As part of the new $900 billion federal stimulus package, the moratorium on evictions for renters will be extended by one month, through the end of January. The help could not come soon enough, said an expert on social and economic development at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
However, without more intentional, long-term solutions and investments, this aid will only postpone an inevitable housing crisis, a new survey shows.
“Data from our recent survey indicates that the impact of COVID-19 on homeowners not only still exists, but it has significantly worsened, especially among Black and Hispanic households and young adults,” said Michal Grinstein-Weiss, the Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor and director of the university’s Social Policy Institute.
Grinstein-Weiss is the principal investigator for the institute’s Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey. The survey was administered in late April and early May (Wave 1) and late August (Wave 2) to over 5,000 nationally representative U.S. households each time.
“We found that the eviction/foreclosure rate of Black and Hispanic respondents increased by 7% as compared to only 2% among white respondents,” Grinstein-Weiss said. “Additionally, Black respondents were almost twice as likely to be forced to move as non-Hispanic white respondents in Wave 2 (late August), despite being least likely to be forced to move during Wave 1 (early May). While the jump in eviction risk among Black households is certainly alarming, Hispanic respondents maintain the highest vulnerability to eviction among the three groups both in Wave 1 and Wave 2.”
In addition to severe disparities in housing hardships based on race and ethnicity, the survey indicated a significant increase in hardship over time among young adults.
“In both survey waves, young adults (18-39 years old) were the most vulnerable to housing-related hardships, followed by middle-aged adults (40-54 years old), then older adults (55+ years old), and Wave 2 further widens the gap,” Grinstein-Weiss said.
Nearly twice as many young adults reported both eviction/foreclosure and mortgage/rent delinquency, or payment delay, in August as compared to May.
“This is compounding the financial situation of young adults who have had a shorter amount of time to accumulate protective financial assets, making it harder to weather the shock of the pandemic,” she said.
“Every member of society is impacted by this housing situation. Stable shelter is an essential tool to combat the spread of the coronavirus.”
For more from Grinstein-Weiss and co-author Yung Chun about their findings related to housing hardships, visit the Brookings Institution blog. Other research from the Socioeconomic Impacts of COID-19 Survey in the U.S. and Israel are available at the Social Policy Institute’s website.
Researchers at the Brown School are conducting discussion groups with parents and staff in the Special School District of St. Louis County (SSD) to develop communication tools surrounding COVID-19 testing and vaccination. The research is funded by a two-year, $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to the Washington University School of Medicine to offer 50,000 saliva tests to students, teachers and staff in the six special education schools operated by the district.
The grant will serve about 750 families in the district who have children in kindergarten through the 12th grade. The saliva tests will be voluntary and offered weekly to teachers, staff and students over the next year.
The pandemic has disproportionately impacted students with special needs, especially those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, in part because they rely on daily structure and in-person support for learning and social growth. Due to underlying medical conditions experienced by many such students, this student population is at a higher risk for developing COVID-19 and severe complications of the virus.
“The widespread closure of schools has particularly impacted the well-being of these children,” said Jason Newland, MD, co-principal investigator of the project and a professor of pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the School of Medicine. He has advised multiple school districts in Missouri on plans for reopening schools. “It is a major priority to get children with disabilities back into the schools while providing a safe environment for the students and staff, and a key component of achieving this goal is ample testing that can rapidly detect COVID-19 infections within the school community.”
The Brown School’s role will be to assess the perspectives of parents and school staff to develop messaging that can encourage participation in regular testing and overcome barriers to it.
“Our discussion groups are underway and have already provided valuable insights to inform communication with parents, teachers and staff. This information is also helping to shape the testing process being implemented in the schools by our medical school colleagues,” said Nancy Mueller, director of the Brown School Evaluation Center and an assistant dean who is leading that part of the research. “We hope that our findings can be useful not only for COVID testing but also for vaccinations to provide protection from the virus in the future.” Participating Brown School faculty include Charlene Caburnay, research assistant professor and co-director of the Health Communication Research Laboratory; Virginia McKay, research assistant professor; and Byron Powell, assistant professor.
The funding stems from $500 million awarded by the NIH National Institutes of Health as part of the agency’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) initiative to provide underserved communities with rapid testing for COVID-19. The money was part of the CARES Act passed by Congress to respond to the pandemic.
The saliva test provides easy and fast testing with same-day results, ideal for screening large communities. It was developed by the School of Medicine’s Department of Genetics and the McDonnell Genome Institute, in collaboration with a biotechnology company.
“The Special School District is eager to partner with Washington University to improve the lives of students with disabilities, especially during this time of COVID,” said Elizabeth Keenan, Ph.D., SSD’s superintendent.
SSD’s special education schools serve students from all school districts in St. Louis County, including those residing in socioeconomically stressed neighborhoods, where many families have heightened exposure to COVID-19, as well as disproportionate vulnerability to its most serious consequences. SSD’s students returned part-time to in-person learning in November.
The Brown School’s Health Communication Research Laboratory (HCRL) has received two grants totaling $1.57 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to understand and address Covid-19 health disparities. The first study will examine how low-income workers have been affected by the pandemic, while the second will develop and test communication strategies to increase Covid-19 testing and vaccination in underserved populations.
The studies will be led by Matthew Kreuter, Kahn Family Professor of Public Health at the Brown School and Senior Scientist at the HCRL. Both studies include cross-disciplinary teams from the School of Medicine (Kia Davis and Amy McQueen), the Brown School (Charlene Caburnay, Niko Verdecias and Jennifer Wolff) and the Department of Psychology (Tom Rodebaugh). “The impact of COVID-19 on the lives and health of low-income Americans and racial and ethnic minorities has been especially severe,” Kreuter said. “These studies will help assure that public health responses meet their needs.”
The communication study, which also involves 2-1-1 helplines in CT, NC, NE, and WA, is part of NIH’s national initiative, Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics for Underserved Populations, or RADx-UP, which aims to increase access to COVID-19 testing in vulnerable populations. Both studies are 2-year projects. Funding came from the $1.1 billion CARES Act, which Congress passed to accelerate the development of technologies to address the pandemic, primarily through testing and education. The HCRL proposed a series of rapid-cycle studies to inform the messaging of underserved populations about testing and vaccination.
“The goal is to make sure underserved Americans can easily get tested and vaccinated, and we need strategies that will work. Our team will be collaborating with other researchers and community partners around the country to develop effective approaches through science,” Kreuter said. “It is exciting to be part of the solution, helping bring this pandemic to an end.”