The Tragedy of Como’s Eviction Epidemic
In a community where people have lived together for years and generations, the idea of asking them to move to a new neighborhood after being displaced is incredibly traumatic.
When people are displaced, they often lose access to their neighborhood’s social and economic resources, including food stores, churches, schools, employment centers, health care providers, and more. This is particularly true when displaced individuals are from low-income neighborhoods.
A key component of a positive recovery trajectory for displaced individuals is the creation of permanent housing alternatives. These can include new homes, rented or owned units, and shared homes. These structures must be affordable, safe and offer the opportunity to regain social and economic stability.
The Tragedy of Como’s Eviction Epidemic – A Community Displaced
Evictions are a major source of displacement, with an estimated 30-40 million Americans at risk. A large increase in evictions could increase the rate of COVID-19 infection and death, exacerbate existing health inequities, and disrupt critical recovery trajectories for displaced individuals in their home and host communities.
Displacement occurs across a wide range of social and economic circumstances, and it is particularly pronounced in communities of color. Historic trends and recent data show that eviction rates are higher for African-American, Indigenous, and Hispanic/Latinx households than White households.
As neighborhoods are redeveloped, people can lose their homes because of lease non-renewals, evictions or foreclosures. These processes are common in urban areas where investors are eager to redevelop or sell properties and shift the demographics of neighborhoods.
Gentrification is a process that involves a complex interaction between a number of different factors, including the historical practices that created and disinvested in low-income communities and communities of color and modern investment patterns that are reshaping neighborhoods. This change can destabilize current residents’ economic situations, forcing them to either rent or to evict themselves.
The SF Fed has partnered with the Urban Displacement Project at UC Berkeley and the Great Communities Collaborative, an initiative of The San Francisco Foundation, to investigate these issues and shine a light on how they are impacting the Bay Area’s communities. The goal is to develop a broad set of strategies that can support more equitable regional growth.
One such strategy is to help displaced people gain access to housing in areas where they previously lived. This may require partnering with local governments and private nonprofits to create or secure temporary, transitional, or permanent housing for displaced persons.
Another strategy to help displaced individuals find housing is to establish or improve the capacity of local and regional emergency rental assistance programs. These can be funded through federal or state funds or through private contributions to nonprofit organizations that provide housing assistance.
While many states are working to ensure that their emergency rental assistance programs continue, a growing number of them have run out of funding or have been unable to expand. The National Coalition for Eviction Relief estimates that 53 such programs are on hold and 18 have closed nationwide.
Unless the Federal government continues to support emergency rental assistance programs, evictions will continue to increase nationwide. This is not an inevitability, however, and eviction prevention can be a lifesaving intervention for many Americans.