Although sympathetic, the judge said state law required him to evict Williams and his 25-year-old daughter Demai Williams in April because they owed $8,348 in unpaid rent and fees on their $940-a-month apartment.

They have been living in limbo ever since.

They moved into a dilapidated Atlanta hotel room with water dripping through the bathroom ceiling, broken furniture and no refrigerator or microwave. But at $275-a-week, it was all they could afford on Williams $900 monthly social security check and the $800 his daughter gets biweekly from a state agency as her fathers caretaker.

I really dont want to be here by the time his birthday comes in August, Demai Williams said. For his health, its just not right.

The Williams family is among millions of tenants from New York state to Las Vegas who have been evicted or face imminent eviction.

After a lull during the pandemic, eviction filings by landlords have come roaring back, driven by rising rents and a long-running shortage of affordable housing. Most low-income tenants can no longer count on pandemic resources that had kept them housed, and many are finding it hard to recover because they havent found steady work or their wages havent kept pace with the rising cost of rent, food and other necessities.

Homelessness, as a result, is rising.

Protections have ended, the federal moratorium is obviously over, and emergency rental assistance money has dried up in most places, said Daniel Grubbs-Donovan, a research specialist at Princeton Universitys Eviction Lab.

Across the country, low-income renters are in an even worse situation than before the pandemic due to things like massive increases in rent during the pandemic, inflation and other pandemic-era related financial difficulties.

Eviction filings are more than 50% higher than the pre-pandemic average in some cities, according to the Eviction Lab, which tracks filings in nearly three dozen cities and 10 states. Landlords file around 3.6 million eviction cases every year.

Among the hardest-hit are Houston, where rates were 56% higher in April and 50% higher in May. In Minneapolis/St. Paul, rates rose 106% in March, 55% in April and 63% in May. Nashville was 35% higher and Phoenix 33% higher in May; Rhode Island was up 32% in May.

The latest data mirrors trends that started last year, with the Eviction Lab finding nearly 970,000 evictions filed in locations it tracks a 78.6% increase compared to 2021, when much of the country was following an eviction moratorium. By December, eviction filings were nearly back to pre-pandemic levels.

At the same time, rent prices nationwide are up about 5% from a year ago and 30.5% above 2019, according to the real estate company Zillow. There are few places for displaced tenants to go, with the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimating a 7.3 million shortfall of affordable units nationwide.

Many vulnerable tenants would have been evicted long ago if not for a safety net created during the pandemic.

The federal government, as well as many states and localities, issued moratoriums during the pandemic that put evictions on hold; most have now ended. There was also $46.5 billion in federal Emergency Rental Assistance that helped tenants pay rent and funded other tenant protections. Much of that has been spent or allocated, and calls for additional resources have failed to gain traction in Congress.

The disturbing rise of evictions to pre-pandemic levels is an alarming reminder of the need for us to act at every level of government to keep folks safely housed, said Democratic U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, urging Congress to pass a bill cracking down on illegal evictions, fund legal help for tenants and keep evictions off credit reports.

Housing courts are again filling up and ensnaring the likes of 79-year-old Maria Jackson.

Jackson worked for nearly two decades building a loyal clientele as a massage therapist in Las Vegas, which has seen one of the countrys biggest jumps in eviction filings. That evaporated during the pandemic-triggered shutdown in March 2020. Her business fell apart; she sold her car and applied for food stamps.

She got behind on the $1,083 monthly rent on her one-bedroom apartment, and owing $12,489 in back rent was evicted in March. She moved in with a former client about an hour northeast of Las Vegas.

Who could imagine this happening to someone who has worked all their life? Jackson asked.

Last month she found a room in Las Vegas for $400 a month, paid for with her $1,241 monthly social security check. Its not home, but Im one of the lucky ones, she said.

I could be in a tent or at a shelter right now.

In upstate New York, evictions are rising after a moratorium lifted last year. Forty of the states 62 counties had higher eviction filings in 2022 than before the pandemic, including two where eviction filings more than doubled compared to 2019.

