The Biden administration again extended a federal moratorium on evictions last week, but conflicting court rulings on whether the ban is legal, plus the difficulty of rolling out nearly $50 billion in federal aid, mean the country’s reckoning with its eviction crisis may come sooner than expected, the Washington Post reported. The year-old federal moratorium — which has now been extended through June 30 — has probably kept hundreds of thousands or millions of people from being evicted from their apartments and homes. More than 10 million Americans are behind on rent, according to Moody’s, easily topping the 7 million who lost their homes to foreclosure in the 2008 housing bust. Despite the unprecedented federal effort to protect tenants, landlords have been chipping away at the moratorium in court. Six lawsuits have made their way before federal judges — with three ruling in support of the ban and three calling it illegal. The opposition started when landlords in Texas sued in the fall, arguing that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had overstepped its bounds in implementing the ban. Apartment owners argued in their complaint that they built and maintained apartment buildings “with the reasonable expectation that they would be legally permitted to realize the benefit of their bargain by collecting monthly rent from their tenants.” District Judge J. Campbell Barker agreed. “Although the COVID-19 pandemic persists, so does the Constitution,” he wrote. The National Association of Home Builders joined Ohio landlords in another suit. The judge in that case, J. Philip Calabrese, also ruled against the ban, writing March 10 that “the CDC’s orders exceeded the statutory authority Congress gave the agency.” Treasury Department officials have been armed with nearly $50 billion in emergency aid for renters who have fallen behind and are racing to distribute it through hundreds of state, local and tribal housing agencies, some of which have not created programs yet. The idea is to get the money to renters before courts nationwide begin processing evictions again. “We are running the Emergency Rental Assistance Program every day like we’re going to lose the moratorium tomorrow,” said a Treasury Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the program before any formal announcements. The moratorium was not overly controversial at first, and it has received bipartisan support from lawmakers. It was formed when President Donald Trump and Congress directed the CDC to create a form tenants can use to declare that they cannot pay rent because of the pandemic and that they have been unable to secure other housing. Filing the form generally halts eviction proceedings.
