The National Council of State Housing Agencies engaged Stout to estimate the potential financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tenants and landlords. Our analyses included estimating the number of renter households behind on rent during the beginning of the COVID‑19 pandemic, projecting the potential increase in rent arrears, and modeling potential eviction filings through January 2021. The first-of-its-kind analysis revealed that, without further intervention or assistance:

• An estimated 9.7 million to 14.2 million renter households (23.3 million to 34 million individuals) in the U.S. may be unable to pay rent and be at risk of eviction because of the pandemic
• At the time of the analysis, renter households had already accumulated between $12.2 billion and $16.7 billion of shortfall in rent
• Up to 8.4 million renter households (20.1 million individuals) risked experiencing an eviction filing by January 2021

We developed several innovative analyses of the Household Pulse Survey data (combined with other publicly available data sets) to arrive at these key findings. On September 4, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an Agency Order, which referenced our analysis, to “temporarily halt residential evictions to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.”

View our report here.