File image
File image
Houston is now the largest U.S. city to allow evictions as the Texas Supreme Court has lifted the moratorium due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We anticipate that there will be a tsunami of evictions filed," Dana Karni, an attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid, told South Carolina Public Radio. "I have no doubt about it; we are going to see homelessness."
While evictions are now allowed in Houston, unemployment in the city is still high, which means many families will have trouble paying rent.
Shamus Roller, executive director for the National Housing Law Project, said 40% of households that have incomes of less than $40,000 saw unemployment in March.
"It's staggering to try to get your head around what that means in practice," Roller told South Carolina Public Radio.
Other cities that begin lifting moratoriums will be expecting the same skyrocketing of eviction, and it doesn't help matters that new cases of the coronavirus are still being reported.
"Displacing people from their housing and sending them out to look for additional housing or sending them into homelessness is a danger for all of us," Roller told South Carolina Public Radio.
Alerts Sign-up