Stimulus Checks Helped Renters Catch Up on Debt

The recent $600 stimulus provided a much-needed financial boost to renters, according to the Census Household Pulse Survey Update, which covers Jan. 6 to 18.

Forty-four percent of renter respondents to the survey used those stimulus payments to meet their regular financial obligations in the last seven days at the time of the survey. The Census began the survey last Spring to gauge the pandemic’s effects on households’ ability to meet their food and housing obligations.

“Those stimulus payments were really helping renters,” says Claire Gray, a research associate at National Multifamily Housing Council, in a recent video. “You can also see that they’ve relied less on those less stable sources to meet their obligations, like credit cards, borrowing from friends and family and selling assets. The stimulus payments have been very helpful.”

Looking at all households, about half of respondents used their stimulus payment to pay off debt. Roughly 22% have spent their stimulus payments and 26% have mostly saved it, according to Gray.

“This paying off debt would be debt they already had or debt they accumulated over the course of the pandemic,” Gray says.

Lower-income households were more likely than higher-income households to use their stimulus payments to pay off debt. “This could be because of reliance on credit cards or something of the like over the course of the pandemic to meet their financial obligations,” Gray says.

The Census Household Pulse Survey Update also indicated that roughly four out of every five renters are current on their monthly rent payments. In August, when the Census began asking the question, 85% of renter respondents were current, while 15% were not.

“We’ve seen a little bit of a deterioration over time,” Gray said.

Gray notes that The NMHC’s Rent Payment Tracker, which surveys 11.5 million units of professionally managed apartments across the country, indicates similar trends. It found that 89.8% of apartment households made either a full or partial rent payment by December 20. That’s 393,952 fewer households than the share who paid rent by that date in 2019. NMHC data shows that 90.3 percent of households paid rent by November 20, 2020.

The Census Household Pulse Survey Update also asked respondents about their confidence to pay the next month’s rent. Throughout most of the surveys, around two-thirds of respondents say they are confident in paying the next month’s rent, according to Gray.