The problems for Roland Carroll started last fall.
That's when the 61-year-old said his apartment complex in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, informed him that federal housing assistance for his one-bedroom apartment had been reduced months ago.
He owed more than $2,000 in back rent.
“I was in shock,” Carroll said. “So how on earth could I owe that amount without you saying something months ago?”
Carol doesn't have a car and works odd jobs through a local temp agency. He struggled to pay the back rent and come up with $339 for his share of the monthly rent.
“November and December – hardly any work had been done. So I was in a real bind,” he said.
A few days after Christmas, his apartment complex filed for eviction.
Carroll said he was concerned because local shelters were full and he has long-standing health problems that cost money.
“I am diabetic. I have arthritis. I have asthma. I'm just a mess,” he said.
With the help of a non-profit organization Iowa Legal AidCarroll successfully dismissed the case at his hearing in mid-January because his apartment did not give him adequate notice.
Now, he said he's still struggling to pay the rent and his apartment continues to send him notices threatening to file for another eviction.
This takes a toll on his health.
“I was so stressed,” Carroll said. “My mental health is very bad at the moment.”
Eviction as a matter of health
With the end of pandemic-era housing supports such as eviction moratoriums and federal rental assistance, many Midwesterners are facing housing insecurity.
Iowa eviction filings are on the rise for the last decade. After a brief decline in 2020 and 2021, they hit a record high of more than 18,000 in 2022, according to Iowa Legal Aid data.
The eviction moratorium issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expired in mid-2021.
And Iowa – like most states – ran out of federal funding emergency rental and utility program last year.
“Rent is a huge part of household expenses,” said Nick Graetz, a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University. Eviction workshop. “And it just soared at unprecedented rates during the pandemic. But rents have been outpacing wages for decades.”
As of March 2020, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment has risen 13% percent in Iowa, nearly 18% percent in Missouri and more than 26% percent in Indiana, according to US News and World Report.
Eviction applications are on the rise Indiana and Missourivery.
Facing eviction can have a huge impact on someone's health, Graetz said.
“The result is that people go from paying 60% of their income on rent to 70% of their income on rent, and they kind of have to absorb that cost by giving up things like preventive health care, facing more food insecurity , You know. things like that,” he said.
According to a literature review published in the journal Social Science and Medicinestudies have linked eviction to depression, anxiety, high blood pressure and childhood abuse.
A 2021 study published in the journal Pediatrics found that women in Georgia who experienced eviction during pregnancy were more likely to have children with lower birth weights.
Chronic health problems or a health emergency can also put a tenant at greater risk of eviction.
“It's hard when you're trying to navigate something like this,” Graetz said. “It can [you] fall behind on rent and then you can quickly get into that space where it becomes very difficult to avoid an eviction.”
Possible legislative assistance
Federal and state lawmakers have proposed a variety of policy solutions to fight evictions, including protecting new tenants and expanding emergency rental assistance programs.
Iowa lawmakers have made available more than $300 million in tax credits to incentivize developers to build affordable housing;
Minnesota lawmakers are considering rent voucher program which could help 220,000 households.
But it's often unclear which policies are most effective, he said Katie Moran-McCabechief law and policy analyst at Temple University's Center for Public Health Law Research.
“We don't often see these laws evaluated,” he said. “So the law works? Does it do what it is intended to do? Are there any unintended consequences?'
Non-profit programs are being strengthened
A growing solution has been eviction diversion programs such as Eviction Diversion Assistance Office Program run by Iowa Legal Aid.
The nonprofit launched the program in the spring of 2020, which placed an eviction assistance office at the courthouse in Polk County, Iowa's most populous county.
Similar programs exist in Illinois and Missouri.
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A rapid increase in requests for eviction assistance has forced Legal Aid of Iowa to reshape its priorities, Executive Director Nick Smithberg said.
“Basically, it structurally changed our organization,” he said. “Where historically housing was about a quarter of our caseload, it's halved.”
As of 2020, the program has expanded to five more county courts. Smithberg said he would like to see it in more.
“I think we're going to see a very, very troubling time in the history of this state,” he said. “It's just an all-time record. I don't think people have seen the results of something like that over an extended period of time. And I think it's going to be very impressive to a lot of people when you start seeing people on the streets.”
Eviction is a civil process, which means that defendants do not have the constitutionally guaranteed right to an attorney as they do when facing criminal charges.
In the Midwest, only a few cities in Ohio, Missouri and Minnesota legally guarantees tenants facing eviction right to a lawyer.
Most tenants fight evictions – which are disproportionately large women, colored and people with disabilities – rely on programs, such as Iowa Legal Aid, if available.
Jon Biderman, an Iowa Legal Aid attorney who helps run the eviction assistance office at the Linn County Courthouse in eastern Iowa, said his job is often to work out a deal with landlords so tenants have more time to settle. in a design.
He wants to help renters avoid adding an eviction to their record, which can make finding housing that much more difficult.
“Homelessness – elimination – is such a crisis for a person that if you can prevent it or even buy a week, that can really make a difference in a person's life,” he said.
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Side Effects Public Media
Other programs such as Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University's Robert H. McKinney School of Law have also shifted their priorities from other health care-related issues, such as access to insurance and affordable prescription drugs, to focus more on housing.
“At first we mostly did health care access type work,” he said Fran Quigley, clinical professor at IU, who directs the clinic. “But during the pandemic, the most critical need we saw in our community was a housing response.”
Quigley said it will take much more than displacement diversion programs like his to address this growing public health crisis.
He said he would like to see major policy changes, such as stronger tenant protection laws and much more funding behind federal housing vouchers, to keep people in their homes.
“We, as a nation, are wrong to treat housing as a commodity rather than a right,” he said.
This story comes from a collaboration between Side Effects Public Media, based on WFYIand the Midwest Newsroom — an investigative journalism partnership that includes IPRKCUR 89.3, New Nebraska Public Media, Public Radio St. Louisand NPR.
Copyright 2023 Side Effects Public Media. To see more, visit Side Effects Public Media.
