Rents are rising, rental vacancy rates are at a three-decade low, and evictions are creeping up, with many more expected to come. And plans for affordable housing funding are on the chopping block as conservative Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema continue to press President Joe Biden to cut back his agenda.

A planned $200 billion increase in rental assistance for low-income tenants, introduced in the House as part of a $322 billion package, would help get another 750,000 households into rental assistance programs that currently cover two million households. Waiting lists for the current program are more than a decade long in some cities, and other cities have stopped accepting new people onto their waiting lists because it’s so hopeless. Three out of four of those renters eligible for assistance don’t get it, thanks to limited funding—so adding 750,000 households to rental assistance programs would only be a drop in the bucket, and now that drop is unlikely to happen.

According to Goldman Sachs analysts, “Much of the proposed $400 billion in housing-related grants and tax subsidies is likely to be cut from the reconciliation bill.” Some members of Congress, including House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters and Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Chair Sherrod Brown, are vowing to fight for the funding.

”I’m all for funding early childhood education, child care and the expansion of health care with education, but we cannot be successful with any of that unless people have safe and secure housing,” Waters was quoted in The New York Times. 

Indeed. The Eviction Lab explains the stakes of eviction in a set of facts we should all commit to memory:

Eviction even harms unborn children, with babies born to mothers who were evicted during pregnancy more likely to be born prematurely or with low birth weight. And eviction is another factor in racial inequality, with Black and Latino renters, particularly women, more likely to face eviction than white renters.

People who do not get affordable housing are more likely to be evicted, and according to the most recent data, 46% of renters pay more than 30% of their income to remain housed, while 24% pay more than half their income. As with eviction, Black and Latino tenants are more likely than white ones to face unaffordable rent and, earlier in 2021, were more likely to report being behind on their rent. According to Census Bureau data, more than half of all renter households had lost income during the pandemic.

It’s really not hard to list one statistic after another that all point to the same basic fact: The United States has an affordable housing crisis, and rental assistance is a key component of fixing that. Instead, the $200 billion drop in the bucket of the need is likely to be scrapped while average rents rise—by $150 since the start of the pandemic.

Manchin and Sinema are setting the stage for untold human suffering, and they dare—they have the unmitigated gall—to be self-righteous about it. The long-term costs of this suffering, both moral and economic (because children raised in instability and poverty have worse educational and health outcomes), are on their heads.