, and many had to take drastic measures, by any standards, to avoid eviction:
When you can’t afford to pay your rent, the natural consequence is eviction, and eviction rates are rising right along with rent prices. — The Eviction Lab is a non-profit that tracks and documents eviction statistics in 10 select states and 34 cities across the country —there is no federal process to track and compile eviction statistics, and most states also do not have an eviction tracking system. Eviction records are embedded in county records and often difficult to obtain, according to The Eviction Lab. Here is a snapshot of the latest eviction statistics captured from the Lab’s home page:
— The Christian Science Monitor published a detailed piece a couple of weeks ago on rising eviction rates across the country and discussed a few reasons behind the increase, tying it to soaring rents since the pandemic, overall inflation and a “shortage of affordable housing” — all resulting in the recent rise in homelessness rates. If you’re evicted, you can maintain a roof over you head for a short while if you can move in with friends or family, or maybe live in a cheap motel, but how will you manage long-term? The article claims that lawmakers have now decided to make housing a priority:
— This opinion piece published just a few days ago by LZ Granderson, a columnist for the L.A. Times and one of the most interesting columnists writing today, explains the deeper reasons for today’s rising rents and evictions:
Granderson also makes clear that using the same old approach to create affordable housing just makes the rich developers richer:
— CNN’s recent article on the eviction crisis focuses on children. It is children who are impacted the most frequently by eviction, although they are also hidden along with eviction statistics because they are not the leaseholder. And the increasing evictions of families with children may be linked to lack of affordable and accessible child care, according to CNN reporting.
— Meanwhile, back at the ranch…thousands of single people and families with children in Columbus, Ohio, are waiting to receive their Section 8 Housing Vouchers, and some have been waiting for years. According to an article in The Columbus Dispatch published February 13, 2024:
Yes, there are “limited resources” to implement this program, but why? I know from first-hand experience that the spokesperson for the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority isn’t just spinning to help their agency look semi-competent, but is dead wrong. The reason why it takes excruciatingly long to process these vouchers is because the housing authority and the private, for-profit company it outsourced the process to, are significantly understaffed and undertrained for one reason: to save money. And with each delay, they are playing with people’s sanity and their lives.
— Finally for this evening, if you’d like to read an important explanation on the current homeless crisis, this is a great post from Jeremy Ney who writes American Inequality __________________________________________________________ I’d love to hear your thoughts on rising rents, rising evictions and the increasing homeless numbers in the last few years. Why not share your ideas in the Comment Section below and join the conversation! And if you are not already a subscriber, don’t forget to sign up for a free subscription to The Poverty Trap and/or upgrade to paid! You’re on the free list for The Poverty Trap: Why the Poor Stay Poor In America. All posts are free for now, but if you’d like to get ahead of the crowd, feel free to support my work by becoming a paid subscriber. |
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