Focus-19

Milestone: 200,000 housing requests since COVID

2-1-1s don’t shut down on weekends, especially not in a pandemic. Last weekend, the 24/7/365 helplines passed 200,000 requests for housing assistance since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and that only counts requests from 2-1-1s participating in a daily tracking system. From March 12 to April 26, 2-1-1s received 207,144 housing requests, a 47% increase over the same dates in 2019. Increases in some types of housing requests were much larger: rent requests grew by 144% and mortgage requests grew by 174% . In contrast, requests for low-cost housing dropped by 33% and requests for home repair services dropped by 24%. Analysis included data from 2-1-1s covering all of 24 states (AL, AR, CT, DE, FL, HI, IA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, NC, NE, NJ, NV, NY, PA, SC, SD, VA, WA, WI and WY ) and parts of 7 others (CA, IL, IN, KS, KY, OH and TN). Two states (MI, WA) did not have data for 2019.

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