NC saw more than 15,000 COVID-19 cases during the summer due to evictions, study says
Thousands of people contracted COVID-19 over the summer in North Carolina and a few hundred of them died because a government moratorium on evictions was allowed to lapse, according to a recent study.
From June 20 to Sept. 3, evictions in the state resulted in 15,690 coronavirus cases and 304 deaths, according to the study published through the Social Science Research Network. SSRN operates as an open-access forum for authors to publish papers not yet peer-reviewed by an academic journal.
North Carolina did not have an eviction moratorium during that time. A moratorium put in place by Gov. Roy Cooper ended on June 20, and a nationwide moratorium issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t start until Sept. 4.
The moratoriums prohibit landlords from evicting someone who can’t pay the rent due to income loss from the pandemic. They were put in place so that people at-risk of eviction due to COVID-19 would still be able to quarantine and avoid spreading the virus.
More than 18,000 evictions were filed statewide from June 20 to Sept. 4, according to a News & Observer report from September that analyzed data from the state Administrative Office of the Courts. The number of eviction filings that resulted in displacement could not be determined.
Kathryn Leifheit, one of the authors of the SSRN study, told The N&O in an interview that eviction affects not only those displaced but also the entire community as the virus spreads from crowded, more transient living situations.
“We’re talking about a situation that can actually drive up risk for everyone in the community,” Leifheit said. “Evictions are a public health issue.”
To determine how many coronavirus cases were a result of eviction, the study analyzed coronavirus trends among 43 states and the District of Columbia that instituted eviction moratoriums at the onset of the pandemic.
Twenty-seven of those states, including North Carolina, lifted their moratoriums prior to the CDC order.
The study, while also accounting for other spread mitigation measures such as mask mandates and social distancing requirements, compared the two groups of states to estimate how many COVID-19 cases and deaths were due to eviction.
Among the 27 states, North Carolina was the 10th worst in terms of coronavirus spread from eviction.
The authors chose to release the study through SSRN, before it had been peer-reviewed, to draw attention to the potential impact of letting the CDC order expire at the end of the month. Leifheit said she is confident in the findings and is eager to receive feedback after the peer review.
Leifheit, a public health researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles, authored the study along with five other public health researchers at UCLA, Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and UC-San Francisco and Emily Benfer, a law professor who specializes in housing law at Wake Forest University.
‘Housing is health care’
Erika Ferguson, director of the state Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Healthy Opportunities, said that displacement worsens the current public health crisis.
“Housing is health care and an important component of overall health,” Ferguson said in an interview. “COVID-19 definitely affirms that and really shows just how much housing instability can exacerbate a public health issue or someone’s personal health.”
Ferguson said that families that lose housing tend to move into overcrowded living environments. She said this makes it more difficult to follow pandemic mitigation practices such as social distancing, quarantining and other hygiene practices.
“All these are really critical to limiting COVID spread,” Ferguson said.
Leifheit said when overcrowded homes are exposed to COVID-19, everyone that someone in the household comes in contact with, either at work or from shopping, is exposed to the virus as well.
“You can see how it sort of expands beyond a tight little bubble pretty quickly,” Leifheit said. “The risk isn’t isolated to the few but to everyone.”
‘We need the government to step in’
Ferguson said that eviction moratoriums are a good tool to limit COVID-19 spread and to keep people housed during the pandemic, but they are not the end goal.
“They are only one part of the solution. Moratoria essentially provide individuals additional time to pay their rent, but they don’t lessen the amount owed,” Ferguson said.
“Many individuals may not be able to make up their rent and utility arrearages at the end of the moratoria.”
Ferguson said that the long-term solution is rental assistance because moratoriums only delay eviction.
Dustin Engelken, government affairs director at the Triangle Apartment Association, agrees there needs to be rental assistance. He said the burden of rent shouldn’t be put on landlords.
“If they’re telling people to stay home, then they need to help make up some of that lost income so that people can keep up with their bills,” Engelken said in an interview. “We need the government to step in.”
Engelken credited the state for providing some rental assistance such as North Carolina’s HOPE program, which stopped accepting applications in November due to depleted funds.
Ferguson said that North Carolina will need more federal funding to provide more rental assistance. The HOPE program and most other rental assistance has been federally funded by the CARES Act, and that money runs out at the end of the month.
“Somebody’s got to figure out a way to get more money into those programs,” Engelken said.
To help both the tenant and landlord, Engelken said that federal funding is necessary.
“The reality is that somebody still has to pay the bills, and so if the tenant is not in a position to do that, that’s exactly why government needs to step in to provide assistance,” Engelken said. “What you’re doing is effectively creating free housing for everybody that’s paid for by the landlord. That doesn’t really solve the problem. That just shifts the burden from one group of people to another, but without actually solving the problem.”
Ferguson said that those facing housing loss should dial 211 to find resources for help in their community. NC 211, a part of United Way of North Carolina, is a hotline for various community resources.
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 10:25 AM with the headline "NC saw more than 15,000 COVID-19 cases during the summer due to evictions, study says."