MFP Voices
Opinion | Biloxi and Gulfport Face Imminent Homelessness Crisis
Columnist Leo Carney is visiting the growing homeless community in Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss.
Leo Carney
October 20, 2023
Columnist Leo Carney is visiting the growing homeless community in Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss.
Most Mississippians who need help paying their rent or utilities will no longer be able to apply to a key pandemic-era rental assistance program after Aug. 15, after Gov. Tate Reeves ordered an end to the state’s participation in the program.
The Supreme Court on Aug. 26, 2021, ended the Biden administration’s ban on evictions, putting millions at risk of losing their homes. We asked legal scholar Katy Ramsey Mason to explain what the ruling means, who will be affected and what happens next.
Mass evictions of the residents at the Catherine Street Apartments in Starkville are underway in spite of the raging pandemic. Many residents fear they will have nowhere to go.
The Centers for Disease Control issued a last minute eviction moratorium Tuesday evening, temporarily staving off an immense surge in evictions in the middle of one of the worst waves of coronavirus the U.S. has seen thus far. While the moratorium is targeted only at areas of “substantial or high spread” of the virus, Mississippi’s dangerously climbing infections have put every county in the state in one of those categories, firmly halting all evictions until transmission declines precipitously and remains low, or until Oct. 3.
As the state starts to emerge from the 16-month darkness of the pandemic—which saw 16% of Mississippians unemployed at its peak—the eviction crisis has the potential to become even worse. The Aspen Institute estimates that 58% of Mississippi renters will be at risk of homelessness by the end of 2021.
Realtor and Flowood resident Teresa Renkenberger founded Shower Power and has been courting homeless Mississippians since 2019, offering free showers and hot tea to them once a week. But, when the temperature began to drop in Jackson first in January and then a major freeze hit in February, she was full of concern that some of the people she has developed relationships with might die out there in the cold from hypothermia.
The Mississippi Supreme Court should immediately impose a moratorium on evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic “to prevent the expected and unprecedented rise in Mississippians being made homeless from evictions,” the Mississippi Center for Justice said in an emergency court filing.
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