"But even before the crisis, tens of millions of people struggled to pay for housing, according to University of Michigan professors Roshanak Mehdipanah and Gregory Sallabank. As of 2018, an estimated 38 million, or over a quarter, of U.S. households spent at least 30% of their income on housing-related expenses. About 12 million spent half their income, making it hard if not impossible to afford other essential expenses like food and health care.
The CDC moratorium and similar eviction bans in states and cities across the country have helped low-income Americans endure the pandemic, but these solutions were always going to be short term, Mehdipanah and Sallabank explain.
'While these interventions have reduced a source of anxiety and stress for households, they are temporary,' the scholars write. 'Once they expire, these people will still have the same debts, same housing costs and the same bleak financial picture.'"