As I have been reading about the recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moratorium extension on evictions mandated by President Joe Biden, I began thinking about how I chose eviction and homelessness as my course theme for my English composition classes during the fall 2017 semester at Ohio State's Lima campus. Using the title "The Struggle is Real" and the book "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City," which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, I wanted my students to examine what then-Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond called "an enormous amount of pain and poverty in this rich land." In writing "Evicted," Desmond followed eight Milwaukee families who were in a vicious cycle of chronic poverty. The staggering graphic detail that Desmond utilized in depicting the distressing plight of these families gave the book a poignant, personal feel, even though some of them made bad life decisions that placed them in their cyclical predicaments. The discussions that my students and I had on "Evicted" were intriguing and, at times, somewhat depressing, especially when talking about the trauma that children experienced when they were uprooted from school to school and had all of their belongings displaced because their parents didn't earn enough money to keep a roof over their heads. Although I am not using eviction for my course theme this upcoming fall semester, I have continued to incorporate poverty in my class topics. "Evicted" really opened my eyes to the seriousness of the epidemic of poverty and homelessness in our nation, and now still in the clutches of the COVID-19 pandemic, this crisis will get much worse if millions of people are thrown out on the streets when the moratorium expires on Oct. 3.

There is currently an intense debate on whether Biden overstepped his executive powers due to the Supreme Court ruling the CDC extension illegal. In a recent piece for the National Review, constitutional scholars John Yoo and Robert Delahunty argued that Biden went beyond his executive reach because Congress did not make a decision during the time interval allowed up until the July extension by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. As a result of Congress' inaction, Yoo and Delahunty maintain that Biden cannot claim "an emergency power that is unsuited to the moment." While I understand the basics of Yoo and Delahunty's constitutional stance, I humbly disagree that we are not facing an emergency of epic proportions with looming evictions across the country. By the end of July, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that 11 million people were behind on their rent. The difficulty that many states are having in distributing rent subsidies provided by the more than $45 billion allocated by Congress further illustrates that we are flirting with disaster.

I view the pending eviction crisis as more of a moral issue than a political one. I strongly believe that we when we are "generous to the poor" and others in need of assistance the Lord repays us for our "deed" as stated in Proverbs 19:17. The pandemic has placed poverty front and center in an alarming way because we're not just dealing with the chronically poor, such as those families featured in "Evicted." Think of the many news stories we've seen about laid-off, middle-aged workers in the leisure and hospitality industry submitting hundreds of job applications and are still unemployed. Others in working class jobs such as grocery clerks may not return to employment due to stores implementing automation. These are not the faces of poverty we are used to seeing when we pass a highway intersection with a distraught person holding a sign asking for money.

When the October moratorium deadline arrives, hopefully the majority of the rent subsidies authorized by Congress will have been utilized, but there will still be people out of work who are going to need help. Short-term solutions will not be sufficient. In "Evicted," Desmond called for a universal voucher program to assist low-income Americans with housing costs, and in July, Rep. Ritchie Torres introduced the Ending Homelessness Act of 2021, which will provide more voucher rental assistance in the next decade for those who are eligible. This is a step in the right direction to combat the housing crisis intensified by the pandemic.

Dr. Jessica A. Johnson is a lecturer in the English department at Ohio State University's Lima campus. Email her at smojc.jj@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter: @JjSmojc. To find out more about Jessica Johnson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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