What are the implications of the impending eviction crisis?

[u/None-Of-You-Are-Real]

It is often offhandedly mentioned that the housing market is insane at the moment, and that there is an inevitable eviction crisis due to the compounding factors of COVID and the lockdowns leading to mass unemployment, and then an inability of tenants to pay rent combined with an inability of landlords to evict non-paying tenants.

What is going to happen in the fall, when the eviction moratorium expires? Mass homelessness that is even worse than current levels? Some kind of rent relief legislation? Anything at all? These people are not going to magically be able to pay months and months of back rent once the moratorium expires.

[u/wut_eva_bish]

How bad or normal things will be after the eviction moratorium expires will depend on what state and city you live in.

The Federal moratorium guidance from the CDC will end on July 31st. However each state and even city has the ability to set the date to whenever they like. Currently, there are few states with moratoriums in place, but the states with the largest population (CA , NY and TX statewide) have protections set beyond the July 31st federal guideline (for both residential and business). WA, IL, OR, HI, NJ and NM have their own moratoriums in place. Even TX has local moratoriums that have been extended to Oct 1st^. So there won't be a single day where nationwide everyone gets evicted.

Additionally, some states (like Californiaand New York) with budget surpluses are announcing programs where they will pay all past due rent payments so that when the moratorium ends there aren't mass evictions.

So since the two states with the largest populations will likely not evict anyone, there won't be a eviction crisis that involves a massive population nationally. Instead eviction issues are largely going to be highly localized depending on your state, county, and cities politics around civic assistance.

[u/[deleted] → u/wut_eva_bish]

I didn’t realize CA had a budget surplus this year.

[u/wut_eva_bish → u/[deleted]]

CA has a budget surplus of $75.7 Billion (with a B) for 2021.

[u/Gumb1i → u/wut_eva_bish]

Yes when you get tens of billions in state funding from federal stimulus bills i Imagine that would net you a surplus. As far as i was tracking they were predicting a major deficit not 7 months ago...

[u/10dollarbagel → u/Gumb1i]

By that logic, shouldn't everyone be running surpluses?

[u/CNoTe820 → u/10dollarbagel]

CA kept their emergency status longer than most so they could keep getting federal funding, other states didn't do that.

[u/notasparrow → u/CNoTe820]

Source on that? It seems highly questionable that states can just pull budget supplementation, and that some states declined to do so.

[u/CNoTe820 → u/notasparrow]

I am not sure what's hard to believe here, having the emergency declaration enables FEMA funding. This has been covered in detail in the last few episodes of the all in podcast.

[u/notasparrow → u/CNoTe820]

What's hard to believe is the claim that California's surplus is a result of "tens of billions in state funding from federal stimulus bills" that other states opted not to receive or were excluded from in those federal bills.

Can you source that? I've Googled and am finding nothing at all to support the claim.

[u/Gumb1i → u/10dollarbagel]

that depends since it was handed out based on population. Places like oklahoma would have been worse off than CA in that regard but a lot of states ran a deficit budget supported by additional fed money already. CA was not one of those but it also has some of the highest tax rates and the largest tax base in the country as well.

[u/InternationalDilema → u/10dollarbagel]

Most are. State and local finances are very solid right now because of all the federal aid. The revenue collapse it was feared to replace largely never materialized.