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POLITICO NIGHTLY: The mystery of the missing vaccines

BY JOANNE KENEN Presented by McDonald's With help from Renuka Rayasam and Myah Ward THE MISSING VACCINES AND THE DATA BLACK LAGOON — White House officials say they have had trouble accounting for all the vaccine shots sent to the states . As of this morning, 56 million doses have been delivered, and only about 34 million of them ended up in arms. That’s according to the CDC count at 9 a.m. ET at least — a separate state health organization just a few hours later cited a 36 million-in-arms number. Which is as good as any place to start. Let’s just say straight off that — despite what some on Twitter may think about “missing” doses — there’s no massive nefarious disappearing vaccine plot here. You can call off Nancy Drew. There are no signs of a black market being run out of the Trump hotel. Based on what we’ve heard from health officials, state, federal and local, it’s more mundane. A patient receives a Covid-19 vaccination in Federal Way, Wash. | Getty Images Some hospitals are keeping more shots than they probably need to in the freezer because they aren’t yet confident in the supply line as they book appointments, including for second doses. Some smaller vaccination centers in more rural areas dispense fewer shots per day, running down their stock more slowly. And a data system so byzantine that, as Nirav Shah, director of Maine’s CDC, put it, tracking vaccinations can be like comparing “apples to tires.” So it’s really hard to know where each and every one of those vaccines is — in arms, in freezers, with a few discarded. Somewhere, perhaps something may have in fact gone wrong (unreported spoilage, theft). Knowing as much as possible is important as the country tries to do a better job of tracking who is getting vaccinated, who is not getting vaccinated, is it equitable, and how to do it better. State and local officials bristle at being accused of hoarding or mismanagement, and given any chance at all they’ll turn the subject to the supply line. They say they are delivering shots as fast as they can, and as soon as the spigots open, they’ll deliver even more. They say vaccine sites being too conservative about storage should be easing up now that the Biden administration has told them how much they can expect and when over three weeks. A few told me that some health care facilities had more staff than they initially anticipated turn down the shot — but that more of them are now baring their arms as they’ve watched their coworkers get inoculated without harmful effects. So their inventory gaps are closing. But it’s also clear that the coronavirus vaccine tracking system is barely a system. Sometimes hospital workers enter the vaccination in a patient’s electronic medical record — without understanding that it doesn’t connect to the state vaccine registry. Sometimes second doses are double-counted. Sometimes a vaccine distribution site “batches” the data, meaning they do it every few days, not in real time, so it looks like there are more discrepancies. Some reports are “delayed or missing,” the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers executive director Mike Fraser acknowledged in a press call today. And sometimes it’s just the delivery schedule. Vaccines aren’t delivered to states every day — so, Shah said, if you have appointments scheduled for Monday, but you aren’t getting another shipment until Wednesday, you can’t use them all up on Sunday. The “gap” waxes and wanes. Fixing the data systems isn’t going to happen over night. But as the Biden administration asserts, cautiously, that the vaccination drive is getting better, some of the psychology of vaccine hoarding may have already begun to dissipate. State officials are telling providers not to hold back — more is on the way. “Let me worry about getting you the second doses,” Shah said he tells them. “ Do not keep them on the shelves.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out at jkenen@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @joannekenen and @renurayasam.   A message from McDonald's: Yenis started as a crew member at McDonald’s speaking limited English. After taking free English language courses through McDonald’s, Yenis improved her fluency and boosted her career opportunities. Today, she is the training manager for 19 restaurants. Learn how Yenis and others succeed at McDonald’s.   FIRST IN NIGHTLY THE LONG-TERM JOBLESS — Millions of Americans are staring at the reality of long-term unemployment, a precarious and worsening situation that threatens to drag on the economic recovery even after the pandemic begins to subside, Megan Cassella writes. More than one in three jobless Americans — or nearly 4 million people — are now classified as long-term unemployed, which the Labor Department defines as being out of work for six months or more. And that total, which is expected to rise again when January jobs data is released on Friday, is likely an undercount: Combined with another 4 million who have stopped searching for work entirely, roughly one in 20 people who were working a year ago have now been shut out of the labor market for more than six months or dropped out altogether. The phenomenon poses an obstacle to the recovery, because the more time a worker spends out of a job, the longer it takes to return to employment, studies show. The fear among many policymakers is that the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed will have trouble finding jobs even after the vaccine is distributed because they have spent so much time out of work — contributing to a prolonged period of heightened joblessness and, in turn, jeopardizing Biden’s goals of turning the economy around quickly. The growing problem runs counter to the idea that the U.S. economy and labor market will be able to bounce back quickly to pre-pandemic levels once shutdown orders are lifted and consumers flood back to restaurants and retail stores. And some recent economic forecasts reflect that: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected this week that unemployment will remain above pre-pandemic levels through the end of the decade. ON THE HILL MTG OUT — The House took the extraordinary step tonight of stripping Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee posts over a series of incendiary comments and actions by the controversial GOP lawmaker, including endorsing the assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It is extremely rare for one party in the House to intervene in another’s personnel affairs. But the vote, which occurred mostly along party lines, came after GOP leaders refused to act on their own. