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15 million Americans Fear ‘Tsunami of Evictions’ as US Rental Aid Moratorium Ends

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After a federal eviction moratorium expired over the weekend, thousands of landlord-filed eviction actions are now pending in courts across the country. The vast majority of federal funds intended for rental assistance were never disbursed.

On July 30, the CDC’s federal ban on evictions expired without replacement, putting up to 15 million Americans behind on their rent at risk of eviction. While some states have their own moratoria, others have already started proceedings.

In states like Michigan, Missouri, and Rhode Island, eviction moratoria have expired or never existed, and landlords are already filing to evict tenants who are behind on their rent. In other states, like New York, renters can still get protection if they show economic hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but only if they notify their landlord.

While many states still have their eviction protections in place, many of them will soon expire, some within the week, such as Hawaii’s, which expires on August 6 – Friday.

Others, such as Maryland’s, will run out on August 15, but Illinois renters will be covered until the end of the month. The moratorium is in effect until October in California and Washington, DC, and until January 2022 in New Jersey.

Others have more complicated systems: in Oregon, for example, the state moratorium on evictions for rent owed during the pandemic expired on June 30, a month before the federal ban, but evictions for rent owed during the pandemic are paused until February 2022, giving renters time to repay their landlords.

“We’re all very concerned about a tsunami of evictions,” Joe McGuire, an attorney with the Detroit Justice Center, told ABC local WXYZ in Detroit.

“A lot of people still haven’t received unemployment benefits. A lot of people are having a hard time finding jobs in this economy that are good for them.”

In St. Louis, 126 evictions have already been ordered, and the Sheriff’s Office told AP they plan to begin enforcing them immediately, evicting as many as nine families per day beginning on Monday, August 9. Between St. Louis and Kansas City, more than 13,000 eviction cases have been filed since March 15, 2020, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

According to the Aspen Institute, over 15 million Americans are behind on their rent payments, owing their landlords a total of $20 billion. Race has a significant impact on those figures.

“Currently, 22% of Black renters and 17% of Latinx renters are in debt to their landlords, compared to 15% overall and 11% of White renters,” the DC-based nonprofit reports.

“Rental debt is also challenging for renters with children, with 19% unable to make payments.”

Meanwhile, a new surge in COVID-19 cases has resulted in the largest daily new cases in the US since February, with Florida setting new records for a single state over the weekend, with over 10,200 people hospitalized with the virus and over 21,000 new cases on Sunday alone. According to the CDC, Florida and Texas account for one out of every five new cases in the United States, and many of the states that lack additional eviction protections, such as Missouri, have the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates and the highest number of new cases.

Many of those same states have also terminated their federally funded unemployment assistance programmes early, depriving unemployed Americans of up to $300 per week, undoubtedly amplifying the effects of the eviction ban’s expiration.

Federal relief fund

Some $25 billion was set aside in aid for renters as part of the $900 billion CARES Act COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress in December 2020, and billions more were added to the pot over the next few months, bringing the total to $45 billion by March 2021, with $21 billion going specifically to the states.

However, only $3 billion of the $25 billion in federal rent assistance has been distributed thus far, with another $1.5 billion distributed by state and local governments by the end of June, the most recent month for which data is available from the US Treasury. This is despite the fact that the law requires state and local governments to distribute up to 90% of the funds allocated to them for emergency renter assistance.

Court Looks to Lawmakers, Who Look to Biden

The US Supreme Court ruled in favour of a group of Alabama landlords who challenged the CDC’s authority to ban evictions on June 29, but declined to lift the ban because it was about to expire anyway. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted with the majority, wrote that if the Biden administration wanted to keep the eviction ban, Congress would have to pass it as a bill.

Despite this warning, the administration waited until July 29 to issue a statement saying that while the White House considered extending the eviction ban “a prudent public health decision,” its hands were effectively tied by the Court’s decision.

“In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the President calls on Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in the Friday statement, adding that Biden was urging several federal government departments, as well as state and local governments, to “do everything in their power” to continue to protect Americans from eviction.

That evening, the vast majority of the 435 members of the US House of Representatives left for their seven-week summer recess, which their colleagues in the Senate will begin on August 6. However, a handful of progressive lawmakers, led by freshman lawmaker Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), began a protest on the US Capitol steps outside the House chamber demanding the eviction ban be reinstated.

The protest has grown to at times as many as several hundred people and drawn other progressive figures to the Capitol grounds. On Sunday evening, Revs. Dr. William J. Barber and Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, spoke to the protesters occupying the House steps. The progressive grassroots movement had already planned on coming to DC to demand Congress discard the filibuster blocking an important voting rights bill and several other pieces of legislation, but Barber said that a federal ban on evictions must also be added to their list of demands.

However, on Sunday, House Democrats were still looking to the White House for answers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Whip James E. Clyburn (D-SC) and Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark (D-CT) issued a statement saying that “action is needed, and it must come from the Administration.”

“Doing so is a moral imperative to keep people from being put out on the street which also contributes to the public health emergency,” they added.

On Monday, Biden, in turn, looked to the CDC to solve the problem, asking the agency to “consider once again the possibility of … a new, 30-day eviction moratorium – focused on counties with High or Substantial case rates – to protect renters.”

“To date, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and her team have been unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium. Our team is redoubling efforts to identify all available legal authorities to provide necessary protections,” the statement reads, adding that “in the meantime, the President will continue to do everything in his power to help renters from eviction,” citing the previously stated requests of department heads, state governments, and merciful landlords

The Monday White House statement did not mention the possibility of federal anti-eviction law or the cancellation of Congress’ summer recess.

Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

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