By Sarah Holder, CityLab, March 17, 2020
Editor's Note: On Wednesday, President Trump announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would provide "immediate relief to renters and homeowners by suspending all foreclosures and evictions until the end of April." It is not yet clear what this means as no plan has been released, but it likely would affect only HUD-funded or operated properties such as public housing.
On Monday afternoon, the Bay Area became the first region in the U.S. to institute a shelter in place to prevent the spread of Covid-19, barring visits to restaurants or bars or the hair salon, having friends over, and taking unnecessary public transit trips. The restriction made another recent San Francisco measure all-the-more urgent: keeping people housed while they deal with the cascading economic toll of such an emergency.
As other cities consider escalating their own lockdowns in the coming days, they are already following the lead of San Francisco by pursuing eviction freezes, foreclosure pauses, and utility shut-off deferrals. Over the past few days, the states of California and New York, and cities including Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Seattle, and Philadelphia have taken up a range of housing security strategies, hoping to avoid exacerbating the public health crisis posed by Covid-19 by pushing more people into homelessness. These efforts follow earlier measures in Singapore and Italy to stem homelessness during outbreaks there.
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