As COVID’s Impact Lessens, NYC’s Housing Crisis Remains
This post uses data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey to examine the impact of the pandemic on New York City’s housing crisis in the months since our initial blog on housing security. Previous blog posts in this series have examined the pandemic’s initial labor market impact, unequal burdens of child and dependent care across gender, inequity in the Paycheck Protection Program, and more recent workforce findings.
New York City’s housing crisis remains persistent and unresolved, even as the worst of the COVID pandemic appears to have passed. In the year since reopening began last summer, New Yorkers have accrued billions of dollars in back rent owed, and the brunt of this debt is shouldered by financially vulnerable households and communities.
Improvements in housing security have stalled
Despite initial improvements as the city began to reopen last summer, New Yorkers still face persistent housing insecurity. Many are unable or unlikely to make next month’s housing payment, and many more still owe months in back payments.
People’s confidence in their ability to make next month’s housing payment initially improved last summer only to stall in recent months. The number of people with little to no confidence in their payment ability dropped from a height of 24% in July 2020 to 16% in late August and September 2020. However, as of March 2021, 15% of respondents still had little to no confidence in their payment ability (Figure 1).
People’s actual payment history is trickier to assess over time because the Pulse survey changed the way it measured payment status in August 2020. Before then, respondents were asked whether they had made the prior month’s housing payment. Beginning in mid-August 2020, respondents were instead asked whether they were behind on their housing payments generally, not just for the last month. Although this change more effectively measures the compounding effects of the pandemic on housing security, it prevents direct comparisons of payment security before and after August 2020. Nonetheless, any change or improvement that occurred before August 2020 has since stalled. From mid-August through September 2020, 11% of respondents were behind on their housing payments. As of March 2021, this figure has only fallen one additional percentage point to 10%.
Renters who are in debt remain most at risk
Most New York City renters face persistent challenges in housing security. The share of tenants behind on their rent has not improved since the Pulse survey began using its new measure in August 2020. From August to December 2020, 22% of renters were behind on their housing payment — the same percentage as from January to March 2021 (Figure 2).
Renters who have already fallen behind are at risk of accruing even more debt. From January to March 2021, 68% of renters who were behind on their housing payment had little to no confidence in their ability to make next month’s housing payment (Figure 3). In other words, the tenants who are behind on rent still face persistent challenges in making their rent payments.
Inequities in housing security grow
New Yorkers with fewer economic resources face mounting financial challenges in housing security. From January to March 2021, 27% of households earning less than $50,000 annually were behind on their housing payments (Figure 2). In this same period, 37% had little to no confidence in their ability to make next month’s payment (Figure 4). Similarly, 22% of those who recently experienced pandemic-induced employment loss were also behind on their payment and had little confidence in their future payment ability. These findings converge with other analyses showing that low-income renters bear the majority of rent arrears across the city.
The pandemic has amplified housing insecurity for people of color, who face segregation, displacement, and other deeply rooted, racially discriminatory practices. Racial disparities in pandemic-induced job loss have compounded financial difficulties for households of color. Consequently, these households bear a disproportionate amount of the housing debt accrued during COVID. From January to March 2021, 6% of White respondents were behind on their housing payments. By contrast, Black respondents were over three times as likely to be behind on their housing payments, and Asian and Hispanic respondents were almost twice as likely (Figure 2).
The racial disparities in the Pulse survey are consistent with eviction findings from the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), which show that the neighborhoods facing the highest rates of eviction are disproportionately communities of color in the Bronx and Queens (see Figure 5 for updated eviction rates). Eviction rates in zip codes in which a majority of residents are people of color are three times as high as rates in zip codes that are predominately White (Figure 5A & 5B). These same neighborhoods also suffered the highest COVID death rates across the city (Figure 5C), leaving communities to contend with an unprecedented housing crisis while bearing both untold grief and inordinate debt.
Eviction rates are also higher in zip codes with lower median incomes (Figure 5D). The disparities by both race and income likely result from the disparate economic impact of COVID. As discussed in previous blog posts, the pandemic disproportionately affected lower-income and non-White workers, who were more likely to be employed in hard-hit industries and less likely to have occupations conducive to telework. Overall, the pandemic is intensifying existing inequities in housing and economic security in New York City.
Many neighborhoods with high eviction rates also have high immigrant populations. Corona, Queens, for example, has one of the highest immigrant populations in the city and the fourth highest eviction rate. There are over 3.1 million immigrants in New York City and they are over-represented in hard-hit occupations in the service sector. Immigrant households also had less access to many COVID-relief benefits and may face language barriers when dealing with eviction notices and the housing court system. Undocumented immigrants in some cases also contend with retaliation from landlords who threaten to report them for deportation for failing to pay back rent or vacate their homes.
Debt and policy
Since last March, a patchwork of federal and state moratoriums prevented many New Yorkers from losing housing during the pandemic. Although landlords can currently file eviction actions against tenants, tenants in New York City and other places with high COVID rates cannot be forced to leave their residence until October 3, 2021, according to federal guidance from the CDC. However, tenants must complete a declaration form to qualify for protection. And while these policies have helped keep people in their homes, New Yorkers still owe rent debt accrued during the pandemic.
