¹ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/police-eviction-housing/tnamp/?__twitter_impression=true

² https://www.etymonline.com/word/quarantine

³ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-landlord-mario-salerno.html.

⁴ Alana Semuels, “Renters Are Being Forced From Their Homes Despite Eviction Moratoriums Meant to Protect Them,” (Time Magazine, April 15, 2020 at https://time.com/5820634/evictions-coronavirus/). See also the important work of Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor: “In California, Governor Gavin Newsom, who is often applauded for exhibiting competence in his handling of the coronavirus, did not impose a moratorium on evictions, opting to leave this up to each locality. (He later signed an executive order that gives tenants statewide more time to respond to eviction proceedings, a move that critics have panned as “entirely useless.”) Some municipalities have allowed for a pause in rental payments, but only if tenants can prove that their hardship is specifically tied to COVID-19. This is plainly a ridiculous requirement in the midst of a pandemic, especially since it is quite possible to become ill but not secure the still-elusive COVID-19 test” (https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/cancel-the-rent).

⁵ ”We Refugees, “ in The Jewish Writings, Schocken, 2008 (164-175). On the relative success of one approach, by ABODE, to enabling the unhoused to transition successfully to rent paying or fully subsidized tenancies, see Nathan Heller, “A Window Onto an American Nightmare” (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/01/a-window-onto-an-american-nightmare).

⁶ https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-keep-passengers-on-grand-princess-cruise-ship-coronavirus-2020-3. Keeping the numbers down (except when he wants them up, see: crowd size), is a recurrent theme of Trump's presidency. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a January 2020 interview with Rolling Stone, about her grandfather, a casualty of hurricane Maria: “He was in a hospital in the storm, on the Western half of the island. And these are the kinds of casualties that are not counted. Power went out across the entire island, and roads and bridges, infrastructure was so compromised. Medicines couldn't be transported. And my grandfather passed away while he was in the hospital. And the thing is, I can't say, “Oh, the hurricane killed my grandfather.” Right? But we don't know. Did he not get medicine in time? There was little to no power, or communication to my family. This was also a time when the government was saying that only 64 people died. We know that the number is actually in the thousands” (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-on-how-to-build-a-green-new-deal-965807/).

⁷ https://shelterforce.org/2020/04/09/high-risk-essential-and-illegally-evicted/

⁸ On rights, themselves, as a practice, see Richard E Flathman, The Practice of Rights, and on property as a practice see Davina Cooper who explores “a broader conception of property organized around relations of belonging rather than control, where rights are fragmented and institutional authority dispersed” and property plays a role “in creating, managing, and sustaining what I will call a “variegated” social” (Cooper, “Opening Up Ownership: Community Belonging, Belongings, and the Productive Life of Property,” Kent Academic Repository—http://kar.kent.ac.uk). Published version available in ‘Law and Social Inquiry, 32 (3): 625—664. On Takings or Eminent Domain, see D. Zachary Hudson, “Eminent Domain Due Process,” The Yale Law Journal Vol. 119, No. 6 (APRIL 2010): 1280-1327. For a critique of “Takings” as too conservative a measure, see Margaret Kohn's persuasive arguments in The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth (OUP, 2016).

⁹ For mortgage holders, another proposal makes sense: suspension of payments now, with all missing payments tacked on to the end of the mortgage and monthly payments resumed when the crisis ends. Here no government “taking” is required, since it is simply a mortgage holiday, and the debt will be paid by the debtor, just later, and not piled up to an impossible level.

¹⁰ In 2015, according to the annual AFL-CIO report: “4,836 workers were killed on the job in the United States. The fatal injury rate—3.4 per 100,000 workers—remained the same as the rate in 2014. An estimated 50,000 to 60,000 workers died from occupational diseases. 150 workers died each day from hazardous working conditions. Nearly 3.7 million work-related injuries and illnesses were reported. Underreporting is widespread—the true toll is 7.4 million to 11.1 million injuries each year” (Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, April 26, 2017 (WORKPLACE HEALTH AND SAFETY REPORT at https://aflcio.org/reports/death-job-toll-neglect-2017).

¹¹ On this point see my Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy (Princeton, 2009)

¹² As the Intercept notes in the context of AOC's comments: “Congress has ignored millions of people who have existed in a state of crisis for decades. The people of Flint, Michigan, (and elsewhere) still do not have safe drinking water. Millions of kids go hungry each day. Half a million people, before the pandemic, were homeless on any given night. And on it goes. There has been no multitrillion-dollar spending bill to combat these and other domestic emergencies. Instead, lawmakers have deprived communities of critical investments that could have attenuated their emergencies, often hiding behind the excuse that there isn't enough money in the budget to deal with problems like these” (Stephanie Kelton, “As Congress Pushes a $2 Trillion Stimulus Package, the ‘How Will You Pay For It?’ Question Is Tossed in the Trash”, https://theintercept.com/2020/03/27/coronavirus-stimulus-package-spending/).

¹³ https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-justice-department-sues-to-seize-private-property-for-border-wall-construction-2019-12-27

¹⁴ https://www.businessinsider.com/mnuchins-onewest-bank-has-long-record-of-mortgage-foreclosures-2017-8.

¹⁵ https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/cancel-the-rent.