A nationwide wave of evictions threatens more than six million families

The maps on this NYTimes piece are sobering.

Discussions often portray housing affordability as a San Francisco, or tech-region, or coastal section. The map on this article (enable JS to view) clearly shows that it is not: housing precarity as measured by households owing back rent is pervasive across the US, and especially concentrated well away from tech hot-spots: California's inland valleys, the deep south, a large swath of (very non-urban) South Dakota, likewise much of New Mexico. There are counties with high-delinquency rates in virtually every state.

The total accrued debt is $23 billion, $2,300 per household (this in a country in which half of all households cannot pay a $400 unexpected expense). A second map shows the amounts owed by household --- that shifts slightly more coastal (where rents are in fact higher in nominal terms) but again shows a pervasive problem.

It's not merely one of the too-common HN canard "you have no right to live in one of the most expensive region" --- this is unaffordability of a fundamental Maslovian need across an entire country. Something is very badly broken with how the US chooses to provision and manage its housing, and incomes (wages, pensions, welfare support).

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/opinion/covid-eviction-moratorium.html

Paywall: https://archive.is/742qv

#Housing #Poverty #Inequality #Evictions #Rent #Renting #LivingWage #Covid19