STATE EVICTION BANS: A POLICY RESPONSE TO COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a light on the importance of housing as a social determinant of health. To prevent millions of American renters from being evicted from their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic and potentially becoming homeless, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a temporary eviction ban order on September 4, 2020 that has currently been extended through June 30, 2021. This paper examines the rationale for the CDC temporary eviction ban order from a public health perspective. It then uses statistical techniques to explore the relationship between political and demographic variables and temporary eviction bans enacted in individual states during the pandemic. Results show a statistically significant relationship between political party control of the state legislature and temporary state eviction bans which suggests that partisanship has largely driven the use of temporary eviction bans as a policy response to COVID-19 at the state level.