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After hitting the pause button during the pandemic, the eviction machinery in New York City, one of the world’s most expensive housing markets, will likely soon start firing up again, the New York Times reported. For roughly 16 months, the city’s renters have been shielded from eviction under broad protections imposed by the federal government and New York State to keep people in their homes during the coronavirus outbreak. But those safeguards are soon expected to come to an end, setting off alarms about the fate of struggling tenants who owe months of unpaid rent, cannot make their next payments and could face homelessness. Nearly 500,000 households in New York City have rent arrears that collectively total more than $2.2 billion, according to an analysis of census data by the National Equity Atlas, a research group associated with the University of Southern California. At the same time, the financial challenges facing many tenants are squeezing smaller landlords who rely on rent to pay their own bills. The federal moratorium, enacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been extended several times throughout the pandemic but is now scheduled to expire at the end of July. After an additional one-month extension in June, the agency said that the protections would likely lapse for good this month. But tenants across New York State will have another month of protections under a state eviction moratorium, which expires at the end of August. New York State officials have not given any indication that the moratorium will be extended again, as it has been multiple times during the pandemic. New York State has set aside $2.7 billion in financial aid, largely from the federal government, that tenants can request through an application the state launched in June. If their applications are approved, up to a year’s worth of unpaid rent will be covered, as well as a year’s worth of unpaid utilities. Lower-income tenants can qualify for an additional three months of rental payments. The payments go directly to the landlord.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Friday called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to extend its eviction moratorium amid a massive backlog in the distribution of rental aid, The Hill reported. In a Friday statement, Ocasio-Cortez urged the Biden administration to prevent the CDC’s ban on most evictions from expiring on July 31 despite the agency saying in June it would not likely extend the ban past that date. Ocasio-Cortez said that it was “reckless” to allow the ban to lapse with a fraction of the $46 billion in federal rental aid actually in the hands of tenants, landlords and utilities companies. More than 4.7 million Americans are not current on their housing payments and expect to be evicted or foreclosed on within two months, according to a survey conducted by the Census Bureau between June 23 and July 5. Roughly 8 million also said they don’t expect to make their next housing payment on time.

A former CEO of the student loan lender Sallie Mae says the cost of tuition at U.S. universities is “criminal,” but acknowledges that he played a role in their rising, according to a forthcoming book, The Hill reported. In an adaption of Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell’s “The Debt Trap,” set to be published on Aug. 3, Al Lord, who joined Sallie Mae in 1981, said that he first felt the impact of tuition costs when he started paying those of one of his grandchildren. Lord said that he paid $175 a semester during the 1960s when he attended Pennsylvania State University, a stark difference to the tuition he paid for his grandson, who enrolled at the University of Miami several years ago. The college currently charges $75,230 for an undergraduate on campus, which includes tuition, fees, housing and meals, transportation and other expenses. He reportedly acknowledges in the book that he understands he played a role in encouraging colleges to increase their rates. According to "The Debt Trap," after Lord started his first run as CEO for Sallie Mae in 1997, he started a series of incentives to allow students to take out more loans so that colleges could charge more. Sallie Mae started bundling packages of student loans that were then sold to investors.

An appeals court ruled that private student loans can be discharged through bankruptcy like other consumer debts, opening the door for more borrowers to obtain relief from educational debt, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Thursday’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sided with Hilal Homaidan, an Emerson College alumnus who sought to eliminate through bankruptcy the $12,567 in private student loans he took on to finance his education. Government-backed student loans are nearly impossible to erase in bankruptcy. To qualify, borrowers must show that continuing to repay would impose an “undue hardship,” a standard so high that few even attempt to meet it. Homaidan’s lender, Navient Solutions LLC, argued that his private loans should be treated the same way. But the Second Circuit said that certain types of private educational loans, especially those that don’t meet the tax code’s definition of a qualified student loan, can be canceled through the bankruptcy process without a showing of undue hardship. There is about $50 billion of outstanding student debt in this category, according to Homaidan’s lawyers. He filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy soon after graduating from Emerson in 2007 and received a discharge of his debt in bankruptcy court. But the discharge order was unclear on whether the Navient loans had been eliminated. Navient hired a collection firm to pester Mr. Homaidan into repaying, causing him to believe that he still owed money on the loans, according to the appellate ruling. He paid Navient in full in the belief that he had a legal obligation to do so, according to the ruling.

Prices of new and used vehicles are at record highs, bolstered by a semiconductor supply crunch that has kept a lid on car production just as consumers are itching to get out and shop for them, the Wall Street Journal reported. Used cars and trucks were 45.2% more expensive in June than they were a year earlier, while new cars were 5.3% pricier, according to the Labor Department. Monthly payments don’t look all that different to consumers, though, thanks to lower rates, longer terms, or putting up more cash. For new cars, average monthly loan payments increased just $7 in the first quarter of 2021 compared with a year earlier, according to consumer-credit reporting company Experian. Monthly loan payments for used cars rose $19, or 5%, in the same period. Loan durations had been getting longer even before the pandemic. The average length of an auto loan was 70 months for new cars and 68.9 months for used cars in the second quarter, according to data from Edmunds; 10 years ago, they averaged 64 months and 62 months, respectively. Much of that happened as competition grew among lenders and as car prices gradually increased, with auto makers adding new technology and customization options on vehicles. Longer payment terms were designed to make vehicles look more affordable.