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has denounced Greene’s past actions but rebuffed calls to take away her committee assignments, only offering to reassign her. Eleven Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to remove Greene from the House Education and Budget committees.   TRACK FIRST 100 DAYS OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: The Biden administration hit the ground running with a series of executive orders his first week in office and continues to outline priorities on key issues. What's coming down the pike? Find out in Transition Playbook, our scoop-filled newsletter tracking the policies, people and emerging power centers of the first 100 days of the new administration. Subscribe today.     TALKING TO THE EXPERTS UPI (UNIVERSAL PARENT INCOME) — A child tax-credit plan from Sen. Mitt Romney got bipartisan support today, with White House chief of staff Ron Klain tweeting that it was "an encouraging sign.” Like the Democrats $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, Romney’s plan would send monthly cash payments to millions of low-income families. But unlike the Democrats’ plan, Romney’s proposal would pay for itself by ending a few existing benefits, including the child tax credit and a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which provides families with childcare and work assistance. But among experts from across the political spectrum who study poverty, the reception to the plan was less enthusiastic, if for very different reasons. By moving assistance from TANF into direct cash payments, Romney’s plan would promote family instability and discourage people from working, argues Scott Winship, director of poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “Part of being serious about safety net policy is being concerned about unanticipated consequences and perverse incentives,” he told Nightly. “It is the job of caring policy researchers to think about currently struggling people, but also about longer-term outcomes and about the world we create for future people.” He added, “We need to worry that being more generous in the short-term worsens our poverty and opportunity problem in the long run.” Yet Olivia Golden, executive director at the Center for Law and Social Policy, said that Romney’s direct cash benefit would not discourage work or family stability. The opposite is true, she said. People are better able to work if they aren’t worried about their kids going hungry or getting evicted. Still, she prefers the Democratic stimulus bill to Romney’s plan because it adds cash payments without taking away benefits. “It’s important to keep other pieces of the safety net,” Golden said. “We shouldn’t be paying for reducing child poverty by cutting other things that help the wellbeing of low-income people.” Golden also said she’s happy to see a focus on child poverty from both parties. “The status quo is untenable for a lot of reasons,” she said. “In this moment there is so much devastation.”   A message from McDonald's:     WHAT'D I MISS? — Dems ask Trump to testify, Trump declines: The House asked Trump to testify under oath next week as part of the former president’s second impeachment trial in the Senate. In response, Bruce Castor and David Schoen, Trump’s lawyers for the trial, all but rejected the House’s request. Castor and Schoen called Raskin’s letter a “public relations stunt” and said it confirms that “you cannot prove your allegations” against Trump. — Trump quits SAG-AFTRA: Trump parted ways with the Screen Actors Guild in a bombastic letter as he was facing disciplinary measures with the union. — Pence joins Heritage: Former Vice President Mike Pence is joining the Heritage Foundation as a distinguished visiting fellow, the conservative think tank announced today. — Booker revives “baby bonds”: Sen. Cory Booker introduced legislation today that would create a federally funded savings account for every newborn in the United States, an idea he first proposed several years ago and promoted during his unsuccessful run for president in 2020. — Hunter Biden announces memoir: Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden and an ongoing target for conservatives, has a memoir coming out April 6. The book is called Beautiful Things and will center on the younger Biden’s well publicized struggles with substance abuse, according to Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. THE GLOBAL FIGHT THE BEGINNINGS OF A BIDEN DOCTRINE — Biden gave his first foreign policy speech as president today from the State Department, where he announced that the United States is pulling back its participation in the war in Yemen and taking steps to aid refugees and members of the LGBTQ community worldwide, Natasha Bertrand, Lara Seligman and Nahal Toosi write. “This war has to end,” Biden said, referring to the conflict in Yemen where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have been fighting Saudi-led forces. Biden said the U.S. would be ending support for offensive operations there, “including relevant arms sales,” but would continue to help Saudi Arabia “defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.” It was not immediately clear whether the Yemen announcement was much more than a symbolic move, as the U.S. military currently plays an extremely limited role in the conflict. The Trump administration, under Congressional pressure, ended the practice of providing aerial refueling support to the Saudi-led coalition. Currently the U.S. military’s role is limited to conducting training for the coalition on reducing civilian casualties, and sharing some intelligence related to the defense of Saudi Arabia. Defense officials said they had not yet been given clear guidance by the administration on whether or how these operations will change moving forward. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment. DEAR NIGHTLY COVID COURT IN SESSION — Are you in the middle of a Covid safety argument? Do you have an unresolved disagreement over Covid risk management with a relative or colleague? Ask Renu to issue a ruling! Email your pandemic disputes to nightly@politico.com.   KEEP UP WITH CONGRESS IN 2021: Get the inside scoop on the Schumer/McConnell dynamic, the debate over the filibuster and increasing tensions in the House. From Schumer to McConnell, Pelosi to McCarthy and everyone in between, new Huddle author Olivia Beavers brings the latest from Capitol Hill with assists from POLITICO's deeply sourced Congress team. Subscribe to Huddle, the indispensable guide to Congress.     FROM THE EDUCATION DESK THE OPEN QUESTION ON REOPENING — The CDC says vaccinations aren’t a necessity for safely reopening schools. But many teachers unions aren’t backing down. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, California education reporter Mackenzie Mays reports on the fight over reopening schools. