33things,” says Aldama, 40, noting that
every thing that he’s wearing, except his
socks and underwear, is used. But no
amount of thriftiness is enough to take
him out of the red now, he adds, puffing
on a half-dozen cigarettes over the course
of an hour-long interview. “There’s never
been a point in my adult life,” he says,
“where I ever thought I would be a hair’s
width away from living on the street.”
While COVID-19 has impacted almost
all Americans in some way, those with the
lowest incomes have been the hardest
hit—both by the virus and by the finan-
cial crisis that it precipitated. According
to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank
of New York, financially vulnerable coun-
ties—as measured through delinquency
patterns on debts like credit-card bills and
car loans—saw higher ratios of COVID-19
infections and deaths than counties with
lower delinquency rates. As of mid-July,
the high-delinquency counties saw an av-
erage of 4.3 cases per 1,000, while other
counties saw 2.8 cases out of 1,000, ac-
cording to the report. Likewise, while 14%
of upper-income earners reported in Au-
gust that they or someone in their house-
hold had lost their job or wages as a result
of the pandemic, the share of low-income people in that posi-
tion was 33%, according to the Pew Research Center. People of
color have had it even worse. Black individuals as a whole are
nearly twice as likely as non-Hispanic white individuals to die
from a COVID-19 infection, and Black and Hispanic people are
more likely than white people—by margins of 5 and 9 percent-
age points, respectively—to have lost their jobs at the outset
of the pandemic, according to a Washington Post–Ipsos poll.
Stephen Musa, 29, embodies these racial disparities. After a
welding job he’d been promised in Seattle disappeared in Octo-
ber, he fell more than $4,000 behind on rent and has since strug-
gled to provide for himself and his 5-month-old son. His dream
job is opening and running a food truck that serves West African
soul food, but right now, just getting by is tough. “Every thing you
hear is that the rest of the world is trying to go to the U.S. to get
a better future,” says Musa, who immigrated as a teenager from
Liberia. “[But] you come here and see that it is not that easy.”
Musa is grateful to the YWCA, a nonprofit that works to
eliminate racism, empower women and advance equity, for
working with his rental-property company to forgive his back
rent. But settling that debt is just the beginning, he says. De-
spite applying for at least a dozen jobs, he has yet to secure a
consistent source of income and worries about keeping a roof
over his family’s head when the eviction moratoriums end this
spring. The management of the apartment complex has been
sympathetic so far, he says, but that hospitality is unlikely
to last forever. “The people that own these buildings have to
pay their mortgages,” he says. “They have to make money.”
Racial inequities in housing—a legacy, in part, of decades^
Stephen
Musa, an
unemployed
father in
Seattle, fell
more than
$4,000
behind on his
rent