Letting Go of the Rope—A Sad Update

We Sharply Reduced Evictions and Childhood Poverty—Now We are Letting it All Happen Again

Image: Noah Sutherland/Antipoverty Centre CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In December of last year, I wrote an article for Common Dreams called “Letting Go of the Rope.”  It was republished in this newsletter. I wrote about how all 71 households summoned to one of our December eviction court sessions had been safely housed just 18 months before:

They were making ends meet thanks in large part to some combination of Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act stimulus checks, extended unemployment benefits, expanded child tax credit, and maximized food stamps.

Together with a national eviction moratorium, we extended a lifeline to tens of millions of Americans. The Eviction Lab at Princeton University estimates that these programs prevented more than three million eviction cases

More broadly, we achieved the remarkable result of poverty rates actually dropping during a pandemic. It was the first time that the U.S.’s shared prosperity began to resemble that of other industrialized nations where housing is a human right and subsistence needs like healthcare and childcare are guaranteed.

Of course, the article’s title spoiled the news about what happened next. All of those programs were dropped.

The article commemorated the latest abdication, the end of our local distribution of Emergency Rental Assistance. Direct help with housing costs was so important because almost all of the people we see getting evicted are among the unlucky three of every four households  that qualify for a federal housing subsidy but don’t receive it because we don’t fully fund the program. I wrote about the emergency rent program:

We can attest to those dollars’ impact. For Elise, who has been unable to work much while caring for a sister living with severe disabilities; for Courtney, who shuttles between two fast-food jobs while finding off-hours childcare for her toddler son; for James, who missed several weeks of work after being injured on the job, the rental assistance program kept them housed.

In our community, a second phase of the rent assistance briefly appeared this year, only to again run out of money after just a few months.

Now, the official U.S. Census data have come in, confirming the pain that we saw spiking in eviction courts. In 2022, the U.S. poverty rate increased at a faster rate than any period in over 50 years. Childhood poverty more than doubled last year, rising from 5.2 percent to 12.4 percent—one in every eight kids in the nation.

According the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities , the biggest culprit was the abandonment of the extended Child Tax Credit. “If Congress had continued the American Rescue Plan’s Child Tax Credit increase in 2022, about 3 million additional children would have been kept out of poverty,” said CBPP president Sharon Parrott.

Now, the CBPP reports, 19 million children live in families whose incomes are too low to qualify for the full tax credit, including about half of all Black children. It is no coincidence that data also show that households with young Black children are the most likely to face eviction.

If it seems like things cannot get any worse, think again. We are in the process of flushing away two other victories of the Covid response: expanded Medicaid coverage and increased child care support. In April, states began requiring people receiving Medicaid to prove they are still eligible, an often-confusing process that was suspended due to Covid. KFF, formerly Kaiser Family Foundation, estimates the reinstated barriers will cause 17 million people to lose Medicaid coverage. And at the end of this month, $24 billion in child care funding from the American Rescue Plan is set to expire, which will lead to 3.2 million children losing their child care spots.

I wish that the end of my December article did not still apply. But, if anything, it is even more true now:

Not so long ago, our country saw the struggles of Ashley and the other families lined up in court today, and we pulled them up to a place of safety and security. Now, finally, we have let go of that rope.

*****

This was a very depressing post, I realize. I promise that I have some more optimistic news ready to share next week. Thank you for reading.