How do we care for the folks who are evicted when the capacity is not in place and ready to roll out in places that havent experienced a lot of eviction recently? said Russell Weaver, whose Cornell University lab tracks evictions statewide.

Housing advocates had hoped the Democrat-controlled state Legislature would pass a bill requiring landlords to provide justification for evicting tenants and limit rent increases to 3% or 1.5 times inflation. But it was excluded from the state budget and lawmakers failed to pass it before the legislative session ended this month.

Our state Legislature should have fought harder, said Oscar Brewer, a tenant organizer facing eviction from the apartment he shares with his 6-year-old daughter in Rochester.

In Texas, evictions were kept down during the pandemic by federal assistance and the moratoriums. But as protections went away, housing prices skyrocketed in Austin, Dallas and elsewhere, leading to a record 270,000 eviction filings statewide in 2022.

Advocates were hoping the state Legislature might provide relief, directing some of the $32 billion budget surplus into rental assistance. But that hasnt happened.

Its a huge mistake to miss our shot here, said Ben Martin, a research director at nonprofit Texas Housers. If we dont address it, now, the crisis is going to get worse.

Still, some pandemic protections are being made permanent, and having an impact on eviction rates. Nationwide, 200 measures have passed since January 2021, including legal representation for tenants, sealing eviction records and mediation to resolve cases before they reach court, said the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

These measures are credited with keeping eviction filings down in several cities, including New York City and Philadelphia 41% below pre-pandemic levels in May for the former and 33% for the latter.

A right-to-counsel program and the fact that housing courts arent prosecuting cases involving rent arears are among the factors keeping New York City filings down.

In Philadelphia, 70% of the more than 5,000 tenants and landlords who took part in the eviction diversion program resolved their cases. The city also set aside $30 million in assistance for those with less than $3,000 in arears, and started a right-to-counsel program, doubling representation rates for tenants.

The future is not so bright for Williams and his daughter, who remain stuck in their dimly-lit hotel room. Without even a microwave or nearby grocery stores, they rely on pizza deliveries and snacks from the hotel vending machine.

Williams used to love having his six grandchildren over for dinner at his old apartment, but those days are over for now.

I just want to be able to host my grandchildren, he said, pausing to cough heavily. I just want to live somewhere where they can come and sit down and hang out with me.

___

Casey reported from Boston. AP writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed.

Obviously, you cant see any of these ice age megafauna now. Theyve all been extinct for about 12,800 years. Mammoths, mastodons, huge bison, horses, camels, very large ground sloths and giant short-faced bears all died out as the huge continental ice sheets disappeared at the end of the ice age. What happened to them?

Scientists have pointed to various potential causes for the extinctions. Some suggest environmental changes happened faster than the animals could adapt to them. Others posit a catastrophic impact of a fragmented comet. Maybe it was overhunting on the part of humans, or some combination of all these factors.

One of my major interests as an archaeologist has been to understand how the earliest Paleo-Americans lived and interacted with megafauna species. Just how implicated should humans be in the extinction of these ice age animals? In a new study, my colleagues and I used a forensic technique more commonly used to identify blood on objects at crime scenes to investigate this question.

Testing stone tools like murder weapons

Archaeologists have uncovered a sparse scattering of stone tools left at the campsites of Paleo-American Clovis hunter-gatherers who lived around the time of the megafauna extinctions.

These include iconic Clovis spearpoints with their distinctive flutes concave areas left behind by removed stone flakes that extend from the base to the middle of the point. People most likely made the points this way so they could easily affix them to a spear shaft.

Based on sites excavated in the western United States, archaeologists know Paleo-American Clovis hunter-gatherers who lived around the time of the extinctions at least occasionally killed or scavenged ice age megafauna such as mammoths. There theyve found preserved bones of megafauna together with the stone tools used for killing and butchering these animals. These sites are crucial for understanding the possible role that early Paleo-Americans played in the extinction event.

Unfortunately, many areas in the Southeastern United States lack sites with preserved bone and associated stone tools that might indicate whether megafauna were hunted there by Clovis or other Paleo-American cultures. Without evidence of preserved bones of megafauna, archaeologists have to find other ways to examine this question.

