Ask an Expert: What is COVID-19’s impact on the homelessness crisis?

Feb 12, 2021

2 min

Marybeth Shinn



The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact the homeless community and homelessness crisis, including posing unique health risks to the homeless population and spurring a likely increase in homelessness due to job losses.


“People experiencing homelessness are at enormous risk of exposure to the coronavirus, due to inability to self-isolate, as evidenced by outbreaks in congregate shelters,” says Marybeth Shinn, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair and professor of human, organizational and community development at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development. “With the cold weather coming, service providers are scrambling to provide food, shelter and outreach services safely, and to use rental assistance to get people into housing.”


Shinn also explains that while eviction moratoriums imposed during the pandemic work to delay evictions, they do not prevent them. Arrears for rent, utilities and fees continue to accumulate when the moratorium ends, and landlords can continue to charge late fees for late payments. On the one hand, moratoriums will help keep many renters in their homes at a time when the alternatives, such as crowding in with friends and relatives or even becoming homeless, puts people’s health at risk. At the same time, landlords, especially small landlords, are also suffering. Landlords often have mortgages as well as other expenses to pay, relying on rental income to do so.


In her new book with Abt Associates researcher Jill Khadduri, In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What to Do About It, Shinn argues that homelessness is not a result of personal failure, but rather societal failure, as we have the knowledge and resources to end homelessness but lack the political will. As an immediate step during the pandemic, Shinn advises that Congress needs to enact relief for tenants and landlords, as well as reinstate weekly supplements to unemployment benefits to help people stay current on rent.



Connect with:
Marybeth Shinn

Marybeth Shinn

Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair, Department of Human and Organizational Development

Expert in how to prevent and end homelessness

Affordable HousingSocial ExclusionHomelessnessPoverty

You might also like...

Check out some other posts from Vanderbilt University

1 min

Debate director and rhetoric expert on Biden vs. Trump presidential debate

John Koch, senior lecturer and director of debate at Vanderbilt University, is available for commentary on the presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. A recognized scholar on presidential communication and rhetoric, John uses a wide range of methods to understand and explain political and policy debates. His research is guided by the question of how we can improve citizenship practices and debates within our political culture. He has served as chair of the National Communication Association’s Argumentation and Forensics Division and the Committee on International Discussion and Debate. John has published various book chapters on presidential rhetoric. Topics he can speak to include: What arguments to expect from the candidates What each candidate needs to do and not do in the debate How to determine who wins a debate What to watch for/what issues might come up in the debate History of presidential debates The usefulness of presidential debates and how we might improve them How adults can discuss politics and debates with their children by watching debates together After debate analysis of who may have won and what issues/moments may be salient to voters The debate styles of the candidates and their histories in debates

1 min

Arguments against the singularity - and what we should worry about instead

In a new paper, “Against the singularity hypothesis,” published in Philosophical Studies, David Thorstad, assistant professor of philosophy, examines how leading defenses of the singularity hypothesis fail to overcome the case for skepticism and provides policy implications of this discussion. Thorstad offers five reasons that arguments that computer intelligence will surpass that of humans are not substantive enough to provide reasonable cause for worry. He can discuss these findings, as well as the rationale to focus on more immediate tech and AI-related causes for concern, including misinformation, deepfakes, election interference and additional irresponsible use.

2 min

Repeatedly seeing headlines of wrongdoing reduces perception of moral offense

A study recently published in Psychological Science reveals that when people repeatedly encounter headlines about corporate wrongdoing, they view the wrongdoing as less unethical and are more likely to believe the headlines are true. Social media can cause scandalous news to go viral in an instant, and the resharing of provocative headlines ensures people repeatedly encounter these scandals. To test the effects of this repetition on moral judgement, researchers at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development and the London Business School sent text messages to study participants with news headlines about corporate misconduct. The study occurred over the course of 15 days as participants engaged in their daily routines. “We often think about social media and the current digital media landscape as increasing our anger and moral outrage, but in this case, repeated exposures to corporate wrongdoings actually made people slightly less outraged about the moral offense,” said Lisa Fazio, associate professor of psychology and human development. “When we repeatedly see news of the latest viral wrongdoing on social media, we often encounter it passively, at random times of the day, and while we might be distracted by other tasks. In our research, we show that even passing encounters can shape our thoughts and emotional reactions,” said Raunak Pillai, the study’s first author and a psychology doctoral student in Fazio’s Building Knowledge Lab. The researchers found that participants rated repeated headlines of wrongdoing as significantly less unethical than new headlines–a phenomenon known as the moral repetition effect–and that participants’ anger diminished when they encountered wrongdoings described in repeated headlines versus new headlines. The less anger they felt, the less unethical they judged the wrongdoing. Likewise, wrongdoings in repeated headlines verses new headlines were rated as less unusual, which also led to judging the wrongdoing as less unethical. That said, the effect size of repetition on moral judgement diminished as participants encountered more headlines; in other words, the effects were larger from the first to the second encounter as compared to the 15th to 16th encounter. As the number of repetitions increased, the effect on moral judgement became progressively smaller. Additionally, the more frequently participants viewed a headline, the truer they thought it was (known as the illusory-truth effect). After the initial views of headlines, participants’ truth ratings rose sharply and then plateaued, suggesting that the first few encounters with a headline have the most impact on peoples’ beliefs. The findings also suggest that perceptions of misconduct as true may elicit a more lenient moral judgment, but the authors say more research is needed to confirm this effect. “The more we hear about a wrongdoing, the more we may believe it—but the less we may care,” the authors write. Fazio and Pillai collaborated with Daniel Effron, Ph.D., from the London Business School on this study.

View all posts