Right now, amidst the pandemic of 2020, we are seeing the highest rental rates in history and big trouble for the USA, when we’re experiencing a tremendous teleworking urban exodus, rural areas are getting top dollar rents which are a fraction of the metropolitan rental rates which are more common in high tech geographic centers.
Great for those moving from the city to the country, not so much for the locals looking for a place to live because they are having to compete with the city slickers.
Highest Rental Rates
In 2020 rental rates are the highest they have ever been in all states across the USA, with California, Washington DC, and Hawaii seeing the heaviest increases of all.
The Shift from Homeownership to Rental
The tech industry has embraced the idea of renting over ownership, seeing renting as a cost of doing business, a monthly expense without the trappings of being a mortgage holder, enabling the renter to more easily relocate with little notice. This preference to rent over buying a home is spreading all across the United States, as the rental rates rise, as there are now more renters than homeowners who are renting.
2020 Pandemic Challenges
Now comes the 2020 pandemic which has people who previously worked in jobs for employers who are dropping out of the sky like raindrops. The disenfranchised workers were blessed initially with unemployment benefits and a $600 per week, that was then, this is now. The $600 is long gone, and now it’s straight unemployment compensation, which has been extended, but it is hard to make the ends meet, like that.
This is getting to dangerous proportions, as these non-telecommuting unemployed Americans are in trouble and find they are unable to pay their rent. For now, the Center for Disease Control and many states have suspended a landlord’s ability to evict a renter for failure to pay total rents (renters are required to pay something, whatever they can) during the pandemic, essentially allowing these marginal unemployed individuals and families to stay in their housing rent-free. But those days are coming to an end as the moratorium on eviction expires at the end of the year. Then what?
There is some mortgage relief for landlords if they get in trouble for non-rent-payers. They can skip mortgage payments and have them put on the back end of their mortgages without penalty. Even so,
Eviction and Homeless Crisis
With 22 million Americans who have lost their jobs, and 70 percent of them have no job to return to, what will happen when we witness the largest eviction event in history and 40 million people are potentially homeless?
Look for Jobs Online While There’s Still Time
Granted, some of these displaced workers have found their way back into the workforce by securing telecommuting work from home jobs online and they have made themselves bulletproof from the coming housing, eviction, and ensuing homelessness crisis of 2021.
And there’s still time for you, or someone you know, to start to look for some of these telecommuting employment arrangements that are available right now, as this is the season to find jobs online.