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast NIGHTLY INTERVIEW BIDEN’S MODEST PRISON REFORM — In a move to fulfill a key campaign promise, Biden signed four executive actions last week to address racial inequity — with one order directing the DOJ not to renew contracts with private prison operators. John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham and the author of Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, talked with Nightly’s Myah Ward about the politics of criminal justice reform and what reform might look like in the Biden era. This conversation has been edited. What was your reaction to the executive actions Biden signed — specifically the DOJ order? The direct impact of the executive orders is going to be very small. It applies only to the federal Department of Justice. It doesn’t even apply to all other federal agencies at this point, so it doesn’t cover ICE, for example. The feds hold about 11 percent of all prisoners. About 15 percent of fed prisoners are in private prisons, so that’s about 1.5 percent of the prison population impacted by this order. It doesn’t change the population size. It’ll just change where they're housed. In fact, it was very telling to me that the day Biden announced his order, one of the groups that was most vocally supportive of it was the public sector union that represents the correctional officers in public federal prisons. Because they understood what this order does — that this is not an order that decarcerates. It’s just an order that makes their public sector jobs more secure. My bigger concern is that we focus on this fairly minor actor, the private prison. My argument is that all the pathologies of private prisons, like profiting off people in prison, all of those pathologies exist for the public prisons as well — just at a far vaster scale. So what should Biden do instead? There’s not much policy-wise that Biden can do to change things, certainly at the state and local level. His ability to shape the national conversation is by far his most important power, and to think carefully about how he uses things like executive orders and commutations to shape that discussion. But he’s going to be able to appoint the 93 U.S. attorneys who run the 93 federal districts. And who he chooses as his U.S. attorneys will matter, and they will also matter for local politics. There’s evidence that Department of Justice investigations into police departments can be effective ways of reining in problematic departments. And Biden during the campaign actually suggested he might expand these kinds of DOJ investigations from the police department to also include prosecutor’s offices, which would be something we haven’t really seen that I think could really have an impact. Is there a place you point to as a success with the decarceration effort? The biggest decarceration success in this country has been California. For a while, almost half of the national decline was just California. What caused California to have this huge impact was that they paid attention to the financial incentives of the public sector, not the financial incentives of the private sector. And one of the more perverse incentive issues is that prosecutors are elected and paid for by the county. Prisons are run and funded by the state. So when a prosecutor decides to send someone to prison, it has no fiscal impact on his office. It goes to the state’s budget. Making things worse, if the prosecutor charges someone with a misdemeanor rather than a felony — the lower charge rather than the higher charge — that person’s going to spend his time either in jail or probation. Those are county expenses. So if he’s lenient and charges the misdemeanor, it gets paid for by the same county that pays his budget. They might not be happy about that. Charge with a felony, send them state prison, and now it comes off of your books and goes on to someone else’s. So it’s actually politically safer and financially cheaper. It’s a huge moral hazard problem. California actually told the counties, “Look, for this wide range of offenses, you can still charge them with a felony, but if you charge them with a felony, they have to serve their time in the county jail, not the state prison. We’re going to make you pay for these lower level charges.” And all of the sudden, counties stopped sending people to prison, stopped charging these kinds of cases. PUNCHLINES HOW TO DRAW 46 — Matt Wuerker has drawn presidents since the Carter administration, and has seen many of the pitfalls and tricks of presidential cartooning. So he asked three fellow cartoonists in the latest Punchlines to share their secrets to drawing Joe Biden. NIGHTLY NUMBER 50 percent The proportion of Americans who said Trump should be convicted in a Senate impeachment trial next week over his incitement of a riot at the U.S. Capitol last month, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University. PARTING WORDS ASSEMBLING THE CABINETRY — Biden has assembled, by some accounts, a history-making Cabinet: If all members are approved, it would be the most diverse array of presidential counselors ever. Can he get them confirmed by the Senate? Democrats’ narrow control of the chamber has made the process far smoother for Biden’s nominees thus far, and the majority have won strong bipartisan support. But Republicans have managed to slow-walk others, who could prove more contentious. If the confirmation battles the Trump and Obama administrations endured in 2017 and 2013 are any indication, there’s no guarantee Biden will have a full bench by the close of his first month. Check out POLITICO’s new Cabinet tracker and follow each of Biden’s picks from nomination to a final floor vote below.   A message from McDonald's: Yenis started working at McDonald’s with big ambitions — but limited English skills. So she seized opportunities to take free English language courses from McDonald’s, helping propel her from crew member to training manager. Today she leads hundreds of training sessions for restaurant employees. And uses her bilingual skills to help others succeed. There are thousands of stories like Yenis’ at McDonald’s, where restaurant employees can develop skills that are useful throughout their career, helping them learn, grow, and achieve their goals. In addition to resources that support restaurant employee’s development, like English Under the Arches, McDonald’s offers the opportunity to develop work readiness skills sought after by hiring managers across the nation — teamwork, customer service, time management, and responsibility. Learn how Yenis and others build careers at McDonald’s.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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Nick Turse | Generation Forever War: Biden's National Security Picks Herald Return to Hawkish Normalcy

