A study of unemployed workers was released last week by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and it showed outstanding rent debt would reach 7.2 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2020. Moody's Analytics estimates that the outstanding rent could reach nearly 70 billion U.S. dollars by the end of the year if there is no additional stimulus spending.

Some experts and analysts warned that the scale of homelessness caused by rent default is likely to be far greater than in the previous crisis in 2008.

Before the coronavirus outbreak, the housing problem in the U.S. was among the worst in developed countries. Data calculated in 2019 by the U.S. Government found that more than 500,000 people are homeless and nearly 200,000 people lived in a place not meant for human habitation, such as the streets or an abandoned building.

Moreover, the phenomenon of inequality in housing has persisted especially among minorities. According to the Census Bureau report from the first quarter of 2020, only 44 percent of black families owned their homes compared with 73.7 percent of white families, which is nearly 30 percentage points lower.

The U.S. Urban Institute said, if housing were equalized, the racial gap between the rich and the poor would be narrowed.

The U.S. economy was in recession due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the housing problem has become more acute and calls for systemic reform of federal housing policies have grown louder.

It is hard to be optimistic about finding middle ground to fundamentally solve the problem of housing inequality at a time of high ideological polarization and political upheaval in the United States.