With the threat of a coronavirus-fueled eviction crisis looming, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a sweeping ban on evictions, although it is unclear what its impact will be. Yet the need to address the problem is urgent. Housing policy experts warn that “the United States may be facing the most severe housing crisis in its history.” As many as 40,000 Americans — up to 43 percent of renter households — risk eviction by the end of 2020. African American and Hispanic households are especially vulnerable to lost wages and eviction notices.
The potential “homeless pandemic” threatens both economic security and public health. And yet, the country has faced this type of crisis before — and made significant strides in ensuring social welfare as a result.
During the Great Depression, social scientists Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott launched a study of the Chicago Renters’ Court. Established to hear cases in which tenants were subject to immediate eviction for nonpayment of rent, the court was busy during the Depression; from 1931 to 1933, total evictions in the city doubled.
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Their research showed that a sharp decline in regular employment caused tenants to fall behind in rent payments. While no demographic group was immune, immigrants and African Americans were especially hard-hit by the economic downtown. Indeed, the study commenced in 1932, a year after a rent riot in the predominantly African American South Side prompted the court to seek rental assistance from charitable agencies before enforcing eviction notices.
The study demonstrated a precipitous drop in family income as a result of months or even years of unemployment. For example, the Whitneys, an African American family who appeared at the court in spring 1932, previously had three earners. Floyd Whitney had worked for a publishing company, but he had been out of work for two years in 1932. His wife, Carrie Whitney, had worked as a maid, but had been out of work for five months. And her brother, Rufus Rice, who worked in a pickle factory, had been out of work for seven weeks. In two years, the family’s total monthly income had dropped from $261 to zero.
As the Depression deepened, even families that had enjoyed financial security before the crisis struggled to survive. Such clients reported having steady incomes, acquiring savings and in some cases even purchasing property before the Great Depression. By 1932, however, they had lost everything.
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Tom and Margaret Riley were in this position. Before 1929, the Rileys had been relatively affluent African Americans, living in a comfortable apartment with quality furniture that they owned outright. (By contrast, many clients lived in shabby “furnished rooms” or bought their furniture “on time.”) Tom Riley had worked as a barber, earning $108 a month. Margaret Riley earned more than her husband, making $143 a month at International Harvester. Both Rileys lost their jobs in 1929-30, however. Although they had been using Tom Riley’s veteran’s pension to cover rent and “depending on relatives for food” since the onset of the Depression, they had run out of resources entirely by 1932. “Had savings, gone now,” the case file tersely recorded.
Urgent needs quickly outpaced available resources. To survive, families sold their furniture, clothing and other belongings, moved repeatedly to cheaper and cheaper quarters, borrowed and begged from relatives and friends and finally turned to charitable and relief agencies for support. By spring 1932, however, most private charities had exhausted their funds. Charitable agencies passed needy families on to other sources when they could, but eventually applicants had nowhere else to go.
For instance, the McNerney family began receiving assistance in 1929, when Thomas McNerney, a German American World War I veteran who had been gassed in the war but nonetheless held a job as a machinist before the Depression, lost his job. The McNerneys first received aid from the Salvation Army, then the Red Cross, then the Catholic Charity Bureau and finally the Cook County Veterans’ Service, but the latter agency could not provide rent assistance when the family was threatened with eviction in 1932.
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Many unemployed Chicagoans lost all hope. The Labedz family, Polish American Catholics, received assistance from their local parish for 18 months before funding ran out. With nowhere else to turn, “Mrs. L. is about frantic,” the case file noted, alternating “hysterical weeping” and “almost shrieking” with threats to “smother the baby” or to “turn on the gas and kill the whole family.”
Breckinridge and Abbott used evidence from this study to advocate for federal relief for impoverished Americans. In her memoirs, Abbott maintained that Colorado Sen. Edward Costigan’s inspiration for the nation’s first federal relief bill was a conversation he had with her about homelessness in Chicago in the summer of 1931.
Breckinridge gave Costigan evidence that he presented in Senate hearings on proposed relief legislation to fund public work projects and provide direct assistance to destitute citizens. Abbott also testified on behalf of Costigan’s proposed legislation. The Federal Emergency Relief Act was passed in 1933. It provided federal funding for both work-relief programs and direct financial assistance for needy Americans.
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Abbott and Breckinridge did not stop there. Both women were long-standing advocates of a “national minimum” standard of living guaranteed by the federal government. With Franklin Roosevelt in office, Breckinridge and Abbott had powerful allies in a network of female New Dealers that included first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, Democratic Party leader Mary W. Dewson and U.S. Children’s Bureau Chief Grace Abbott (Edith Abbott’s sister).
They used their connections with this group to advance their aim of creating a comprehensive welfare state. Abbott and Breckinridge worked with members of Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security, created in 1934 to design what would become the Social Security Act, which laid the groundwork for the modern welfare state, including unemployment insurance and old age insurance — now commonly referred to as “Social Security.”
Breckinridge and Abbott helped draft the child welfare portions of the bill. They promoted a new federal program, modeled on the “mothers’ pensions” program Breckinridge had pioneered in Illinois, which became Aid to Dependent Children (later Aid to Families With Dependent Children). They also supported new federally funded programs to provide health care and financial support for poor and disabled children.
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And yet, they fell short in achieving their goal of establishing a “national minimum” for all Americans. A powerful physicians’ lobby thwarted their proposal for universal health insurance. In addition, a widespread view of poor Americans as “pitied but not entitled” limited direct financial aid to those living in poverty, rather than guaranteeing a basic income for all Americans. Finally, while Breckinridge and Abbott advocated public assistance for African Americans, White Americans benefited disproportionately from many New Deal programs.
As the novel coronavirus exacerbates the nation’s preexisting eviction crisis, local and federal officials struggle to find solutions, just as they did during the Great Depression. In some localities, as in the 1930s, innovative measures to prevent homelessness have simply run out of money. In Houston, a $15 million allocation for rent relief established in May was spent in only two days.
At the federal level, the CDC has now issued a temporary halt to evictions, but it may be an overreach of executive power and without funding it may leave renters even more vulnerable come January. Senate Democrats have proposed measures to extend and expand the ban on evictions, but none of these proposals approach the wide scope of the New Deal welfare state.
As the nation seeks solutions to the economic crisis ushered in by the coronavirus, the challenges that Breckinridge and Abbott worked to solve in the 1930s remain. It may be time to take their idea of a “national minimum” for all Americans seriously.