Nick Turse, The Intercept
Turse writes: "Biden's picks for State Department and national security adviser are conventional. An opportunity for reform is being squandered."
READ MORE

Donald Trump speaks to a less-than-capacity crowd at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa. (photo: AP)

When He Leaves Office, Can Ex-President Trump Be Trusted With America's National Security Secrets?
Ken Dilanian, NBC News
Dilanian writes: "Ex-presidents are entitled to classified briefings. Some ex-intel officials think Trump shouldn't get access to any national secrets when he leaves office."
READ MORE

Protesters from environmentalist groups, including Extinction Rebellion, ANV-COP 21 and Alternatiba, block an Amazon depot in Saint Priest, near Lyon, France, on Black Friday 2019. (photo: Nicolas Liponne/Getty)

Secret Amazon Reports Expose the Company's Surveillance of Labor and Environmental Groups
Lauren Kaori Gurley, VICE
Excerpt: "Dozens of leaked documents from Amazon's Global Security Operations Center reveal the company's reliance on Pinkerton operatives to spy on warehouse workers and the extensive monitoring of labor unions, environmental activists, and other social movements."
READ MORE

Thousands of court-ordered evictions are occurring nationwide despite a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) moratorium for renters impacted by the pandemic. (photo: John Moore/Getty)

We Know How to Prevent Up to 40 Million People From Being Evicted. It's Up to Congress to Do It.
Jerusalem Demsas, Vox
Demsas writes: "Millions of Americans face eviction in a 'completely predictable and entirely preventable' crisis as the CDC's moratorium is set to expire on New Year's Eve."

even months into her fight to stay housed, 48-year-old Kimberly is furious.

