The National Multifamily Housing Council Rent Payment Tracker found 80.4 percent of apartment … [+]
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has authorized an extension to the eviction moratorium, further preventing the eviction of tenants who are unable to make rental payments. The moratorium that was scheduled to expire on March 31 is now extended through the end of June
“The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a historic threat to the nation’s public health,” said CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in a statement. “Keeping people in their homes and out of crowded or congregate settings — like homeless shelters — by preventing evictions is a key step in helping to stop the spread of COVID-19.”
As noted in the Joint Center for Housing Studies recent report, The State of the Nation’s Housing 2020, “The Covid-19 pandemic, a powerful movement for racial justice, and the devastating impacts of climate change have combined to bring the nation’s longstanding housing challenges to the fore. Over half of Black and Hispanic renter households were cost burdened going into the pandemic, compared to 42 percent of Asian and white households.”
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which President Biden signed into law on January 20, set aside $21.5 billion for rental assistance. At the time, Biden stated that the pandemic and the corresponding economic crisis are devastating families across the country. He called on Congress to take immediate action to forestall a coming wave of Covid-related evictions and foreclosures.
The National Multifamily Housing Council’s Rent Payment Tracker found 80.4 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by March 6 in its survey of 11.6 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.
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That was a 4.1 percentage point, or 474,942 household decrease from the share who paid rent through March 6, 2020 and compares to 79.2 percent that had paid by February 6, 2021.
The National Apartment Association remains strongly opposed to the CDC’s expanded eviction moratorium. Bob Pinnegar, president and CEO of NAA, calls it “a destructive and legally entangled policy that does nothing to address the underlying financial distress of renters and rental housing providers.”
He added, “Though politically popular and well-intentioned, eviction moratoria push renters and their housing providers closer to the brink of financial ruin and jeopardize the stability of 40 million rental homes. These policies need to end, and we instead need to focus on swift distribution of federal rental assistance to keep renters securely housed and ensure housing providers can pay the bills that keep housing safe and operational.”
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Ohio ruled that the CDC lacked the authority to issue a nationwide moratorium on rental evictions.
On March 10, U.S. District Judge J. Philip Calabrese, sitting in Cleveland, ruled that the CDC went beyond what the federal Public Health Service Act allows it to do in ordering a halt to evictions. However, he did not grant an injunction that would have stopped the agency from enforcing the moratorium.
The ruling came two weeks after U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker in the Eastern District of Texas determined that the moratorium was unconstitutional. The Justice Department is appealing that order.
“Although the Covid-19 pandemic persists, so does the Constitution,” Barker wrote in his decision.
In a statement, Brian Boynton, the acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil division, said prosecutors respectfully disagreed with the judge’s ruling and noted it only applied to parties in the case, not broadly to others.
“The CDC’s eviction moratorium, which Congress extended last December, protects many renters who cannot make their monthly payments due to job loss or health care expenses,” said Boynton. “By preventing people from becoming homeless or having to move into more-crowded housing, the moratorium helps to slow the spread of Covid-19.”
Barker, who was nominated by Trump in 2018 to serve in the Eastern District of Texas, stopped short of issuing an injunction in the case. Several property owners had brought the litigation arguing that the federal government didn’t have the legal authority to stop evictions.
“The federal government cannot say that it has ever before invoked its power over interstate commerce to impose a residential eviction moratorium,” Barker wrote. “It did not do so during the deadly Spanish flu pandemic. Nor did it invoke such a power during the exigencies of the Great Depression. The federal government has not claimed such a power at any point during our nation’s history until last year.”
To be eligible for protection, renters must demonstrate they have sought government help to pay rent; have earned no more than $99,000 or $198,000 if filing jointly; declare that they can’t pay because of Covid-19 hardships; declare that they are making timely partial payments that are as close to the full payment as the individual’s circumstances may permit; and affirm that they are likely to become homeless if evicted.