Making a Mess of Evictions
Terry H. Schwadron
Aug. 2, 2021
From the cheap seats, it looks as if the Joe Biden administration just blew a big one, failing to signal in time for Congress to help that the White House was unable or unwilling to extend eviction protections to renters who lost income in the pandemic.
The result is that we’re starting to see huge numbers of evictions getting underway this week. Indeed, a U.S. Census Bureau survey says that more than 3.6 million adults reported that they were likely less than two months away from eviction as of June, including 2 million households with children. At least double that number say they are behind on rent.
Late notice only last Thursday from the White House that the administration would not renew eviction protections left Congress with almost no time before the House, at least, adjourned for a seven-week break. Besides rental displacements, that has left some hard political feelings even among Democrats, a wide-open target for both Republicans and for progressives, a few of whom decided to sleep on the Capitol steps this weekend to bring attention to homelessness.
Among the concerns here is that, in contrast with The Former Guy, the whole premise of Joe Biden’s approach has been that he relies on experienced people who actually know what they are doing about government services. But as with some of the border issues and managing a clear set of communications about responses to coronavirus itself, this administration is showing cracks in being able to handle all that life is throwing at once.
For its part, the administration says simply that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling to rein in rules set basically by the Centers for Disease Control keep it from extending the eviction protections. That may be, but there also has been major lobbying by landlord groups and developers to end the protections. Landlords want their money, and, of course, the Court rules on issues of law without thinking through the effects on people.
Available Money, Untapped
What makes all this worse is that there is federal money available from the coronavirus monies passed since January. But because of the laborious processes of application, the great bulk of it has not been spent, only about $3 billion of $47 billion available for rental assistance.
So, neither landlords nor tenants are happy. Neither are politicians from both parties, who want to know why the money isn’t getting where it had been intended, making government look like inefficient misers, indifferent to human fallout on the country’s poorest citizens.
From my point of view, this is exactly where the Biden team said it could excel — in running the actual day-to-day government, and where we are seeing slippage.
In any event, there is hell to pay because there was no Congressional time to pass a fix in a day, and no immediate consensus, for a lot of the usual partisan divide reasons.
As a human tragedy, this one looks cruel. For almost a year, a federal moratorium on evictions — and some state moratorium orders in New York and California, which continue in effect — allowed tenants who suffered economic losses from coronavirus to stay in their homes. That protection ran out Saturday at midnight, and there are reports of renters around the country scurrying for alternatives.
Let’s add in the sudden rise in Delta-mutant coronavirus cases and the apparent need to step back from any declaration of success with the effects of virus.
Already, homeless shelters have been adding beds in preparation for an influx of people.
Under the orders, renewed as recently as June, people were protected from eviction, but not from paying rent that may be months behind.
Politico reports that evictions are expected to hit cities hardest, and areas of Ohio, Texas and parts of the Southeast where tenant protections are generally low, housing costs are high and economic problems from the pandemic linger. Even New York is of concern because rental assistance has been slow to flow.
Everyone Knew
Weirdly, everyone saw this one coming. The eviction ban had to run out sometime, of course, and as we see reports of millions returning to jobs, people ought to have started paying off their back-due rent.
Somehow, it would seem, the wheels of government clogged, which is bad enough, and the White House failed to signal early enough that they needed Congressional action.
As with the previous administration, Biden’s late actions mean that the demise of the eviction ban this week threatens new economic burdens on state and local governments, which will have to respond to mass evictions triggered by landlords. Biden did call for local government to respond, saying that there was nothing in the Supreme Court order stopping state government from carrying out eviction bans. He said the available federal funds should be distributed immediately, but that too seems a call made way too late.
However one looks at it, any renter safety net has been severely weakened, landlords are still going to have to find renters who will pay, and there will be a political mess that will continue to echo in partisan chambers.
From those of us who simply watch government at work, this seems a total train wreck. The Congress blames the White House which said it would not extend the moratorium because of the prospect of legal challenges, which have been spearheaded for months by landlords. The Biden administration cited a Supreme Court decision last month that kept the ban in place until July 31 but made clear that a majority of justices believed the CDC was exceeding its legal authority. Biden wants Congress to pass a new prohibition, but at least a dozen House Democrats and more Republicans said no under pressure from local landlord groups, and progressives including Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., who once lived in her car, staged the Capitol steps protest for yet broader approaches to homelessness.
Princeton University actually has an Eviction Lab where they track filings. Landlords have filed for more than 451,000 evictions since March, 2020. Landlords typically file about 3.7 million eviction cases per year, and so filings are expected to swell in August. They are watching Texas, among others, which has allowed evictions to continue under the federal ban.
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