Flutterby™! : housing precarity and mortality

NBER Working Paper Series — Housing Precarity & the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impacts of Utility Disconnection and Eviction Moratoria on Infections and Deaths Across US Counties (direct PDF link)

... We find that policies that limit evictions are found to reduce COVID-19 infections by 3.8% and reduce deaths by 11%. Moratoria on utility disconnections reduce COVID-19 infections by 4.4% and mortality rates by 7.4%. Had such policies been in place across all counties (i.e., adopted as federal policy) from early March 2020 through the end of November 2020, our estimated counterfactuals show that policies that limit evictions could have reduced COVID-19 infections by 14.2% and deaths by 40.7%. For moratoria on utility disconnections, COVID-19 infections rates could have been reduced by 8.7% and deaths by 14.8%. Housing precarity policies that prevent eviction and utility disconnections have been effective mechanisms for decreasing both COVID-19 infections and deaths.

Or RT Lydia DePillis @lydiadepillis

!! Study finds that uniform moratoria on evictions and utility shutoffs through November of last year could have saved *164,000* lives lost to COVID-19: https://nber.org/system/files/...p%3Butm_source=PANTHEON_STRIPPED

If real, that would make reducing housing precarity easily the best public health measure we've got.