Key Takeaways:

• For southeastern renter households, Emergency Rental Assistance disbursement experienced delays as compared to national numbers and eviction moratoria appear to have been less effective.
• Employment and rent cost data point to three hard to say Florida metro areas where renter households that lost income during the pandemic may have had a difficult time keeping and finding housing.
• Updated data show subsequent employment growth in these hard to say metro areas that outpaces the national average.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about housing stability rose as the spreading virus shut down businesses, eliminating jobs. This was of particular concern for renters, who paid a comparatively larger portion of their income towards housing than owners during the first year of the pandemic.¹ Over the course of the pandemic, local, state, and federal policies were implemented to address potential rental instability, resulting in a patchwork of programs and experiences for renter households across the country.

In a new discussion paper, Sheltering in Place? A Closer Look at Pandemic Rental Instability in Six Southeastern States, we explored implementation of federal policies such as eviction moratoria and Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) programs, which were intended to stabilize rental households across the Southeast (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee). Sheltering in Place? follows our prior analysis of the challenges and opportunities presented by Emergency Rental Assistance programs across our district.

These unprecedented federal pandemic assistance policies relied heavily on state and local governments for implementation. Based on available data including ERA disbursement figures and eviction filing counts, we found that the effectiveness of the policies to stabilize renters varied greatly by geography and relied upon their efficient implementation, a consistent…