New Yorkers by now owe billions in rent arrears. Although the Household Pulse survey does not assess how much respondents owe in back payments, other sources estimate that renters could owe as much as $3.4 billion in New York State as of January 2021. New York City accounts for 63.2% of renters in the state and may account for as much as 75.3% of rental assistance need — thus, as of January, NYC rent arrears may have totaled as much as $2.6 billion. Landlords in New York City have sued for $8,150 on average in back payments, and these cases have been disproportionately filed in Black and Latino neighborhoods. The number of tenants behind $10,000 or more in rent back payments more than doubled from September 2019 to 2020.
As of June 1, 2021 New Yorkers could apply for relief as part of the state’s most recent rent relief program, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). ERAP is slated to disperse over $2.7 billion in aid, and eligible applicants can qualify for up to 12 months in rent payment aid. Rent burdened households, who spend over 30% of their income on rent payments, can qualify for an additional three months’ aid. The program prioritizes tenants who are most at risk of losing their housing and who earn less than 80% of the area median income, which is $85,920 for a family of three in NYC. Applicants must also have either received unemployment benefits after March 13, 2020 or have experienced a reduction in income from the pandemic.
This program could help partially alleviate the long-term consequences of the current housing crisis by reducing thousands of dollars of debt that families would otherwise have to manage for years to come. However, this depends on whether ERAP can overcome limitations of earlier relief programs. Previous versions of New York’s rent relief program suffered from overly restrictive eligibility criteria and accessibility issues, reducing the number of people who could qualify or even apply for relief. The initial COVID Rent Relief Program of 2020, which had all of these problems, dispersed only a fraction of the available funding.
To address limitations of earlier relief programs, ERAP loosened eligibility restrictions so that those receiving unemployment benefits now qualify for aid. Applicants also no longer have to provide their immigration status and have more options for providing proof of income. Although these changes will help more tenants get the aid they need, those who were denied aid after applying for the COVID Rent Relief program earlier will have to apply again.
In the first month of ERAP, over 91,000 tenants in New York City applied for aid. Importantly, tenants can still apply for aid since the program operates on a rolling basis. But while there is no set application deadline, tenants should apply before October 3. Even if the aid isn’t distributed by then, evictions against tenants cannot proceed until they hear back about their aid application. Further, tenants who qualify for aid cannot be removed from their homes for another year even if their landlord does not accept ERAP aid.
Recently, Governor Cuomo announced that the State would relax standards for required application documents, making it easier for tenants and landlords to receive needed aid. This announcement comes after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer urged the State to distribute rent relief funds before the federal deadline at the end of September. New York has been slow to distribute program aid — as of late July, less than $1 million of the $2.7 billion program had been dispersed. If New York fails to distribute the rest of the aid before the September deadline, the State risks losing over $2 billion.
Ultimately, though, ERAP aid will not be enough. Even if every dollar of the $2.7 billion program reaches those in need, it would only cover 80% of the estimated need in the state as of January 1, 2021. Many families are still accruing rent debt, as employment recovery remains sluggish. But even if the program managed to absolve all COVID-related debt, New Yorkers still face the same housing barriers that existed pre-COVID. While ERAP is a vital component of COVID recovery, it is only a part of what is needed to support equitable housing security in New York City.
New Yorkers need more affordable housing
As of 2017, 44% of households in the city were rent burdened, meaning over 30% of their income went toward rent alone. In the most recent fiscal year, as part of Mayor de Blasio’s ongoing program[1] to expand affordable housing, the City secured 28,310 affordable homes through new construction and preservation deals. Over half of these homes are reserved for low-income families, where rent burden is most concentrated. For example, these reserved units would be available to a family of three earning between $32,000 and $58,000 annually.
These new, affordable units will relieve rent burden for thousands of families, though households may spend years on long waitlists before a unit becomes available. Other programs, such as federal subsidies and rent vouchers, help New Yorkers meet immediate housing costs. But even before the pandemic, these programs were not enough to meet the city’s needs. To help fill this gap, the City recently expanded local rental assistance programs, which means more people will qualify for assistance. Truly addressing the city’s housing crisis, and not merely returning to pre-COVID levels, will require intensive aid and coordination across local, state, and federal agencies.
[1] The housing plan is on track to create or preserve 200,00 affordable homes by the end of the administration.
Resources:
- ACCESS NYC Guide to Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP)
- NYC Tenant Resource Portal
- Hardship Declaration Forms in multiple languages
- ACCESS NYC site for help obtaining housing, food, money, work and other resources
The poverty Research Team at NYC Opportunity is responsible for the development of the NYCgov Poverty Measure. The alternative NYC Poverty measure, in comparison to the official U.S. measure of Poverty.
The work has received nationwide attention and contributed to the development of the Federal Supplemental Poverty Measure.
