Resuming evictions caused over 10,000 deaths in just six months
Evictions are murder. They help spread the virus.
So we were supposed to go to eviction court the day before Thanksgiving. We were about to make the trip but at the very last moment found out that it would not happen. There had been a bureaucratic mishap. Now our day in court is set for late January — less than two months from now and two months before Evgenia’s due to give birth.
Ever since the lockdown began in March, I’ve been saying that allowing evictions to go forward during a pandemic is premeditated murder. Evgenia and I even took part in a few early protests calling on Los Angeles to suspend evictions and provide rent support — which was months before we ourselves got hit with a frivolous eviction by our landlord. Now a new study that’s supposed to be published tomorrow backs this worry up: evictions spread the virus, they kill people — lots of them.
According to CNBC:
The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, San Francisco, Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and Wake Forest University School of Law, found that lifting state moratoriums and allowing eviction proceedings to continue caused as many as 433,700 excess cases of Covid-19 and 10,700 additional deaths in the U.S. between March and September.
"When people are evicted, they often move in with friends and family, and that increases your number of contacts," said Kathryn Leifheit, one of the authors on the research and a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. "If people have to enter a homeless shelter, these are indoor places that can be quite crowded."
To best understand the direct impact that evictions continuing in a state has on the spread of the coronavirus, the researchers controlled for stay-at-home orders, mask orders, school closures, testing rates and other factors. The study period was from March to early September, before the most recent spike in cases.
Despite all of this, Los Angeles County has revved up its evictions court again. That means that under LA’s current lockdown regime, people can’t enjoy a socially distanced coffee in an outdoor cafe but they can be forced to spend hours in inside court room — and then get kicked out on the street. That’s life in progressive, liberal California. Landlords uber alles!
—Yasha Levine
Yasha, I think you've hit on a really important point with regard to evictions.
By way of example: We've got very bad youth suicide and child poverty here in New Zealand.
For example, from a 2017 report:
"...Think of New Zealand and what likely comes to mind is beautiful nature - fjords, mountains and magnificent landscapes, vast, empty and endless.
But for years already, the country has been struggling with another form of isolation - depression and suicide.
A new report by UNICEF contains a shocking statistic - New Zealand has by far the highest youth suicide rate in the developed world..."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40284130
The majority of the news coverage down here this year, similar to everywhere else has been about covid. We are up to 25 deaths from covid so far: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealand/
==> There is hardly any coverage in NZ about youth suicide anymore. <==
In the USA, there are, as you have mentioned at various times, evictions, poverty, lack of access to healthcare, the opioid crisis, etc. All of these are serious issues that deserve a lot media coverage.
And yet, it seems all the coverage is on covid...but the actual numbers are confusing to me, in that with five weeks left to 2020, it seems 2018 was also very bad for the USA?
2,839,205 passed away in 2018
Source for 2018 number: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db355.htm
2,590,780 passed away in 2020 (week ending 21st Nov)
Source for 2020 number: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
Side by side: https://imgbox.com/JsFxLnvF
It pains me to say it, but I'd rather see wall to wall coverage of how NZ is going to stop our young people killing themselves, or how the US is going to address poverty, than repeated reporting of case numbers.
This is just my opinion of course, but for the record, not being a US citizen, I'm not a democrat or a republican obviously. I do however think Trump is on some sort of spectrum found in the DSM-IV 😉
Evictions kill people in a pandemic, lots of people, as the studies show.