“I’m angry that people can think so little of human life,” she told Vox.

In 2016 — after massive floods in her hometown of Houston, Texas, left her homeless and she was forced to abandon her cat to stay safe — she thought she’d never be in that position again. She got a job, found a place to live, and rescued three dogs she refers to as her “fur babies.”

But after Covid-19 hit, she lost hours at her job as a crew trainer at Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers and found herself on the brink of financial collapse. She fell behind on her rent and when she tried to work with her landlord to set up a repayment plan, she told Vox that she was served an eviction notice. Now, the only thing keeping her in her home is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) national eviction moratorium, which prohibits landlords from evicting qualifying tenants for failing to make rent.

If she’s evicted, Kimberly says she has nowhere to go — and will be homeless for the second time in five years.

Kimberly isn’t alone. According to research by the Aspen Institute, nearly 40 million Americans could face eviction over the next several months. The only thing holding back the flood right now is the CDC’s eviction moratorium order and a patchwork of state and local protections for renters.

But these moratoriums are only kicking the can down the road. Chief economist for Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi told the Washington Post that tenants could owe nearly $70 billion in back rent by year’s end. And for landlords left holding the bag, there’s been little relief, as they’ve been forced to take on the role of government — subsidizing housing for millions even as their own taxes, mortgage payments, and other expenses are due.

The moratorium is an imperfect solution, and one that leaves a number of renters and landlords hanging. But without Congress passing renters’ assistance or other stimulus, it’s one of the few things helping keep Americans housed.

Kimberly is angry at Congress, at her landlord, at a system that asks for personal responsibility and calls her an essential worker but has no safety net for people who are fighting to work and to stay housed.

“You’re endangering our lives,” she told Vox. “You’re asking us to stop gathering on Thanksgiving and yet it’s somehow okay to put us on the streets?”

Kimberly, and millions like her, could indeed end up on the streets right as the US rings in the New Year. That’s when the CDC’s eviction moratorium expires — leaving countless Americans on the verge of losing their homes, even as Covid-19 cases continue to surge.

The CDC eviction moratorium, explained

The CDC’s eviction moratorium was an emergency measure; like a hastily applied bandage over a gaping wound, it was never a holistic solution, but it’s what you do to keep yourself alive until you can get to a doctor.

It came together in something of a slapdash way: After a partial eviction moratorium from the CARES Act expired at the end of July, the lack of congressional action left a void of federal protections against eviction. Some states and localities enacted renters protections, but fearing a national emergency, experts, advocates, and tenants began sounding the alarm, pointing to the tangible public health risks of evicting people while a highly contagious respiratory disease was still spreading.

On September 4, the CDC responded to these concerns by invoking its authority under the Public Health Service Act to pass a broad eviction moratorium. The agency’s justification was that evictions could lead to overcrowding and homelessness as those forced to leave their homes searched for alternative housing. It’s hard to follow social distancing orders if you have to double-up at a friend’s or family member’s house, and it’s impossible if you’re homeless and are forced to turn to shelters as a last resort.

Here’s what it does: Until January 1, landlords cannot force tenants out of their homes due to a failure to pay rent, as long as the tenants legally declare they qualify for protection under the order. This means tenants have:

• used “best efforts” to get “all available” rent and housing assistance from the government


• are below certain income thresholds


• are unable to make rent because of a loss of household income, layoff, or “extraordinary” medical expenses


• are using “best efforts” to make partial payments


• and that eviction would make them homeless or force them to crowd into a new home.

Landlords can still evict tenants for other reasons — like “engaging in criminal activity” or “threatening the health and safety of other residents.” But moratoriums like the CDC’s and the one passed by Congress in the CARES Act succeeded in stopping many evictions. Research by ProPublica shows that the CARES Act reduced evictions, and the Eviction Lab found that between the end of the CARES Act moratorium and the beginning of the CDC moratorium evictions rose, indicating that the current federal protection has had real success at keeping many renters in their homes.

