Faculty Comment: President’s “Eviction Ban” Postpones What Will Be Tsunami of Economic Devastation Monday, September 14, 2020
The Trump administration’s new eviction ban faces a slew of legal and political challenges that could undercut an ambitious and unorthodox attempt to save tens of millions of Americans from homelessness.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday issued an order banning landlords from evicting tenants that can no longer afford to pay rent due to a pandemic-related expense or hardship through the end of 2020. That order, along with previously issued federal protections, could ensure all of the nation’s 40 million rental households keep their residences during the pandemic.
Gretchen Purser’s research focuses on precarious work and the low-wage labor headshot of Associate Professor Gretchen Pursermarket and the reproduction and lived experience of urban poverty in the U.S. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her research and teaching, including the 2016 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching and Research and the 2013 Meredith Teaching Recognition Award. She has been a visiting scholar at both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the School for Advanced Research and her research has been funded by the American Sociological Association, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and the Sociological Initiatives Foundation. Since 2012, Purser has served as chair of the board of the Workers’ Center of Central New York. She also serves on the community advisory board for Greater Syracuse HOPE.
Purser offers perspective on the ban:
“Obviously, the eviction ban was desperately needed to keep millions of renters from being cast out of their homes amidst this historic pandemic. Nevertheless, it does nothing to solve the fundamental crisis at hand. Renters are still on the hook to pay their rent, so this ban merely postpones until the end of the year what will be a tsunami of eviction, wrought by economic devastation. Without a sweeping package of rental relief and cash assistance, this ban is a mere temporary band-aid. Moreover, as a sociologist and as an ethnographer, I’m worried about how this situation will impact relations between renters and landlords across the country. In many ways, the eviction ban, absent any form of rental relief, might exacerbate renters’ vulnerability and further undermine their access to safe, habitable housing. “
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