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Roland Carroll’s troubles began last fall.
The 61-year-old was informed that his apartment complex in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had its federal housing subsidies for his one-bedroom apartment cut several months ago.
He owed more than $2,000 in unpaid rent.
“I was shocked,” said Carroll. “How in the world could you borrow this amount of money without saying anything months in advance?”
Carol does not own a car and works odd jobs through a local temporary staffing agency. He struggled to pay his rent and as part of his monthly rent he got $339.
“November and December – I had very little work, so I was really tied up,” he said.
A few days after Christmas, his apartment complex filed to evict him.
Carol said she was worried because her local shelter was full and she had expensive chronic health problems.
“I’m diabetic. I have arthritis. I have asthma. I’m just a complete mess,” he said.
With the help of non-profit organizations iowa legal aidCarroll successfully dismissed the lawsuit at a hearing in mid-January because his apartment did not give him enough notice.
Now he’s still struggling to pay his rent, and his apartment keeps sending out notices threatening to demand another eviction.
undermining his health.
“I was very stressed,” Carroll said. “My mental health is very bad right now.”
Eviction as a health issue
Many Midwesterners are facing housing insecurity as pandemic-era housing aids such as eviction moratoriums and federal rental assistance have ended.
Eviction applications in Iowa have increased over the past decade. 2020 and he hit a record high of over 18,000 in 2022 after a short dip in 2021, according to Iowa Legal Aid data.
The eviction moratorium issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expires in mid-2021.
And Iowa, like most states, ended its federally funded emergency rent and utilities program last year.
“Rent is a big part of household expenses,” says Nick Graetz, a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. eviction lab“And it’s booming at an unprecedented rate during the pandemic. But rents have outpaced wages for decades.”
According to US News and World Report, since March 2020, average rent for one-bedroom apartments has risen by 13% in Iowa, nearly 18% in Missouri, and more than 26% in Indiana.
Eviction applications are also on the rise in Indiana and Missouri.
Graetz said facing eviction can take a toll on someone’s health.
“As a result, people will go from paying 60% of their income in rent to paying 70% of their income in rent, and the cost will have to be absorbed by forgoing things like preventive health care, resulting in higher costs. You’re going to face food insecurity, things like that,” he said.
A literature review published in the journal Social Science and Medicine found studies linking eviction to depression, anxiety, hypertension, and child abuse.
A 2021 study published in Pediatrics found that Georgia women who faced eviction during pregnancy were more likely to have children with low birth weight.
Chronic health problems and health emergencies can also put renters at risk for eviction.
“It’s hard when you’re trying to navigate something like that,” Graetz said. [you] If you fall behind on your rent, you can quickly enter this space where it will be very difficult to avoid filing for eviction. “
Potential Legislative Support
Federal and state legislators are proposing a variety of policy solutions to combat evictions, including new tenant protections and expanded emergency rental assistance programs.
Iowa legislators have allocated more than $300 million in tax credits to encourage developers to build affordable housing.
Lawmakers in Minnesota are considering a rent voucher program that could help 220,000 households.
But he said it was often unclear which policies would be most effective. Katie Moran-MccabeChief Law and Policy Analyst at Temple University’s Center for Public Health Law Research.
“Often these laws are underappreciated,” she said. “So is the law working? Is it working as intended? Are there any unintended consequences?”
Strengthening non-profit programs
One growing solution is the eviction conversion program. For example, the eviction conversion help desk program operated by Iowa Legal Aid.
The nonprofit launched the program in the spring of 2020, setting up an eviction help desk in a courthouse in Polk County, Iowa’s most populous county.
Similar programs exist in Illinois and Missouri.
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The rapid increase in requests for eviction assistance has forced Iowa Legal Aid to change its priorities, said Executive Director Nick Smithberg.
“Basically, it structurally changed our organization,” he said. “Housing work used to be about a quarter of our caseload, but it’s now halved.”
Beginning in 2020, the program has expanded to five other county courts. Smithberg said he would like to see more of it.
“I think it’s going to be a very disturbing time in the state’s history,” he said. “It’s just an all-time record. I don’t think people have seen the effects of something like this for a long period of time.” think.”
Eviction is a civil procedure. That is, defendants are not constitutionally guaranteed the right to an attorney, as they are when facing criminal charges.
In the Midwest, only a handful of cities in Ohio, Missouri, and Minnesota legally guarantee the right to an attorney for renters facing eviction.
Most renters who oppose eviction are skewed toward women, people of color, and people with disabilities, and rely on programs like Iowa Legal Aid when possible.
John Biderman, an Iowa legal aid attorney who helps run the eviction helpdesk at the Linn County Courthouse in eastern Iowa, says his job often involves signing contracts with landlords to help renters spend more time. He said that it is to be able to make plans over time.
He wants to help tenants avoid adding evictions to the record that can make housing much harder to find.
“Being kicked out of your home is a huge danger to a person, and if you can prevent it, or end homelessness once a week, you can make a big difference in someone’s life.” he said.
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Other programs, such as the Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law, have also shifted priorities away from other health care-related cases, such as access to insurance and affordable prescription drugs, and improved housing. It is more focused on
“Originally, we were doing mostly healthcare access type jobs,” he said. Fran Quigley, IU’s clinical professor who directs the clinic. “But the most important need we saw in our community during the pandemic was housing.”
Quigley says it will take much more than eviction conversion programs like his to address this growing public health crisis.
He said he wants major policy changes, including stronger tenant protection laws and more funding behind federal housing vouchers to keep people at home. rice field.
“As a country, we make the mistake of treating housing as a commodity rather than a right,” he said.
This story was born in collaboration with Side Effects Public Media. WFYIMoreand Midwest Newsroom — an investigative journalism collaboration that includes IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media News, St. Louis Public Radio, and NPR.
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