There will be thousands of people in danger of being homeless, in the coming days and weeks.
While lawmakers get to go home, make calls to their donors, host high dollar fundraisers, or maybe even go on vacation!
Lawmakers get to go home, make calls to their donors, host high-dollar fundraisers, or maybe even go on vacation, living comfortably on their taxpayer-funded salaries with top-quality healthcare. All while at the same time engaging in the bizarre yet perfectly legal ability to enrich themselves with the stock market and business interests while in power.
Unfortunately, Congress left Washington on Friday without extending the eviction moratorium, in the middle of a pandemic that is once again worsening, and leaving millions of people vulnerable to losing their housing in the coming weeks. The situation in the next few weeks will be dire.
This government bureaucracy, failed policy, and — if we are being honest — our nations’ deep ambivalence to poor folks, let another deadline pass when the national eviction moratorium lapsed. This move — or more accurately lack of movement- will cause months, or even years, of dangerous hardship and will cripple communities like mine.
It’s a lose-lose situation. Nobody is a winner here. First, you have the tenants who have lost their incomes and don’t have the money to pay the rent. Then you have tenants who didn’t lose their incomes yet chose not to pay the rent.
Finally, you have the landlords who are still responsible for mortgages and taxes on their properties but have lost their rental income. So the mortgage and tax payments are coming out of their pockets. These landlords may be in danger of losing their properties to foreclosure.
They are also in the difficult position of evicting their tenants and more than likely will face thousands of dollars worth of damages in their rental units with no way to recoup financially.
In sum, as Martin Luther King said: “Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about the things that matter.” So let’s fight to achieve our rights.
To conclude, our people need an eviction moratorium. What we must do is to work together to get this done. We need a federal eviction moratorium.
