Housing is the single largest element of the typical household’s budget, and data from the SCE Household Spending Survey show that this is especially true for renters. As the housing market heated up in the latter stages of the pandemic, home prices and rents both began to rise sharply. For renters, some protection from these increases was afforded by national, state, and in some cases local eviction moratoria, which greatly reduced the risk of households losing access to stable housing if they couldn’t afford their rent. Yet many of these protections have expired and additional supports will do so soon. In this post, we draw on data from our SCE Housing Survey to explore how renters perceive their housing risk and find that the answers depend to a large degree on their current and past experiences of the housing market.
The pandemic period has been tumultuous for U.S. renters. The sharp recession that began as the pandemic took hold early in 2020 buffeted the labor incomes of renters, who are more likely to work in jobs that require close physical proximity and can’t shift to work-from-home. Federal support came in many forms, including enhanced unemployment compensation and stimulus checks that allowed renters to continue making their lease payments. At the same time, evictions were forestalled by a complex series of federal, state, and local interventions that kept the eviction rate at low levels. As these programs ended, federal rental assistance was put in place to avoid evictions. These latter programs were initially slow to disburse funds, although by now most of the programs have been implemented.
To continue reading the rest of the article, please click on the source link below: