United States | The rent is too damn high

Pandemic eviction bans have spawned a renters’-rights movement

The housing crunch has Democrats pushing for more tenant protections

2CY21KJ Tenants and housing rights activists protest for a halting of rent payments and mortgage debt, during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., October 1, 2020. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson — Image: Alamy

Feb 16th 2023|Los Angeles

A BAN ON evictions sounds simple. In practice, it was anything but. As covid-19 spread across America in early 2020, the federal government, 43 states and countless municipalities issued some kind of eviction moratorium. The result was a patchwork of policies to help renters stay in their homes. Some places prevented landlords from filing petitions to evict. Elsewhere, courts stopped processing evictions, or officials avoided locking people out of their homes. Several governments offered grace periods for late rent.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The rent is too damn high”