By Joshua Vaughn, The Appeal, January 28, 1978
A new working paper from researchers at Duke University has found that policies that secured access to housing and utilities like water and electricity played a major role in preventing COVID-19 infections and deaths.
Counties with a moratorium on evictions reduced county-level infections by nearly 4 percent and led to 11 percent fewer deaths, the paper found. And policies that prevented the disconnection of utilities like water and electricity brought infections down by a little more than 4 percent and reduced deaths by more than 7 percent.
“We know from research that not being able to pay your water and electricity is the first signal that a household is headed towards being at risk of eviction,” Kay Jowers, co-author of the paper and senior policy associate at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, told The Appeal.
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