Below is an excerpt from a letter the Kentucky Equal Justice Center sent to Mayor Fischer urging him to order a moratorium on evictions in Jefferson County through March 31, 2020. Please use your voice to demand Mayor Fischer protect people from eviction during our deepening pandemic. Preventing evictions helps keep everyone safe and dramatically reduces the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

Sign below!

Mayor Fischer,

I urge you to use your emergency powers to protect thousands of people who rent their homes from eviction during our escalating (again) pandemic. Your action is necessary because the CDC’s Order protecting renters from eviction expires on December 31, 2020. Without action from you, thousands of Kentuckians who cannot afford to pay rent will be evicted in the dead of winter in the middle of a pandemic. Mayor Fischer, you must use your emergency powers to extend the CDC’s protections in Jefferson County through March 31, 2020.

Each year, two-thirds of all evictions in Kentucky take place in Louisville. Because of our nation’s racist history (Jim Crow, redlining, and the predatory lending that led up to the foreclosure crisis), the gap in homeownership between White and Black Americans is 30% (72% v. 42%, respectively). This means that Black and Brown Kentuckians are disproportionately impacted by our state’s antiquated, unfair, and cruel eviction processes. It is morally, economically, and epidemiologically imperative that you act now to protect people in Jefferson County from the personal and systemic catastrophes caused by a wave of evictions that you have the power to prevent.

When it issued its nationwide moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent, the CDC explained the various ways eviction moratoria support everyone’s efforts to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2:

Eviction moratoria facilitate self-isolation by people who become ill or who are at risk for severe illness from COVID-19 due to an underlying medical condition. They also allow State and local authorities to more easily implement stay-at-home and social distancing directives to mitigate the community spread of COVID-19. Furthermore, housing stability helps protect public health because homelessness increases the likelihood of individuals moving into congregate settings, such as homeless shelters, which then puts individuals at higher risk to COVID-19.

The CDC issued its nationwide eviction moratorium because it is well-understood that when people are evicted, they often go to congregate shelters or “double-up” with friends and family. This isn’t safe. Epidemiologists know that evictions accelerate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in three ways. When more people are living under one roof, the chances that someone will introduce SARS-CoV-2 into the home increase. With people living in more close quarters, the chances that infections will spread within households increase. And, third, because of increased spread within households, more people infected with SARS‑CoV-2 emerge from their homes to spread infection within their community.

Because the United States has been unable/unwilling to control the virus as effectively as other nations, researchers have had an opportunity now over the course of eight months to study the effects of eviction moratoriums on preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and saving lives. The data are clear: extending the CDC’s Eviction Moratorium in Jefferson County through March 31 would save lives. A recent article in the Journal of Urban Health, “Pandemic Housing Policy: Examining the Relationship Among Eviction, Housing Instability, Health Inequity, and COVID-19 Transmission,” summarized the research:

[R]esearchers used varying expiration dates of state eviction moratoria to evaluate whether lifting moratoria was associated with increased COVID-19 spread and mortality. After controlling for mask orders, stay at home orders, school closures, and testing rates, as well as characteristics of states and underlying time trends, this natural experiment showed that lifting moratoria was associated with 1.6 times higher COVID-19 mortality after seven weeks and 5.4 times higher mortality after sixteen weeks. Similarly, lifting moratoria was associated with 1.6 times higher incidence of COVID-19 after ten weeks, and 2.1 times higher incidence after sixteen weeks compared to maintaining eviction moratoria. Lifting moratoriums translated to a total of 433,700 excess cases and 10,700 excess deaths between March 1 and September 3, 2020. Thus, eviction moratoria could be effective mechanisms for suppressing COVID-19 infection and mortality.

I urge you to exercise that power to protect people in Jefferson County—people who are disproportionately Black and Brown because of our community’s racist systems of oppression—from eviction. Today. Extending the moratorium through March will provide federal policymakers more time to enact a comprehensive relief package that includes rental assistance to landlords and robust housing and homelessness resources for state and local governments.

Thank you for the work you and your administration have done to quickly secure and distribute the rental assistance Congress provided in the CARES Act in March. Extending the CDC’s eviction protections through March 31 is the next step your administration can take to protect our community from unnecessary evictions and the additional sickness and death flowing from the completely preventable spread of SARS-CoV-2.