Conclusion

"Dear landlord
Please don't put a price on my soul
My burden is heavy
My dreams are beyond control" – Bob Dylan

Overwhelmingly, our findings came down to this simple fact: People cannot afford decent homes.

The disparity between income and housing cost growth over the past 50 years, compounded by more than a century’s worth of race-based housing discrimination have created a housing insecurity for both homeowners and renters across the United States. The country sees stark disparities in homeownership rates between white and non-white households, and in turn a staggering racial wealth gap: In 2019, the average Black family had 12 times less wealth than the average white family. In a country in which property ownership is tied to intergenerational wealth building, limited homeownership among Black and Latinx Americans has kept millions stuck at the bottom of the economic mobility ladder, while many of their white peers had helping hands pulling them up.

Among the third of the country who rent their homes, a substantial number are forced to make trade-offs between life’s necessities such as food, shelter, and heat.

We also know that racial and economic disparities only deepen in times of crisis, and never has the nation faced an economic crisis quite like the one driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the national unemployment rate languishes above 10 percent, we know tens of millions can’t pay for their homes. Not only that: As the number of U.S. COVID-19 infections tops 6 million, we know hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers—those who couldn’t afford housing in the first place—have neither the employment benefits nor the income to remain solvent if they fall ill.

A cashier, retail worker or health aid stands to lose between $200 and $500 from a single week off for being sick. Consider the two-week quarantine requirement in case of exposure to COVID-19. Then consider that only 30 percent of the lowest earners have paid sick leave, and only 58 percent of all workers in service occupations have sick leave, period. For most Americans, health insurance is tied to employment, and laid off workers could face overwhelming health care bills in the case that they fall ill. Here, we see quickly how the COVID-19 crisis may exacerbate housing loss through variable income earnings, even for those who manage to keep their jobs.

These considerations lead us to the million dollar question: Can we pair data on historic housing vulnerability with data on current income loss and other pandemic-specific considerations, to identify and predict where housing loss will be the most acute during and after this crisis?

This, we believe, is the next frontier of studying the housing loss impacts of the pandemic. Pairing data on previous housing loss with current economic trends and data may enable decision makers to better understand the relative importance of systemic and historical factors, as opposed to one-time, uncharacteristic shocks, in triggering displacement. Policies could then be crafted to target and deliver resources to improve community resilience to all shocks—be they anomalous events, like a pandemic, or everyday stressors, like a flat tire.

While we hope this research provides a starting point for this sort of analysis, we also hope the questions don’t stop coming after the initial economic shock of the COVID-19 crisis subsides.

If nothing else, our study reveals the magnitude of housing instability across America, irrespective of the pandemic. And so, while our most immediate solutions should orient around stopping the bleeding caused by the current economic crisis, they should not end there.

Stable, decent housing is a fundamental human right that our country fails to provide to millions of its residents each year. This is an injustice that must be solved.