Ongoing research has revealed a potentially massive COVID-19 impact on the two- to four-unit properties that house more than a third of Chicago’s renters and likely represents a broader potential crisis throughout Illinois and in major cities across the United States.
Like the pandemic itself, this impact disproportionally threatens Latinx and Black renters and owner-occupants in the buildings. Communities of color have borne the brunt of the widespread suffering caused by the pandemic in almost every way: they have experienced a higher incidence of the disease; higher mortality rates; greater loss of income; and a higher unemployment rate than Whites.
The loss of income has left millions of renter households unable to pay their rent, with the threat of eviction falling most heavily on lower-income households because they have fewer resources than more affluent households to tide them over until they can recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.