Jenny Schuetz:

That depends a lot on where you live. So in a metro area like Dallas, $1200 a month is about the rent on a two bedroom apartment. So that will at least cover a decent chunk of your expenses for the month. But in a place like, say, San Jose, the median rent is double that and so there are a lot of people in expensive places for whom this is really not going to cover that much of their cost.

What we know is that there are a lot of people who were in fact in unstable housing situations even before the current crisis hit. So about 20 percent of American households were already spending more than half of their monthly income on rent. That really doesn't leave a lot left over for other things and there's essentially no financial cushion. So these are households who in the best of circumstances were just barely covering their housing costs each month. Any kind of disruption to their income: losing their job, losing hours or a shift is going to mean that they can't pay all of their bills. So next week on April 1st there are simply a lot of people who are going to come up short.