OVER 11 MILLION AMERICANS ARE BEHIND ON THEIR RENT

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Economy – December 26, 2020

TrueNewsBlog- TNB

By: Steve Johnson

While Congress and President Trump argue over the amount of money to doll out to citizens, 11.3 million Americans have not been able to pay their rent for the last nine months. Without federal aid and an extension of the eviction moratorium on evictions which is scheduled to end in five days (December 31, 2020) million of Americans may become homeless.

An estimated 11.3 million households in the country are behind on rent or won’t be able to pay next month according to the Census Bureau, creating a backlog in unpaid rent estimated at $70 billion by Moody’s Analytics. Landlords have responded by filing hundreds of thousands of eviction notices at local courthouses around the country, cases that are ready to advance once moratoriums are no longer in place. 

Meanwhile, unemployment benefits will come to an end unless President Trump signs the bill on Saturday. But many states will need additional time to reprogram their computer systems to account for the extension in unemployment benefits.  But unemployed workers would still be able to claim the benefits.

Further  delays could prove more costly because States cannot pay out benefits for weeks that begin before the bill is signed, meaning that if the president does not sign the bill by Saturday, benefits will not restart until the first week of January. But they will still end in mid-March, effectively trimming the extension to 10 weeks from 11.