The end of July could bring changes to the country’s rental markets, according to the website Marketplace, which reported on a series of surveys by the rental site Apartment List. 

The reason? The potential end of the $600 weekly unemployment payments to individuals who lost their jobs and were forced to file for unemployment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a recent survey, almost one-third of the tenants surveyed by Apartment list admitted to a struggle in paying July rent.

“Thirty-two percent had either a missed or partial payment in the first week of July, indicating some pretty alarming levels of difficulty with housing costs,” said economist Chris Salviati at the rental site Apartment List. And the problem was worse for those who earned $50,000 per year [or less].

“During the first week of this month, 19 percent of Americans had made no housing payment, while an additional 13 percent paid only a portion of their monthly bill,” the survey noted with more individuals concerned about being evicted or losing their homes to foreclosure. 

A recent survey from the Urban Institute revealed that the $600-a-week federal pandemic unemployment payments played an important role in whether rental tenants were able to pay their July rent at all. Michael Karpman, a representative of the Urban Institute, told Marketplace that there were “pretty big declines in the share worried about paying for basic expenses in the next month, such as the rent or mortgage, food, utility bills and medical care.”

The Urban Institute survey also noted that the federal unemployment payments helped recipients with issues of food insecurity and showed a decrease of anywhere from 6.2 percent to 17.1 percent in the group of individuals who worried about paying for essential needs like rent/mortgage, food, utility bills, medical costs or debts.