In Louisiana, where tenants are protected primarily by the federal moratorium, Hannah Adams, a staff attorney at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, told Vox that the CDC order has been a “godsend.”

But that’s not the whole story. Loopholes in the CDC’s order have allowed landlords to continue filing evictions. And since many evictions happen to marginalized individuals without access to legal protection and without knowledge of their rights, some are even being evicted illegally.

While at first the federal moratorium appeared to be a blanket federal order stopping all evictions for nonpayment of rent for covered persons, four days after it went into effect the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) sued the CDC over the order, calling it an “unprecedented power grab” and requesting a federal injunction. A month later, the CDC released a non-binding “Frequently Asked Questions” document, which made the controversial claim that the order was not “intended to prevent landlords from starting eviction proceedings, provided that the actual eviction of a covered person for non-payment of rent” doesn’t happen.

That means that property owners can pursue the process of eviction (which is usually a lengthy and multi-step endeavor) up until the actual removal of the tenant. And some have taken advantage of this so that the final steps needed for evictions can begin as soon as moratoriums are lifted.

Other owners, however, have used “just the filing of the eviction as a method of harassing tenants and getting them out [of their homes] even without judicial action,” Eric Tars, legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center, told Vox. Attorneys for indigent defendants in Illinois, Louisiana, and North Carolina told me similar things — people terrified of an eviction record following them around will frequently leave after receiving notice before they officially have to.

Additionally, the CDC told landlords they weren’t required to inform tenants of the federal protection, which means many tenants may not know they have the ability to stay in their homes even if they can’t continue paying rent.

The CDC declined an interview to discuss the moratorium, stating that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Lawrence Wood, a supervisory attorney at Legal Aid Chicago, told Vox that in one of his cases a landlord is seeking to evict a woman for nonpayment of rent. Wood says the Cook County sheriff isn’t carrying out any evictions, and the state’s own moratorium prevents people from “commenc[ing]” eviction proceedings for those who qualify; but some landlords are dubiously claiming they can still file the paperwork. Even in a state like Illinois, where the protections are stronger than the CDC’s, there are loopholes that allow some renters to fall through the cracks.

Overall, national, state, and local moratoriums were a needed step in the right direction, according to policymakers and tenant rights advocates. But their imperfect protections have been a huge burden for other groups, who feel the government has dumped its obligation to provide a social safety net on them.

“Everybody’s going to suffer” — renters and small landlords are in a no-win situation

The CDC policy prevents people from being evicted if they can’t pay rent, but at the end of the day, someone has to pay.

“I’m not sure who ends up holding the bag, everybody’s going to suffer — local governments are going to suffer when taxes can’t get paid, banks are going to suffer when they’re not getting paid, bondholders are going to suffer. Everyone’s going to feel the pain,” Greg Brown, senior vice president at the National Apartment Association, which represents over 85,000 members in the rental housing industry and has joined the NCLA’s lawsuit, told Vox.

The moratorium doesn’t include debt forgiveness, and billions in back rent and late fees are accumulating. These costs are piling up not just for big corporations, private equity, and banks but for average Americans like Marita, a 51-year-old from Weatogue, Connecticut, who’s seen her $65,000 annual income dry up during the pandemic.

Marita’s income used to come from a commercial property she co-owned with her two brothers, but after the two occupying restaurants had to shut down, the building has become a liability as taxes and upkeep costs pile up without the usual accompanying rent payments.

Now, for the first time in her life, Marita is on food stamps, $15,000 in credit card debt, and owes her landlord over $11,000 in unpaid rent. She has no idea how much she owes in late fees — she’s afraid to look.

If Marita gets evicted, she told me her only option will be living in a car.

Marita’s story is an extreme case — most of the landlords I spoke with were not on the brink of losing their homes — but her story illustrates an important point about the diversity of Americans burdened by this crisis.

Most affordable housing in America is owned by individual investors or “mom-and-pop” landlords. This can be surprising because many people think of rental property owners as being part of giant corporations, but 41 percent of the nation’s 48.2 million rental housing units (not just affordable housing units) are owned by these mom-and-pop property owners.

