A slew of expiring emergency programs are setting up an economic “COVID cliff” come 2021, which could see millions of people lose unemployment insurance and get evictions, while a growing wave of small businesses close shop, The Hill reported. March's CARES Act set up myriad programs to give people economic relief in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of which are set to expire on Dec. 31. Unless a divided Congress can reach a deal to extend the programs, the country's economic suffering could skyrocket. Come New Years, one program that extended traditional unemployment benefits from the standard 26 weeks by another 13 weeks, and another program that made self-employed and gig economy workers eligible, will expire. At the same time, provisions meant to shore up tax benefits for low-income earners, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Credit, are scheduled to go up in smoke, potentially pulling money out of the paychecks of the poorest people who are still working. On top of it all, an evictions moratorium from the CDC is set to expire, teeing up a wave of evictions and homelessness. “We know that eviction filings have been able to continue during this period even with maraotira in place, so certainly the cases are there and ready to be processed and adjudicated,” said Samantha Batko, an expert on housing insecurity at the Urban Institute. The most recent data from the Census Household Pulse Survey, covering the last days of October and early November, painted a grim picture. Nearly a third of all households (32.9 percent) said they were behind on housing payments and rated the chances of eviction or foreclosure within two months as somewhat or very likely. Some 25.9 percent expected a household earner to lose employer income in the coming month, and 12 percent said they didn’t have enough to eat. An analysis by Stout found that absent a moratorium, as many as 6.4 million evictions filed in recent months could take effect on Jan. 1.
