CDC extends nationwide eviction ban for last time
Tenants able to breathe a little easier with moratorium’s final day now July 31
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday extended the nationwide ban on evictions for a month to help millions of tenants unable to make rent payments during the coronavirus pandemic, but said this is the last time it plans to do so.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, extended the evictions moratorium from June 30 until July 31. The CDC said “this is intended to be the final extension of the moratorium.”
A Biden administration official said the last month would be used for an “all hands on deck” multi-agency campaign to prevent a wave of evictions. One of the reasons the moratorium was put in place was to prevent further spread of COVID-19 by people put out on the streets and into shelters.
As of June 7, roughly 3.2 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
The news brought relief to tenants on the verge of being evicted and whose only lifeline was the CDC moratorium.
Among them was Cristina Livingston, a 55-year-old mother of two from Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, who lost her job as an administrative assistant during the pandemic. She couldn’t get federal rental assistance to pay about $14,000 in back rent because her landlord refused to take it.
“I’m just asking for a little bit more time. I just need the time to move out of here in a dignified way,” said Livingston, who said her biggest fear was that she would be evicted without notice before finding a new job.
The extension announcement Thursday was accompanied by a flurry of administration activity. The Treasury Department issued new guidance encouraging states and local governments to streamline distribution of the nearly $47 billion in available emergency rental assistance funding. And Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta released a letter to state courts around the country encouraging them to pursue a number of alternatives that would protect both tenants and landlords.
Gupta’s letter states that “eviction filings are expected to overwhelm courts across the country,” unless additional steps are taken.
This week, dozens of members of Congress wrote to President Joe Biden and Walensky, calling for the moratorium to be not only extended but also strengthened.
The letter, spearheaded by Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Jimmy Gomez of California and Cori Bush of Missouri, called for an unspecified extension to allow the emergency rental assistance included in the American Rescue Plan to get into the hands of tenants.
Ending the assistance too abruptly, they said, would disproportionately hurt some of the minority communities that were hit so hard by the virus, which has killed more than 600,000 people in the United States. They also echoed many housing advocates by calling for the moratorium’s protections to be made automatic.