%1

The White House said yesterday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was “unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium” and asked that states and local governments put in policies to keep renters in their homes, the Associated Press reported. Mass evictions could potentially worsen the recent spread of the COVID-19 delta variant as roughly 1.4 million households told the Census Bureau they could “very likely” be evicted from their rentals in the next two months. Another 2.2 million say they’re “somewhat likely” to be evicted. The prospect of mass evictions has led to criticism that the Biden administration was slow to address the end of the moratorium, which expired over the weekend. But the White House says that it lacks the authority to extend a national moratorium. That’s largely because the Supreme Court signaled in a 5-4 vote in late June that it wouldn’t back further extensions, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing that Congress would have to act to extend the moratorium. The White House noted that state-level efforts to stop evictions would spare a third of the country from evictions over the next month.

States can allocate some of the $10 billion in federal funding for struggling homeowners to help people who bought their residences with nontraditional home loans, according to Treasury Department officials, the New York Times reported. Guidance issued yesterday for the new Homeowner Assistance Fund allows states to provide financial aid to qualified residents who face foreclosure on a loan for a mobile home or a home acquired through a contract for deed — a loan financed by the seller of the property. Some elderly residents who have taken out a reverse mortgage on their homes — a deal in which borrowers can get cash for the equity in their house — may also qualify for the emergency assistance money. Advocates and some state governments had prodded the Treasury Department to extend the program’s support to those who do not have traditional mortgages. A handful of states, including Texas and New York, drew up preliminary plans that would allow them to allocate some of the money in the Homeowner Assistance Fund to those with mobile homes or houses acquired through contracts for deed, which are sometimes called land contracts.

Using pandemic stimulus money, nearly two dozen schools across the country are forgiving fees for things like extra courses, parking tickets, lost library books and, in some cases, tuition, Bloomberg News reported. On Wednesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced what will be the largest of these programs, erasing $125 million in unpaid tuition and fees for students in the City University of New York system. Students can get to graduation owing a range of fees that, in some cases, can exceed $10,000. By comparison, those who finished college at either public or nonprofit schools in 2019 and took out loans, left with an average of almost $29,000 in debt, according to The Institute for College Access and Success. Students who drop out of school because of unpaid balances suffer the worst of all worlds: No degree and student loan payments over their head.

A national ban on most residential evictions expired after Saturday, setting the stage for a potentially widespread displacement of low-income renters that looks poised to hit Southern states particularly hard, the Wall Street Journal reported. Meanwhile, only about $3 billion out of $46.6 billion in federal rental assistance meant to prevent tenant evictions and help struggling landlords had reached landlords and tenants by the end of June, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, which noted that the pace at which local programs were disbursing the funds has been increasing. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention enacted the eviction ban in September to prevent evictions of millions of tenants who were unable to pay rent because of financial hardship during the pandemic. The CDC has extended the moratorium three times. The White House said on Wednesday that only the U.S. Congress could extend it again, citing a Supreme Court ruling that limited the CDC’s power to renew it. But lawmakers failed to reach an agreement to renew the ban.

The vote on a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package could be held “in a matter of days,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday. But first, senators still need to finish writing the vast legislation, the Associated Press reported. Schumer opened the rare Sunday session by saying that the text of the bill would be released “imminently.” To be called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it is swelling to 2,700 pages. But as glitches were caught and changes made, the start-and-stop day was turning into an evening Senate session. Two of the negotiators said yesterday morning that action could come soon. Senators and staff have been laboring behind the scenes for days to write what is certain to be a massive piece of legislation and a key part of President Joe Biden’s agenda. It calls for $550 billion in new spending over five years above projected federal levels, what could be one the more substantial expenditures on the nation’s roads, bridges, waterworks, broadband and the electric grid in years.

American consumers increased their spending by 1% in June — a dose of energy for an economy that is quickly rebounding from the pandemic recession but is facing new risks led by the delta variant of the coronavirus, the Associated Press reported. At the same time, a key inflation barometer that is closely followed by the Federal Reserve surged 3.5% last month from a year earlier. That was the fastest such 12-month surge since 1991. June’s solid increase in consumer spending provided further evidence that consumers are driving a strengthening recovery from the pandemic recession. Friday’s report from the Commerce Department also showed that personal incomes, which provide the fuel for spending, edged up 0.1% in June after two months of big declines, reflecting the waning of several government support programs. In its report on consumer spending in June, the government said that goods purchases rose a modest 0.5%, while spending on services increased a stronger 1.2%. As vaccinations have increased and the economy has increasingly reopened, more Americans have been shifting their spending away from the physical goods that many purchased while hunkered down at home to to spending on services, from haircuts to airline tickets to restaurant meals.

The White House called on Congress to pass an emergency extension of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) eviction ban yesterday, three days before it expires, insisting the administration does not have the legal power to extend it after a recent Supreme Court ruling, The Hill reported. “Given the recent spread of the delta variant, including among those Americans both most likely to face evictions and lacking vaccinations, President Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the CDC to further extend this eviction moratorium to protect renters at this moment of heightened vulnerability,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available," she added. The Supreme Court last month left intact the CDC’s moratorium on evictions by a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court’s three liberals. But Kavanaugh also said he agreed with a federal judge’s determination that the CDC had exceeded its authority in enacting the moratorium and argued that it could not be extended again unless by an act of Congress. For that reason, another extension could be reversed by the court if it is challenged by one of the moratorium's many opponents.

A bankruptcy judge moved to delay a trial over Washington Prime Group Inc.’s restructuring plan, a win for shareholders who say the mall operator might be worth more than the plan implies, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. At a court hearing yesterday, lawyers for Washington Prime and attorneys representing its official committee of shareholders said they agreed to postpone the trial by 2½ weeks, until late August. At the trial, the two sides will present the bankruptcy judge with competing views of the company’s value. Washington Prime filed for bankruptcy last month with a plan to hand ownership to lenders and bondholders led by investment firm Strategic Value Partners in exchange for debt forgiveness. The mall operator said other interested bidders would need to offer a minimum of $2.3 billion. Shareholders say that Washington Prime is rushing the restructuring and that with the COVID-19 pandemic abating and customers returning to in-person shopping, the business might be worth enough to satisfy all its debt obligations and provide a bigger return to its shareholders. The proposed restructuring gives shareholders the choice of dividing among themselves $40 million in cash or as much as 6.1% of shares in the restructured company, as long as they vote in favor of the plan. That is a better outcome for equity than in most bankruptcy cases, which typically leave nothing for shareholders.