Research from the Urban Institute shows that the average rent in small rental properties is less than “the median for single-family rentals, medium-size apartment buildings, and large apartment buildings.” And in 2018, “the median income for a two-to-four-unit landlord was $67,000.” Renters of these units are predominantly Black and Hispanic, and they have the lowest median household income when compared to renters of other types of properties.

This means that renters of small properties tend to be poorer and tend to work in industries that were most harmed by Covid-19 — food service, retail, and construction to name a few. On top of that, the landlords they rent from are some of the least capable of absorbing the loss of income from unpaid rent. Many of these landlords have mortgages of their own, and all of them are required to maintain their properties — which means operating costs continue even as rent payments decline.

This is what has Malcolm Bennett, a broker and real estate agent in Southern California worried. His firm oversees around 2,000 units, and he knows many of his property managers don’t have enough capital to withstand the downturn. He’s right: More than half of mom-and-pop landlords don’t have access to credit, according to a March survey. “We’re not in the eviction business ... we need tenants,” Bennett told Vox, but “we’re the only industry being asked to carry the burden for the pandemic ... that’s what the government is for, they should have given relief [to renters].”

A simple solution on the one hand, a patchwork of complicated half-measures on the other

The answer to this complicated problem is refreshingly simple: Give renters money so they can pay their landlords. Renters want to pay their landlords. They don’t want to owe tens of thousands of dollars in back rent and late fees. And landlords want to keep their tenants: Eviction is expensive, frustrating, and emotionally fraught; moreover, finding a replacement tenant can be hard. Every expert I spoke with, as well as tenants and landlords, believes that rental assistance is the only holistic solution to stopping this crisis.

“If they’re going to make us not charge them rent then I think they should pay for the rent!” Laurie, a landlord in Port Richey, Florida, told Vox.

If sufficiently large, rental assistance could effectively stop evictions for nonpayment of rent because ... people could pay their rent. Rental assistance would reduce pressure for landlords to search for loopholes to evict their tenants officially or pressure their tenants to leave unofficially. It also ensures that mom-and-pop landlords have the funds they need to keep their buildings operating and keep America’s affordable housing stock solvent.

So what’s the problem?

“For nine months, this tsunami on the horizon has been completely predictable and entirely preventable; we’ve known the solution to this for months, [the problem] is the lack of political will,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “We’ve been saying for nine months now that it’s going take at least $100 billion in rental assistance.”

Lobbyists say there’s bipartisan support for some rental assistance, but the size and timing of a relief package that would include it is uncertain. Congress has struggled to get the votes necessary to pass a large stimulus package.

In the meantime, advocates say the most obvious — and needed — first step is simply not allowing the federal moratorium to expire on December 31. That alone could help stave off a looming eviction crisis in the dead of winter.

And while the executive branch is at it, Mary Cunningham, the Urban Institute’s vice president for metropolitan housing and communities policy, recommends clarifying the order to restrict landlords from beginning the eviction process, putting less of the onus on the tenant to prove financial hardship, and increasing enforcement of the order to ensure landlords are following the law. These changes could help further reduce evictions.

Experts Vox spoke to also suggested enacting tax relief for landlords and passing a law to cloak the credit scores of renters who are evicted during the pandemic. Another potential boon might be technical assistance to states on how to use existing federal dollars for rental aid. (Katherine McKay, senior program manager at the Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program, pointed out that Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and various community development funds could be commandeered for this purpose).

But most of the other proposals floating around would either be too limited or too slow to help many people. Take the idea of tax relief, for example: Not only are most states and localities — the entities that would be offering the tax breaks — already strapped financially because of the pandemic, but people in the real estate industry like Bennett suspect the program would be very convoluted and operate on too long of a timeline to help mom-and-pop landlords.

The only real solution is rental assistance from the federal government.

“You know, I lose my home, I lose everything. I lose my dignity, I lose my pride,” Marita told Vox.

Advocates are worried nothing could happen by the end of the year. If they’re right, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe for tens of millions of families in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic.

And none of it had to happen.

