Housing, Homelessness, and COVID-19

by Emmy Cohen, MSW

     Before COVID-19 began to reshape our society, I worked with residents of a Section 8 housing project that was in the first phase of redevelopment. Those residents are also my neighbors. I would see them in the corner store and on my walk to campus each morning. In my last days of field placement, I struggled to find toilet paper and food for residents who suddenly faced more difficult struggles and more limited resources.

     At the beginning of March 2020, just before things shut down, I was running between affordable housing sites in Washington, DC, to do one-on-ones with residents and lead community programs. I was working with a nonprofit developer to create affordable housing across the DC-Maryland-Virginia area.

     I spent most of my time at one site in particular. The Section 8 property was slated for redevelopment by the city. We launched a weekly tea time for residents who were being relocated and displaced because of redevelopment. The program was meant to gather residents to see what resources they needed as they moved, support them through the trauma of displacement and relocation, and create a stable event that they could look forward to each week. We had tea once before our world turned upside down, and for months, disposable cups and tea bags sat in my living room waiting for the next event that would not happen.

     I got calls from residents desperate for toilet paper, dog food, soap, meals, and water. Their desperation was magnified as the crisis grew. I made resource sheets for residents with lists of food banks that were still open and neighborhood businesses that still had essentials in stock.

     I, naively, sent out a list of activities for residents to do in quarantine, back when we thought we would stay home for two weeks and then go back to normal. The list included things like: take a walk, journal (a resource we had been encouraging residents to use to cope with the transition), learn a new skill, and take an online workout class. These were all activities that I saw my white millennial friends doing in their Instagram posts and that we discussed during Zoom happy hours. And these were all activities that helped me cope with our new world at the beginning of quarantine, but they are also immensely difficult to do if you are unsure about the status of your job, where you will live next month, if you will have dinner that night, and if your children will be able to go back to school.

     All summer, I sat on my front porch reading novels about faraway places and worlds without pandemics while looking at that same housing project. The community, which was already undergoing deep changes associated with the relocation and redevelopment project, suddenly lived in a new world. I was lucky to have the resources necessary to stay safe at home during the pandemic, but I knew that my neighbors were continuing to be forced out of their homes and community during this time. Moving trucks drove up and down the block, transporting residents’ entire lives to different wards, cities, and states. Community members held protests and rallies, but at that point, many of their neighbors had already been relocated and demolition was slated to start.

     These moving trucks, lists of COVID-19-friendly activities, and protests were all before we fully understood the extent to which housing saves lives during COVID-19. It was before eviction moratoriums were enacted, rental assistance programs were readily available, and mutual aid groups sprang up across the city. It was before stimulus checks and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.

     As housing values soared and people fled cities for fresh air and outdoor space, the activists and advocates got to work fighting for eviction moratoriums and rental assistance. Rent strike banners began to go up, and situations became more desperate.

     By March 27, 2020, the CARES Act was signed, and an eviction moratorium was in place. But this only helped nominally. Families were still being put out, whether through loopholes or illegal actions. In September, nearly half a year after the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC enacted its eviction moratorium, clearly emphasizing the importance of housing in preventing the spread of COVID-19.

     As summer ended and I began taking my courses from the dining room table, I heard my roommate, a community organizer, talk to her members. She serves a community of predominantly working-class and undocumented immigrants. Despite the CDC eviction moratorium, her members were scared. Many were on informal leases and feared that their legal status would prevent them from being protected. Rental assistance applications required printers and English proficiency.

     At my internship, I researched rental assistance programs in each state and heard stories of people being denied assistance because they checked off the wrong box or their landlords did not complete their portion of the application. Meanwhile, the condos on my block sold for millions as more people experiencing homelessness slept at the neighborhood park.

     Still, more people than ever see the injustices associated with housing, and rental assistance funding is at the highest amount ever. And that only matters so much if the people who most need resources cannot access them.

     I don’t have all the answers for how to fix communities that have been torn apart, but I do know that once the pandemic ends, we are still in for a long recovery period. The activism and advocacy must continue. Rental assistance must be widely available to everyone who needs it. And, above all else, we must amplify the voices of those impacted by past housing policies and the current eviction crisis. Safe, decent, affordable housing cannot and should not be considered a luxury. It is literally a matter of life and death.

     As I write this, it is March again, and most of my clients from last year have been moved. The steady stream of moving trucks has slowed to a trickle, but I worry about what will happen when the local and federal eviction moratoriums expire. Will more of my neighbors be forced out of their homes through eviction?

Emmy Cohen, MSW, graduated from Howard University School of Social Work with a concentration in Community, Administration, & Policy Practice and a displaced populations field of practice in May 2021. She is interested in federal affordable housing policies and is passionate about ensuring an equitable COVID-19 response.