There is a line that traces from people who lost jobs due to COVID-19 to those who received government aid, to those who did not get new jobs, to the expiration of aid, to the end of a moratorium on evictions from their homes. That line of events has reached its conclusion. The Centers for Disease Control eviction control ends at the close of the year. Soon, millions of people can be legally evicted from where they live. In some states, the situation is much worse than in others.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) has just published a study, “Cost of COVID-19 EVICTIONS”. One of the points of the study is to look at a range of academic data to determine how many people, in this case who are renters, could lose their homes in the next few months. Its researchers looked at information from consultancy Stout Risius Ross, data from the Federal Reserve, and from the Census Household Pulse Survey. With information from each, the NLIHC came up with a national eviction total which showed “6.7 million renter households will be unable to pay their rent and at risk of eviction if rent payments remain consistent among renters with no or slight confidence in their ability to pay rent.” Granted, the number could be called into question because of the number of qualifications in the calculations.

One conclusion from the study is correct. People who are evicted likely have poor enough financial circumstances that they will need government aid. The figure could be well above $100 billion, and perhaps much more. The problems eviction can cause include “emergency shelter, inpatient medical care, emergency medical care, foster care, and juvenile delinquency.”

And, those evicted will cease to be consumers, almost certainly. This, in turn, is a drag on the American economy.

The NLIHC had to make a decision as to which information to use from a number of sources. Their figures could be wrong, although they are likely to be directionally correct.

On top of their national estimates, they presented a range of evictions based on both cost and eviction numbers. Three measurements were presented. The first was based on a Federal Reserve model. The other two were based on models from Stout.

24/7 Wall St. took the lowest numbers which were from the Federal Reserve model. These are the number of households at risk for eviction, based on that data:

United States
6,656,340

Alabama
86,536

Alaska
12,562

Arizona
121,372

Arkansas
54,864

California
823,5112

Colorado
79,862

Connecticut
66,273

Delaware
19,330

District of Columbia
16,285

Florida
456,833

Georgia
220,963

Hawaii
25,893

Idaho
22,168

Illinois
279,410

Indiana
100,019

Iowa
52,206

Kansas
51,763

Kentucky
82,720

Louisiana
141,678

Maine
16,888

Maryland
131,116

Massachusetts
150,601

Michigan
181,047

Minnesota
76,066

Mississippi
77,596

Missouri
134,912

Montana
11,300

Nebraska
33,165

Nevada
76,525

New Hampshire
21,126

New Jersey
152,491

New Mexico
30,759

New York
636,843

North Carolina
200,555

North Dakota
13,291

Ohio
224,521

Oklahoma
81,251

Oregon
70,218

Pennsylvania
309,027

Rhode Island
22,236

South Carolina
92,216

South Dakota
15,983

Tennessee
139,255

Texas
603,426

Utah
33,516

Vermont
9,136

Virginia

161,170

Washington

106,708

West Virginia
23,559

Wisconsin
97,475

Wyoming
8,115

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