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José, 27, embraces his son, José Daniel, 6, after crossing the border into the U.S. in El Paso, Texas, May 16, 2019. (photo: Paul Ratje/Getty)

Migrant Children and Parents Face Deportation After Refusing to Be Separated
Shani Saxon, Colorlines
Saxon writes: "While coping with COVID-19's growing threat this summer, parents held in ICE detention were forced to decide whether they would separate from their children or stay incarcerated together."
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A protester stands in front of the burning Congress building during a protest in Guatemala City, Nov. 24, 2020. (photo: EFE)

Guatemalans Call for New Protests Against President Giammattei
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Guatemala's social and student organizations called for taking to the streets this Saturday to urge an end to President Alejandro Giammattei's government 'whose neoliberal policies have entrenched corruption.'"
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Diver swimming over Elkhorn Coral in the Florida Keys. Elevated nutrients as well as elevated temperatures are causing a massive loss of this iconic branching species in Florida. (photo: JW Porter/University of Georgia)

'Dire Outlook': Scientists Say Florida Reefs Have Lost Nearly 98% of Coral
Hannah Chinn, Guardian UK
Chinn writes: "Scientists estimate that along the coast of Florida, where degradation is most severe, perhaps as little as 2% of original coral cover remains."

he United States’ coral reefs are in fair condition, according to a recent reef condition status report, but vulnerable to decline. Scientists estimate that along the coast of Florida, where degradation is most severe, perhaps as little as 2% of original coral cover remains.

The report, released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa) and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science last week, assesses reefs along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, from the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico to Guam, Hawaii and American Samoa. It is the first of its kind to do so using standardized monitoring data on a national scale. Analyzing records from 2012 to 2018, researchers identify ocean warming and acidification, coral disease and fishing as ongoing threats to coral reefs, indicating a “dire outlook” for these ecosystems.

Coral reefs, widely considered the most biologically diverse ecosystem in the ocean, help to support over 25% of all marine life. They also provide shoreline protection against hurricanes and tropical storms, and economic benefit through commercial fishing, tourism and recreation.

Unlike years past, when experts credited ocean pollution with worsening coral reefs’ outlook, Noaa researchers now name climate change as the primary cause of reef degradation.

“It used to be mostly water quality … but now it’s pretty well accepted that it’s predominantly climate change,” says Jennifer Koss, director of Noaa’s coral reef conservation program.

The twin threats of temperature-related bleaching and increased ocean acidification, both caused by climate change, can destroy coral reef ecosystems regardless of their location or proximity to human populations. And along the Florida coast, additional stressors of water pollution, new development, overfishing and disease outbreaks mean that even remaining coral cover is inadequate and unhealthy.

“A lot of the corals that are left are what we refer to as the more weedy species,” says Erinn Muller, who specializes in coral health and disease at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida. “They’re resistant to a lot of threats, but they’re not the major reef-building species and they’re not the species that are important for high levels of biodiversity … they’re functioning at a very different scale than they should be.”

Potential impacts are not solely environmental. Muller says Florida’s reef is estimated to be worth at least $8bn to the state economy, providing support for over 70,000 local jobs; a recent US Geological Survey report estimated that coral reefs provide almost $600m in infrastructure to the peninsula and over $75m to the Florida Keys every year.

In response to the threat of potential future decline, scientists are working to raise awareness and restore coral growth. Past efforts to replant coral reefs have been utilized in response to acute damage like a ship strike or a storm – now, researchers are using the same knowledge to help reverse the effect climate change has had on reef populations.

“If for whatever reason a forest is clearcut,” Koss says, referring to the practice by which trees are cut down or removed, “or it’s damaged by a fire or a tornado, nobody thinks twice about going back and replanting what was there. We’re really taking the same approach.”

National solutions could be on the way as well. The Restoring Resilient Reefs Act, introduced by lawmakers last year, would establish a federal taskforce on coral protection and a set of national strategies for reef management and restoration. It has been co-sponsored by lawmakers from Hawaii and Florida, where reefs are a critical part of state ecology and economy.

“We are at a critical point, [but] the trajectory can be reversed,” says Koss. “We’re not naive enough to think we can get all the reefs to where they were pre-industrial development … we’re doing everything we can to buy coral some time, so that they can assimilate and acclimate to their new conditions.”

In the long term, says Muller, scientific responses need to include not only local restoration efforts but also addressing the global impact of the climate crisis on water quality and the ecosystems that depend on it to survive.

She stresses the need to be proactive about preserving marine life, rather than simply reacting to each new blow dealt by the climate crisis. “We won’t be able to climate-proof these ecosystems forever.”

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