Rolland Carroll’s troubles began last fall.
That’s when the 61-year-old said his apartment complex in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, notified him that federal housing assistance had been reduced for his one-bedroom apartment a few months earlier.
He is behind on more than $2,000 in back rent.
“I was in shock,” Carroll said. “Like, how do I owe so much money if you guys didn’t say it a few months ago?”
Carroll doesn’t own a car and does odd jobs through a local temp agency. He struggled to pay his rent arrears and took out $339 as part of his monthly rent.
“November and December—hardly any work. So I was really stuck,” he said.
A few days after Christmas, his apartment complex filed to evict him.
Carroll said he was worried because local shelters were full and he had many chronic health issues that cost money.
“I have diabetes. I have arthritis. I have asthma. I’m just a mess,” he said.
with the help of nonprofits Iowa Legal AidCarroll successfully had the case dismissed at a hearing in mid-January because his apartment did not give him sufficient notice.
Now, he says he is still struggling to pay rent, and his apartment continues to send him notices threatening to evict him yet again.
This took a toll on his health.
“I was so stressed out,” Carroll said. “My mental health is really bad right now.”
Eviction is a health issue
With the end of pandemic-era housing supports like an eviction moratorium and federal rent assistance, many Midwesterners face housing insecurity.
Eviction filings have been on the rise in Iowa over the past decade. After brief declines in 2020 and 2021, they hit an all-time high of more than 18,000 in 2022, according to Iowa Legal Aid.
The moratorium on evictions issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ends in mid-2021.
Like most states, Iowa ended a federally funded emergency rent and utility program last year.
“Rent is a huge part of household expenses,” said Nick Graetz, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University. expulsion lab“During the pandemic, it just soared at an unprecedented rate. But rents have been outpacing wages for decades.”
Since March 2020, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment has risen 13% in Iowa, nearly 18% in Missouri and more than 26% in Indiana, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Eviction filings were also on the rise in Indiana and Missouri.
Facing deportation can take a huge toll on someone’s health, Gretz said.
“The result is that people spend 60% of their income on rent, up to 70% of their income on rent, and have to cover the cost by forgoing things like preventive health care, facing higher levels of food insecurity, you Know, stuff like that,” he said.
Studies link eviction to depression, anxiety, high blood pressure and child abuse, according to a literature review published in the journal Social Science and Medicine.
A 2021 study published in the journal Pediatrics found that women in Georgia who faced deportation during pregnancy were more likely to have children with lower birth weight.
Chronic health problems or health emergencies may also put tenants at higher risk of eviction.
“It’s difficult when you’re trying to navigate something like this,” Graetz said. “perhaps [you] Arrears on rent, and then you can quickly move into a place where eviction is hard to avoid. “
possible legislative help
Federal and state lawmakers have proposed various policy solutions to combat evictions, including new tenant protections and an expansion of the emergency rental assistance program.
Iowa lawmakers have allocated more than $300 million in tax credits to incentivize developers to build affordable housing.
Minnesota lawmakers are considering a rent coupon program that could help 220,000 households.
However, it is often unclear which policies are most effective, he said Katie Moran-McCabechief legal and policy analyst at Temple University’s Center for Public Health Law Studies.
“We often don’t see these laws being evaluated,” she said. “So is the law working? Is it doing what it was intended to do? Are there any unintended consequences?”
Nonprofit Program Strengthens
One growing solution is eviction diversion programs, such as the eviction diversion help desk program run by Legal Aid of Iowa.
The nonprofit launched the program in the spring of 2020 with an eviction help desk at courthouses in Polk County, Iowa’s most populous county.
Similar programs exist in Illinois and Missouri.
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Executive Director Nick Smithberger said the rapid increase in requests for eviction assistance has forced Iowa’s legal aid agency to realign its priorities.
“Basically, it structurally changed our organization,” he said. “Housing jobs used to be about a quarter of our workload, now it’s up to half.”
Since 2020, the program has expanded to five other county courts. Smithberger said he would like to see more.
“I think we’re going to see a very, very disturbing period in the history of this state,” he said. “It’s just a historical record. I don’t think people have seen the impact of something like this for a sustained period of time. And I think when you start seeing people on the street, it’s an eye-opener for a lot of people.”
Deportation is a civil action, meaning defendants have no constitutional guarantee of access to a lawyer when facing criminal charges.
In the Midwest, only a handful of cities in Ohio, Missouri and Minnesota legally guarantee renters facing eviction the right to an attorney.
Most renters battling evictions — who are disproportionately women, people of color and people with disabilities — rely on programs like Iowa Legal Aid, if they are available.
Jon Biderman, an attorney with Legal Aid of Iowa, who helps manage the eviction help desk at the Lynn County Courthouse in eastern Iowa, said his job is often to reach an agreement with the landlord so that the rental You have more time to plan.
He wants to help tenants avoid having evictions added to their records, which would make it harder to find housing.
“Homelessness — being kicked out — is a crisis for a person, and if you can prevent that from happening, or even buy them a week, that can really change a person’s life,” he said.
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Other programs, such as the Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law, have shifted their focus from other health care-related cases, such as access to insurance and affordable prescription drugs, to a greater focus on housing. .
“Originally we were mostly doing access to health care type jobs,” says Frank Quigley, a clinical professor at IU, directs the clinic. “But during the pandemic, the most pressing need we’re seeing in communities is a housing response.”
Quigley said it will take more than a deportation program like his to address this growing public health crisis.
He said he would like to see major policy changes, such as stronger tenant protection laws and more money behind federal housing vouchers to keep people in their homes.
“As a country, we have made the mistake of viewing housing as a commodity rather than a right,” he said.
This story is from a collaboration between Side Effects Public Media, based on world food programand Midwest Newsroom — an investigative journalism partnership that includes IPR, KCUR 89.3, Nebraska Public Media News, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR.