Forensic scientists have used an immunological blood residue analysis technique called immunoelectrophoresis for over 50 years to identify blood residue sticking to objects found at crime scenes. In recent years, researchers have applied this method to identify animal blood proteins preserved within ancient stone tools. They compare aspects of the ancient blood with blood antigens derived from modern relatives of extinct animals.

Residue analysis does not rely on the presence of nuclear DNA, but rather on preserved, identifiable proteins that sometimes survive within the microscopic fractures and flaws of stone tools created during their manufacture and use. Typically, only a small percentage of artifacts produce positive blood residue results, indicating a match between the ancient residue and antiserum molecules from modern animals.

A previous blood residue study of a small number of Paleo-American artifacts in South Carolina and Georgia failed to provide evidence that these people had hunted or scavenged extinct megafauna. The researchers found evidence of bison and other animals such as deer, bear and rabbit, but no evidence of Proboscidean (mammoth or mastodon) or of an extinct species of North American horse.

Identifying ancient prey of human hunters

My colleagues and I realized we needed a much larger sample of Paleo-American stone tools for testing. Since Clovis points and other Paleo-American artifacts are rare, I relied heavily on local museums, private collectors, collections housed at state universities and even military installations to amass a sample of 120 Paleo-American stone tools from all over North Carolina and South Carolina.

Because these artifacts are irreplaceable, I personally carried all 120 Clovis spearpoints and tools inside a protective case on a flight from South Carolina to the blood residue lab in Portland, Oregon. I coordinated in advance with the Transportation Security Administration so my collection of 13,000-year-old weaponry would make it through the screening process.

The blood residue analysis provided unambiguous proof that the tools had had contact with ancient animal blood proteins. The results included the first direct evidence on ancient stone tools of the blood of extinct mammoth or mastodon (Proboscidean) and the extinct North American horse (Equidae) on Paleo-American artifacts in eastern North America. This evidence is significant because it proves that these animals were present in the Carolinas, and they were hunted or scavenged by early Paleo-Americans.

In addition to Proboscidean and horse, bison (Bovidae) blood residues were most common, adding to earlier blood residue research suggesting a focus on bison hunting by Clovis and other Paleo-American cultures. Bison in North America did not go extinct but instead became smaller, most likely as a result of climate change as the last ice age ended and the climate warmed.

So, what do these results suggest for the extinction debate? While this study does not prove humans were responsible for the extinctions, it does show that early Paleo-Americans across the continent likely hunted or scavenged these animals, at least occasionally. The results also indicate that Proboscideans and horses were around when Clovis people were here only a few hundred years before their eventual extinction in North America.

Another interesting finding is that while Proboscidean blood residues are found on Clovis artifacts, blood residues for horses (Equidae) are found on both Clovis and Paleo-American points that are slightly more recent younger than Clovis. This may suggest the extinction of Proboscidean was complete in the Carolinas by the end of the Clovis period, and the extinction of ice age horse species took longer.

Testing an even larger sample of Paleo-American stone tools from different regions of North America could help pin down the timing and geographic variability in the extinction of megafauna species and provide more clues about why these animals disappeared when they did.

Christopher R. Moore is Research Professor and Director of the Southeastern Paleoamerican Survey (SEPAS) at the South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Antonio Guterres says the International Monetary Fund has benefited rich countries instead of poor ones. And he describes the IMF and World Bank s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as a glaring failure that left dozens of countries deeply indebted.

Guterres criticism, in a recent paper, isnt the first time hes called for overhauling global financial institutions. But it is his most in-depth analysis of their problems, cast in light of their response to the pandemic, which he called a stress test for the organizations.

His comments were issued ahead of meetings called by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Thursday and Friday to address reforms of the multilateral development banks and other issues.

Neither the IMF nor the World Bank would comment directly on the secretary-generals criticisms and proposals. But Guterres comments echo those of outside critics, who see the IMF and World Banks leadership limited by the powerful nations that control them a situation similar to that of the United Nations, which has faced its own calls for reform.

