Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Ralph Northam and state lawmakers were realizing they had dual crises on their hands. The coronavirus was not just a public health emergency. It was an economic one, too.
In April 2020, more than 450,000 Virginians were counted as unemployed and the commonwealth lost more than 383,400 jobs, per Virginia Employment Commission data released that May. This historic shock to the state’s economy — and to Virginians’ bank accounts — happened just weeks after the close of a historic 2020 General Assembly session where several sweeping bills were passed, including an increase to the state’s minimum wage.
After 12 years of staying put at $7.25 per hour, the raise to $9.50 was scheduled to take effect this past January. Amid fears that the wage hike would further hurt small businesses, Northam proposed delaying the change until May and the General Assembly approved that amendment during its April 2020 veto session.
People are also reading…
Now in August, the national salary conversation appears to have jumped from “Do we raise the minimum wage?” to “How much do we have to pay to compete for workers?” In a tight labor market, some larger U.S. employers — from Southwest Airlines to Starbucks — have made recent commitments to instill $15 per hour as the norm.
“That number is not a coincidence,” Aaron Sojourner, a University of Minnesota economist, told The Associated Press in late July. “It’s the number that those activists and workers put on the table 10 years ago, and built a movement towards.”
We’ve raised awareness of the need for a living wage. What about a living rent? When will this kind of discussion affect both workers’ paychecks and tenants’ housing costs for the better?
On Saturday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention federal eviction moratorium expired. By Monday, courts saw the resumption of eviction proceedings that, in Virginia at least, had dropped to roughly 10% of prepandemic levels during the first quarter of 2021, per Virginia Commonwealth University’s RVA Eviction Lab.
Almost $47 billion in federal relief through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program was aimed at helping families keep their homes and stay safe from the coronavirus. But the effort to deploy the money to tenants has been hampered by bottlenecks.
Roughly $1 billion of that funding went to Virginia. While the commonwealth has been credited as having one of the most efficient state rent relief programs, as of a few days ago, almost $700 million still was available.
In a recent Q&A with WTVR-TV, Martin Wegbreit, director of litigation at the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, cited three parts of the solution: tenants can apply for relief, landlords can cooperate or even help tenants apply, and renters facing difficulty can get help from rent relief navigators and facilitators, or an attorney.
“With so much in available funds, no tenant in Virginia should be evicted for nonpayment of rent until after the last dollar has been spent,” Wegbreit said in a recent RTD report.
We agree. After that last dollar, we also need to reduce the instability that has placed Virginia localities at the top of nationwide eviction lists for far too long.
Data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition‘s (NLIHC) “Housing Needs By State” page shows just how much work has to be done. In Virginia, 22% of renter households are extremely low income (a maximum income of $28,120 for a family of four). Compounding the strain, 71% of extremely low income households are severely cost-burdened (spending more than 50% of income on housing). And even if a family tried to find a more feasible living situation, the commonwealth has a shortage of 148,720 affordable rental homes.
“Severely cost-burdened poor households are more likely than other renters to sacrifice other necessities like healthy food and health care to pay the rent, and to experience unstable housing situations like evictions,” the NLIHC warns.
But COVID-19 has expanded the scope of our nation’s housing crisis. A July Aspen Institute report estimates that more than 15 million people (6.5 million households) are behind on rent. A collective $20 billion-plus is owed to landlords, with an average debt of $3,300 per tenant. Roughly half of people who are behind on rent expect to be evicted in the next two months, the report added.
That same week, a New York Times op-ed by Sema K. Sgaier and Aaron Dibner-Dunlap of the nonprofit Surgo Ventures featured two interactive maps attempting to present local-level data of the rent struggle. As of July 5, the estimates for these Virginia localities (in no particular order) were:
Richmond — 13% of households owed rent, $3,051 was the average amount owed;
Henrico County — 13.4%, $4,247;
Chesterfield County — 12.8%, $3,975;
Hanover County — 10%, $4,443;
Roanoke — 12.9%, $2,975
Fredericksburg — 12.4%, $4,496;
Culpeper County — 12%, $2,590;
Charlottesville — 9.1%, $3,408;
Lynchburg — 11.9%, $2,982;
Danville — 15.1%, $2,275;
Bristol — 9.9%, $1,892;
Waynesboro — 9.8%, $2,350; and
Martinsville — 15.1%, $2,275
Good-faith efforts by businesses and worker advocates to raise wages arguably will be for naught if families see any meaningful increase in their paychecks swallowed by a severe rental cost burden, or worse than that, an eviction on their record. We need real, permanent strides toward housing stability that complement the recent improvements in wages — and apply the lessons learned during this pandemic.
We’ve raised awareness of the need for a living wage, and we’re making progress. What about the need for a living rent?
— Chris Gentilviso