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| Homelessness is becoming a way of life for millions. We must end this crisis. |
Many people lose their homes for short periods. You may be homeless if you move to another city to take a job, and you have to stay in a hotel or with friends for a while. You may be homeless if you decide to travel after leaving a job and don't renew your lease.
Traveling for vacation doesn't make you homeless. Selling your home, putting your things into storage, and sailing around the world does make you somewhat homeless. If you live in an RV and travel around the country, you're technically homeless.
Homelessness is not necessarily a bad thing but it's become an unwanted way of life for millions of people. According to American Progress, in a normal year just over half a million people are considered homeless on any night. About one and half million people experience homelessness in a typical year.
But 2020 has been anything other than typical. As tents pile up on the streets of Los Angeles and other cities around the countries, as many as 30 million people may soon be without homes. That's because millions of jobs have vanished due to the pandemic. Without jobs people cannot pay their rent or mortgages.
Mortgage owners want to evict non-paying tenants. That's normal for business. They must make their mortgage payments and they use the rents they are owed to do that. But who will replace the tenants thrown out on the street?
No one wins in this pandemic. Even if the tenants are evicted, those apartments and houses can't be rented out to new tenants. Everyone will fail the rent history check. They'll have evictions and foreclosures on their rental and mortgage records.
This isn't the time for property owners to be pushing people out onto the street. They lack adequate health care and housing, cannot practice social distancing, and risk spreading disease even more than if they could stay in their old homes.
Everyone wants to own a home one day. That's a worthy goal for all Americans. But they should also be free not to own homes if they feel happier renting. The pandemic is destroying these opportunities for millions of families.
Once the rent and mortgage moratoriums expire, property owners will be faced with a new crisis. They still won't have any revenue to cover their own mortgages and there won't be anyone they can rent or sell to.
Home prices are soaring right now because only a smaller percentage of homes than usual are being sold. The market has shrunk. And people who would normally put their homes on the market are staying put. So the inventory has shrunk.
We don't know what will happen to home prices in 2021. It's a good bet that a housing bubble is forming and many people who buy at the top of that bubble will lose value when home prices start to come down.
It may be years before that happens. When you take 50 million people out of work an economy slows down. Even as people return to work, things won't return to where they were in February. Too many jobs have been permanently lost.
By some estimates, as many as 100,000 businesses have shut down forever. Their jobs are gone. Their employees have nothing to return to.
This situation isn't fair to anyone. But it's up to us to see to it that it doesn't continue forever. The U.S. economy needs massive federal help now.
That is what federal governments are for: to serve, protect, and help their citizens during times of emergency. We're facing a national crisis unlike anything before. Even the 1918 influenza pandemic wasn't the same as this because there are so many more of us. And we're all aware of the problems that have resulted from this pandemic.
These people who insist on opening up the economy at all costs are wrong to do so. That won't restore us to where we were. The long-term damage has already been done.
The U.S. Congress should have approved monthly stimulus payments for everyone from the beginning. Everyone would have made the payments they need to make and our economy could have rebounded fully when the pandemic is over.
Now that opportunity is gone forever. We'll need years to rebuild and replace all the jobs that were lost. And during those years, what becomes of the millions of people who fell too far behind on their rent and mortgage payments because the government failed them when they needed it most?
