Calif. Landlords Locking Out Struggling Families; 'Tsunami' of Evictions May Be Next (Hoovervilles?)
'California landlords are locking out struggling tenants. A 'tsunami of evictions' may be next.' By Sam Levin in LA, The Guardian, July 31, 2020. Ed.:
As Covid-19 continues to pummel the state, hundreds of thousands of renters are at risk of becoming homeless. Christopher Borunda’s landlords locked him out. Theresa Ribeiro’s landlord left vulgar voicemails threatening to remove her. Denise Briggs’s landlord said he was selling her house and she couldn’t stay.
Some California tenants have faced increasingly aggressive eviction efforts over the last month, despite emergency protections meant to preserve people’s housing during the coronavirus pandemic. And although advocates have urged state officials to strengthen the rules, key renters’ protections are set to expire without new state plans in place.
The result, experts say, could be catastrophic. Amid rising coronavirus infections and a worsening economic crisis, hundreds of thousands of renters are now at risk of becoming homeless in California, potentially exacerbating the state’s dire housing crisis. In addition, advocates fear the lack of protections will embolden some landlords to resort to hostile methods to get their renters out, at a time when many Californians have nowhere to go.
With so many families facing huge rent debt, advocates are urging the state to act. The only viable solution, some activists say, is rent relief – a move that elected officials have so far resisted. “When talking about the scale of eviction and mass displacement, it’s pretty unimaginable,” said Ananya Roy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The state, she said, was headed towards even more dire conditions than the shanty towns or “Hoovervilles” of the 1930s. “This will be worse than the Great Depression.”...
More, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/30/california-covid-19-evictions-landlords-tenants
________________
- "Hoovervilles' The Great Depression, HISTORY
https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/hoovervilles
During the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted approximately a decade, shantytowns appeared across the U.S. as unemployed people were evicted from their homes. As the Depression worsened in the 1930s, causing severe hardships for millions of Americans, many looked to the federal government for assistance.
When the government failed to provide relief, President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was blamed for the intolerable economic and social conditions, and the shantytowns that cropped up across the nation, primarily on the outskirts of major cities, became known as Hoovervilles. The highly unpopular Hoover, a Republican, was defeated in the 1932 presidential election by Democrat Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945), whose New Deal recovery programs eventually helped lift the U.S. out of the Depression. In the early 1940s, most remaining Hoovervilles were torn down.
- The Great Depression Sets In: The Great Depression was the most severe and enduring economic collapse of the 20th century, and included abrupt declines in the supply and demand of goods and services along with a meteoric rise in unemployment. 1933 is generally regarded as the worst year of the Depression: One-quarter of America’s workers–more than 15 million people–was out of work....https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/hoovervilles
= new reply since forum marked as read