Maurice Kugler, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, told The Associated Press that the institutions failure to help the neediest countries reflects the persistence of a top-down approach in which the World Bank president is a U.S. national appointed by the U.S. president and the IMF managing director is a European Union national appointed by the European Commission.

Richard Gowan, the International Crisis Groups U.N. director, said there is a lot of frustration with the U.S. and its European allies dominating decision-making, leaving African countries with only a sliver of voting rights. Developing countries also complain that the banks lending rules are weighted against them, he said.

In fairness, the bank has been trying to update its funding procedures to address these concerns, but it has not gone far enough to satisfy countries in the Global South, Gowan said.

Guterres said its time for the boards of the IMF and the World Bank to right what he called the historic wrongs and bias and injustice built into the current international financial architecture.

That architecture was established when many developing countries were still under colonial rule.

The IMF and what is now known as the World Bank Group were created at a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944 to be key institutions of a postwar international monetary system. The IMF was to monitor exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to countries with balance of payment deficits. The World Bank would provide financial assistance for postwar reconstruction and for building the economies of less developed countries.

Guterres said the institutions havent kept pace with global growth. He said the World Bank has $22 billion in paid capital, the money used for low-interest loans and grants for government development programs. As a percentage of global GDP, thats less than one-fifth of the 1960 funding level.

At the same time, many developing countries are in a deep financial crisis, exacerbated by inflation, rising interest rates and a standstill in debt relief.

Some governments are being forced to choose between making debt repayments or defaulting in order to pay public sector workers possibly ruining their credit rating for years to come, Guterres said, adding that Africa now spends more on debt service costs than on health care.

The IMFs rules unfairly favor wealthy nations, he said. During the pandemic, the wealthy Group of Seven nations, with a population of 772 million, received the equivalent of $280 billion from the IMF while the least developed countries, with a population of 1.1 billion, were allocated just over $8 billion.

This was done according to the rules, Guterres said. This is morally wrong.

He called for major reforms that would strengthen the representation of developing countries on the boards of the IMF and World Bank, help countries restructure debts, change IMF quotas, and revamp the use of IMF funds. He also called for scaling up financing for economic development and tackling the impact of climate change.

IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack, asked about Guterres proposals at a June 8 news conference, said Im not in a position to comment on any of the specifics.

She added that a review of IMF quotas is a priority and is expected to be completed by Dec. 15.

In a written response to a query from the AP, the IMF said it has mounted an unprecedented response to the largest-ever request from countries for help dealing with recent shocks.

After the pandemic hit, the IMF approved $306 billion in financing for 96 countries, including below-market rate loans to 57 low-income countries. It also increased interest-free lending fourfold to $24 billion and provided around $964 million in grants to 31 of its most vulnerable nations between April 2020 and 2022 so they could service their debts.

The World Bank Group said in January that its shareholders have initiated a process to better address the scale of development.

The banks development committee said in a March report that the bank must evolve in response to the unprecedented confluence of global crises that has upended development progress and threatens people and the planet.

Guterres push for reforming the IMF and World Bank comes as the United Nations also faces demands for an overhaul of its structure, which still reflects the post-World War II global order.

Gowan said many U.N. ambassadors think it might be marginally easier and more helpful to developing countries to overhaul the IMF and World Bank than to reform the U.N. Security Council, which has been debated for more than 40 years.

While Guterres and U.N. ambassadors talk about reforming the financial institutions, any changes are up to their boards. Gowan noted that when the Obama administration engineered a reform of IMF voting rights in 2010, Congress took five years to ratify the deal and Congress is even more divided and dysfunctional now.

But Western governments are aware that China is an increasingly dominant lender in many developing countries, Gowan said, so they have an interest in reforming the IMF and World Bank in ways that keep poorer states from relying on Beijing for loans.

Beyond the Paris meeting, the debate over IMF and World Bank reforms will continue in September at a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 in New Delhi, and at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

U.S. climate chief John Kerry said in an Associated Press interview Wednesday that he will be attending the Paris summit along with IMF and World Bank officials.

Hopefully, new avenues of finance will be more defined than they have been, he said. I think its really important.