Beautiful Virgin Islands

Thursday, Sep 04, 2025

America’s Health Crisis Is Becoming a Housing Crisis

America’s Health Crisis Is Becoming a Housing Crisis

The current housing crisis could get messy quickly, but fixing it shouldn’t be complicated, if Congress intervenes. A Lot of Americans Are About to Lose Their Homes.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a historical accelerant. It has compressed 10 years of online-shopping growth into a few months, bankrupted chains that were in steady decline, hastened Democratic gains in the Sun Belt, sped up an urban exodus from America’s most expensive cities, and persuaded my grandmother to finally use Instacart. All of this was bound to happen eventually. The coronavirus just mashed its big fat thumb on the fast-forward button.

And now a housing problem years in the making is dangerously close to spiraling out of control.

Before the pandemic, half of U.S renters spent 30 percent of their income on housing. The poorest quintile of Americans spent more than half their income on rent, on average. Even in a healthy economy, housing costs were eating workers’ wages.

Then the plague hit, and low-income workers were hit hardest. With the face-to-face economy shut down, the retail and leisure industries shed tens of millions of jobs in a matter of weeks. An analysis by the NYU Furman Center found that in New York City, the households most likely to face an “economic disruption”—including losing a job, or having hours cut back—spent the highest share of their income on housing.

Without intervention, the COVID-19-induced economic crisis is in danger of becoming a housing crisis. Data on rent payments are hard to come by, but one survey has found that a third of Americans say they failed to make a full housing payment in June. By September, more than 20 million renters will be at risk of eviction, especially as eviction moratoriums come to an end. Without income, renters can't pay rent and utilities. Without monthly payments, landlords and other companies can’t make mortgages and bond payments.

Perhaps this is all starting to sound like a redux of the mid-2000s housing crisis. It’s not. The Great Recession was driven in large part by declining standards in mortgage underwriting. When the bubble burst, foreclosures soared, homes stood empty, housing prices fell, homeownership rates fell, and more people rented in dense cities.

The 2020 housing market is the opposite, in almost every way. Demand for downtown apartments is deteriorating. Sales of newly built homes rose faster in June than any month since 2005. Watchdogs perceive no trouble in underwriting. Rather than too many houses, the hot market is defined by a historic undersupply of single-family and multifamily houses, thanks to a decade of insufficient building and, now, the shutdown of new construction in much of the country.

Still, one thing unites the crises of 2020 and 2008: the urgent need for intervention by the U.S government. The current housing crisis could get messy quickly, but fixing it shouldn’t be complicated. It will just take something that, unlike public-health competence, the federal government has in nearly infinite supply: money.

In March, Congress passed the CARES Act, which distributed a onetime stimulus check to tens of millions of households, expanded unemployment benefits by $600 a week (and made them available to self-employed and gig workers), and authorized the distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars to companies to keep them from laying off their workers. Meanwhile, dozens of cities and states passed moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures. Hurried and patchy as these programs might seem, they’ve largely worked to keep people in their homes. They need to be extended imminently, or a terrible economy will get far worse.

“There are two things we need to do right now,” says Bill McBride, an economic writer at the blog Calculated Risk. “First, we need to keep doing CARES Acts until this is over. If we run the debt up $10 trillion, it will be money saved. Second, we’ve got to get a grip on the pandemic, and that probably means shutting every indoor business down for a few months again and moving as much outdoors as we can.”

Pandemics are complicated, but pandemic economics is simple. Get families cash, or people will go hungry and lose their home. Get companies cash, or firms will fire their workers and disappear from their communities. Stop the pandemic, or else suffering and devastation will continue no matter how much cash we spend. The United States has been terrible at following the third rule. But in the next few weeks, Congress has a chance to do what it does best—appropriate money. If it doesn’t, we will all accelerate into a world nobody wants to live in.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Putin Celebrates ‘Unprecedentedly High’ Ties with China as Gazprom Seals Power of Siberia-2 Deal
China Unveils New Weapons in Grand Military Parade as Xi Hosts Putin and Kim
Queen Camilla’s Teenage Courage: Fended Off Attempted Assault on London Train, New Biography Reveals
Scottish Brothers Set Record in Historic Pacific Row
Rapper Cardi B Cleared of Liability in Los Angeles Civil Assault Trial
Google Avoids Break-Up in U.S. Antitrust Case as Stocks Rise
Couple celebrates 80th wedding anniversary at assisted living facility in Lancaster
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
The White House on LinkedIn Has Changed Their Profile Picture to Donald Trump
"Insulted the Prophet Muhammad": Woman Burned Alive by Angry Mob in Niger State, Nigeria
Trump Responds to Death Rumors – Announces 'Missile City'
Court of Appeal Allows Asylum Seekers to Remain at Essex Hotel Amid Local Tax Boycott Threats
Germany in Turmoil: Ukrainian Teenage Girl Pushed to Death by Illegal Iraqi Migrant
United Krack down on human rights: Graham Linehan Arrested at Heathrow Over Three X Posts, Hospitalised, Released on Bail with Posting Ban
Asian and Middle Eastern Investors Avoid US Markets
Ray Dalio Warns of US Shift to Autocracy
Eurozone Inflation Rises to 2.1% in August
Russia and China Sign New Gas Pipeline Deal
China's Robotics Industry Fuels Export Surge
Suntory Chairman Resigns After Police Probe
Gold Price Hits New All-Time Record
Von der Leyen's Plane Hit by Suspected Russian GPS Interference in an Incident Believed to Be Caused by Russia or by Pro-Peace or by Anti-Corruption European Activists
UK Fintechs Explore Buying US Banks
Greece Suspends 5% of Schools as Birth Rate Drops
Apollo to Launch $5 Billion Sports Investment Vehicle
Bolsonaro Trial Nears Close Amid US-Brazil Tension
European Banks Push for Lower Cross-Border Barriers
Poland's Offshore Wind Sector Attracts Investors
Nvidia Reveals: Two Mystery Customers Account for About 40% of Revenue
Woody Allen: "I Would Be Happy to Direct Trump Again in a Film"
Pickles are the latest craze among Generation Z in the United States.
Deadline Day Delivers Record £125m Isak Move and Donnarumma to City
Nestlé Removes CEO Laurent Freixe Following Undisclosed Relationship with Subordinate
Giuliani Seriously Injured in Accident – Trump to Award Him the Presidential Medal of Freedom
EU is getting aggressive: Four AfD Candidates Die Unexpectedly Ahead of North Rhine-Westphalia Local Elections
Lula and Putin Hold Strategic BRICS Discussions Ahead of Trump–Putin Summit
WhatsApp is rolling out a feature that looks a lot like Telegram.
Investigations Reveal Rise in ‘Sex-for-Rent’ Listings Across Canada Exploiting Vulnerable Tenants
Chinese and Indian Leaders Pursue Amity Amid Global Shifts
European Union Plans for Ukraine Deployment
ECB Warns Against Inflation Complacency
Concerns Over North Cyprus Casino Development
Shipping Companies Look Beyond Chinese Finance
Rural Exodus Fueling European Wildfires
China Hosts Major Security Meeting
Chinese Police Successfully Recover Family's Savings from Livestream Purchases
Germany Marks a Decade Since Migrant Wave with Divisions, Success Stories, and Political Shifts
Liverpool Defeat Arsenal 1–0 with Szoboszlai Free-Kick to Stay Top of Premier League
Prince Harry and King Charles to Meet in First Reunion After 20 Months
Chinese Stock Market Rally Fueled by Domestic Investors
×