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In late June, the Supreme Court “denied a request by a group of Alabama real estate agents to block a federal moratorium on evictions that was imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Justice Brett Kavanaugh provided the key vote to leave the moratorium in place, joining Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices. Kavanaugh wrote that, although he agrees with the real estate agents that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its authority when it issued the ban, he nonetheless voted to leave the ban in place because it is scheduled to expire soon.” SCOTUSblog
“A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lacked authority for the national moratorium it imposed last year on most residential evictions to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. The ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati means judges in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan are no longer bound by the moratorium… The moratorium is set to expire on July 31 and the Biden administration said in June it would not grant further extensions.” Reuters
The right opposes the eviction moratorium, arguing that it is both illegal and bad policy.
“Congress passed the eviction ban amid the pandemic and extended it through Jan. 31 of this year. But the CDC then chose on its own, without a new command from Congress, to extend the ban three times, most recently through July 31… [Judge John Bush] said that the CDC interpreted a sentence to give itself expanded power to do whatever it wants in the name of public health, though Congress in that sentence intended to circumscribe the CDC’s power by listing precise actions it can take…
“Under the CDC’s interpretation, Judge Bush wrote, the agency ‘can do anything it can conceive of to prevent the spread of disease. That reading would grant the CDC director near-dictatorial power for the duration of the pandemic, with authority to shut down entire industries as freely as she could ban evictions.’ Hear, hear. Federal and state governments have too often used the pandemic as a license to restrict liberty without a legal basis.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“When Massachusetts’s state eviction moratorium expired, lease violations, rather than nonpayment of rent, made up the largest share of eviction actions. So strong is the eviction crisis narrative, however, that the case of a Boston apartment complex in which 113 tenants—some of whose rent assistance was mired in red tape—received eviction notices was headlined for its supposed lasting ill effects, even though ‘few if any’ of the tenants will be physically evicted…
“Data from Monarch Investment and Management Group, a major property management firm, indicate that only 10.5 percent of tenants facing eviction are physically forced from the premises. The majority go on to stay and pay or leave on their own. In many cases, eviction filings are part of a de facto arbitration process in which property owners, many of whom rely on rental income to meet mortgage payments and perform crucial maintenance, use the courts to work out a compromise on back rent…
“The push to make evictions more difficult, or even to ban them outright, is a misguided effort that threatens the income of rental-property owners of modest means and puts at risk the safety and building maintenance of tenants who do pay their rent.”
Howard Husock, City Journal
“Most of the places that removed eviction bans in May and June last year didn’t see a resulting surge in evictions. Even in states and cities that did see a spike, they were all less than pre-COVID levels…
“The market and generous government aid seem to have done far more to avert an eviction crisis than the various moratoria on the books. The share of households paying their rent on time did fall in 2020 but not by much, declining by an average of just 1.5 percent from April to December compared to the same period in 2019. Stimulus checks combined with an extra $600 a week for many unemployed workers made a remarkable difference for helping tenants make rent…
“Helping renters receive financial aid and get better terms from property owners would do far more to avert painful evictions. Nearly $50 billion in federal rent relief money is now available to renters. The problem is processing these dollars through some 400 state and local housing programs; Texas has issued 37 percent of its relief funds to renters, compared to less than 4 percent in Arizona. There is every reason to push for this money to be distributed quickly and efficiently.”
Michael Hendrix, Governing
The left urges state and local governments to distribute rental aid more expeditiously and also to enact stronger tenant protections.
The left urges state and local governments to distribute rental aid more expeditiously and also to enact stronger tenant protections.
“More than half of all renter households lost employment income between March 2020 and March of this year, causing one in five of those households to fall behind on rent… The US Census Bureau’s biweekly Household Pulse Survey issued on June 15 revealed that nearly 4.2 million people nationwide report that it is likely or somewhat likely that they will be evicted or foreclosed upon in the next two months…
“In the short term, the Biden administration should extend the CDC moratorium to reflect the lingering economic struggles caused by the pandemic…
“Lawmakers and courts should also require landlords to offer mediation to their tenants or take other informal steps before filing for a court order of eviction. A landlord should not be able to spend a few minutes completing a check-the-box form, plunk down as little as $87, and thereby inscribe a ‘Scarlet E’ that will haunt a tenant for decades. Even when an eviction case is resolved with a settlement or in the tenants’ favor, future potential landlords often check court records, find a past eviction record, and then reject the applicants outright.”
Fran Quigley, Jacobin Magazine
“In a world where rental assistance is flowing and the economy booming, policymakers could rest easy that a spurt of evictions will not ensue. But that reality only exists on charts and unofficial estimates. In the real world, the assistance spigot has turned from completely dry to only a few drips at a time… In the first six months since rental assistance was made available, only 6.5 percent of the funds have been distributed…
“Around 7.4 million Americans are behind on rent, but the assistance program has helped around 600,000. Tenants have been unable to access rental assistance for a variety of reasons. First of all, it’s a completely decentralized program; every locality must build from scratch its own process for getting the money out. Each initiative varies widely on verifying rental debt and placing paperwork burdens on the renter, and some give landlords discretion on whether to accept the assistance. If they would rather kick out the renter and bring in someone else at higher rent, they can reject it.”
David Dayen, American Prospect
“Changing national eviction policy and local court practices is critical to address the nation's long-term eviction crisis. To start, researchers, policymakers and advocates need better and more uniform data on evictions. This data is notoriously uneven and incomplete, making it hard to track evictions over time, identify communities hardest hit and design effective solutions. One proposal gaining traction is to create a federal database of eviction filings and completed evictions…
“A national right to counsel would also give renters a fairer shot in the justice system… Early data from [such] programs show promising results in preventing evictions, and many landlords are more likely to participate in mediation with tenants when they are represented…
“The civil courts that administer evictions also need to work more closely with housing and social service practitioners, including housing assistance and financial counseling administrators, and with case workers who can connect evicted tenants to new housing opportunities… Long-term solutions are the only way to guarantee every family has a home, not only during a pandemic, but always.”
Kathryn Reynolds and Abby Boshart, CNN
A libertarian's take
“The CDC’s rationale for its eviction moratorium, which applies to renters who claim financial hardship, is that evicted tenants might ‘become homeless’ or move in with other people, thereby increasing the chances of virus transmission. The same rationale could justify an outright ban on changing residences or even broad economic interventions aimed at making sure that all tenants have enough money to cover their rent. Where does the CDC get these vast powers, which somehow exceed even the president’s?…
“As US District Judge J. Philip Calabrese noted in March, the reading favored by the CDC would ‘implicate serious constitutional concerns’ by authorizing ‘action with few, if any, limits — tantamount to creating a general federal police power.’”
Jacob Sullum, New York Post
