Julián Castro is a former presidential candidate, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama and former mayor of San Antonio, Texas. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

The Department of Labor has announced that about 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment since the coronavirus crisis started shutting down businesses in the United States. That means a large percentage of the nation's renters and homeowners sat around their kitchen tables as the rent or mortgage payments came due at the first of the month and wondered where the money would come from.

Housing is the biggest monthly expense for most Americans, but it's often shoved aside in our political discourse for other important issues like health care, immigration or taxes. The federal government's response to the Covid-19 pandemic is a prime example of this and more needs to be done.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development announced in mid-March that it would suspend foreclosures and evictions for the 8.1 million mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration. In its $2.2 trillion economic stabilization package, Congress included more than $12 billion for housing and protection from eviction and foreclosures. While these measures are important, they won't be nearly enough to keep millions of Americans from housing insecurity and prevent a crisis worse than the Great Recession.

Long before Covid-19, stagnant wages, a severe lack of affordable housing and discriminatory housing practices had created an affordability crisis in communities across the nation.

In the United States, 43.7 million households rent their homes or apartments. More than 40% of renters spent at least 35% or more of their monthly paycheck on rent and utilities in 2018, meaning they are rent burdened.

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