CDC issues 60-day halt in evictions after outcry

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced a temporary ban on evictions across most of the country Tuesday evening, a move that bent to intense pressure from liberal House Democrats but that President Joe Biden acknowledged may not prove constitutional.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a moratorium on evictions for 60 days for

U.S. counties with “substantial and high levels of community transmission” of the coronavirus, according to an agency news release.

About 90% of the country will be covered by the ban as the virus’s delta variant spreads quickly throughout the country, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement.

Data from Moody’s, a business and financial services company, has shown that more than 6 million Americans are behind on rent. Local housing organizers had feared an imminent uptick in eviction proceedings.

As she wiped her eyes before a crowd at the Capitol after the CDC’s announcement, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., who was once homeless herself, said she was shedding “joyful tears.”

“My God, I don’t believe we did this,” she said. “We just did the work, just by loving folks, to keep millions in their homes.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said it was a day of “extraordinary relief.”

“The imminent fear of eviction and being put out on the street has been lifted for countless families across America. Help is Here!” she said in a statement.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., released a statement thanking Biden “for listening and for encouraging the CDC to act! This extension of the moratorium is the lifeline that millions of families have been waiting for.”

Rachel Lazarus, a legal aid attorney in Gwinnett County, Ga., said she hopes extending the moratorium will persuade more landlords to work with financial aid programs rather than try to evict tenants and replace them with new ones. She said the order may help thousands of renters stay in their homes in her area alone.

“We were gearing up for a lot of people in desperation saying they don’t have anywhere to go and having very little assistance for them,” Lazarus said. “When I saw this, I was very relieved.”

DELTA VARIANT CITED

The Biden administration had previously said it had no legal authority to extend the national eviction moratorium that lapsed over the weekend.

A statement from CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on Tuesday evening pointed to the emergence of the delta variant and said “it is imperative that public health authorities act quickly to mitigate such an increase of evictions, which could increase the likelihood of new spikes.”

The administration’s move capped a sudden, startling and remarkable rift between Biden and his House Democratic allies, including Pelosi. Late last week, just days before the CDC’s moratorium was set to expire, the White House issued a last-minute call for Congress to pass a law offering new protections. At the time, the White House said it did not have the legal authority to do so on its own.

House Democrats responded angrily, saying such a measure was impossible to pass through Congress on short notice and pressed Biden officials to extend the moratorium unilaterally. Neither side acted, and the moratorium lapsed at midnight Saturday.

That only galvanized liberal Democrats. Bush drew immense support from other Democrats by sleeping outside the U.S. Capitol for four consecutive nights in protest of the lapsed moratorium, sending a signal to the White House that the backlash was only growing.

The White House had spent weeks trying to corral Democrats behind a big infrastructure package and there were clear signs in recent days that the party was fracturing. So after days of insisting there was nothing the White House could do, the administration announced its new action.

In remarks to reporters shortly before the CDC announcement, Biden acknowledged that the move would probably be subject to court challenge and appeared to express doubt about its legality. He even said scholars he consulted felt the measure was probably not constitutional.

“The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster … . But there are several key scholars who think that it may, and it’s worth the effort,” Biden said.

The administration had said its hands were tied by an opinion from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh saying any further extension of the moratorium would need congressional approval. But some experts argued the administration should still try to fight for it in court, noting Kavanaugh’s opinion — written before the delta variant renewed fears about the impact of the coronavirus on renters — also pointed to the need to get rental relief disbursed.

Biden also suggested that announcing a new moratorium, even if it was struck down in court, would help give the administration time to disburse rental assistance to tenants in need. Biden said initially his administration was “under the impression” that states were moving swiftly to distribute the funding, even though tens of billions of dollars remain unspent.

“The money is there,” Biden said.

LANDLORDS SQUEEZED

While intended to stave off evictions, the measure could also drive thousands of minor landlords to bankruptcy.

Patrick Newton, spokesman for the National Association of Realtors, said roughly half of all housing providers are “mom-and-pop operations” that could be jeopardized without tenants’ payments.

“Without rental income, they cannot pay their own bills or maintain their properties,” Newton said.

Bob Pinnegar, president and CEO of the National Apartment Association, said the organization “has always held the same position — the eviction moratorium is an unfunded government mandate that forces housing providers to deliver a costly service without compensation and saddles renters with insurmountable debt.”

Republicans are expected to oppose the move. Conservatives said the CDC’s order could exacerbate housing shortages by taking funding away from developers, which they said would in turn reduce their incentives to build.

“There’s an old expression that the best way to make people starve is to make food free. The best way to make people homeless is to make housing free,” said Casey Mulligan, who served as an economic official in President Donald Trump’s White House.

The rift between the Biden White House and House Democrats over the expiration of the eviction moratorium had escalated earlier Tuesday as Pelosi ruled out getting lawmakers back from their recess to address the issue through new legislation.

On a private call with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and House Democrats, Pelosi said the consensus of the caucus was that the House should not come back from its recess and that lawmakers should focus on urging the administration to extend the moratorium unilaterally, two people familiar with the conversation said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a discussion that was meant to remain private.

Pelosi’s comments sent a clear signal to the White House that Congress was not going to act and that it would be up to the administration.

The treasury secretary tried to encourage Democrats to work together, even as lawmakers said Biden should act on his own to extend the moratorium, according to one person on the call.

That person said Yellen agrees “we need to bring every resource to bear” and that she appreciated the Democrats’ efforts and wanted “to leave no stone unturned.”

Yellen also fielded lawmakers’ questions about delays in disbursing more than $46 billion in emergency rental assistance approved by Congress. The Treasury Department has struggled to get funding out the door to renters in need — with recent administration estimates suggesting only a fraction of it has been released.

Waters, the powerful chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee, has been talking privately with Yellen for days and urged the treasury secretary to use her influence to prod states to push the money out the door. But Waters also called on the CDC to act on its own.

Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to the president, on Monday announced an “all-agency review” to learn why state and local governments are not getting funding out.

It is not clear, however, how much more the Treasury Department can do to accelerate the distribution of funding.

“States and cities need at least another couple months to get this money out, and there’s no sticks or carrots Treasury can wield to make that happen faster. What we need is time,” said Paul Williams, a housing expert and fellow at the nonprofit Jain Family Institute and the author of an analysis on the current crisis.