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The Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 on Tuesday night to leave in place the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ban on evictions, imposed to combat the coronavirus pandemic and prevent homelessness, the Washington Post reported. The ban has just been extended another month, until the end of July, and the Biden administration said it will end then. A group of landlords, real estate companies and real estate trade associations in Alabama and Georgia convinced U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich in the spring that the CDC lacked authority to impose the moratorium. But Friedrich stayed her order to allow appeals to continue. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit kept it in place, saying it believed the government was likely to prevail. At the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined fellow conservative Brett M. Kavanaugh and liberal Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to keep the stay in place. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett said they would have lifted the stay, which would have struck down the moratorium. Neither side explained its reasoning in the short emergency order. But Justice Kavanaugh wrote separately to say that while he agreed the CDC had exceeded its authority, this was not the time to scuttle the ban on evictions. “Because the CDC plans to end the moratorium in only a few weeks, on July 31, and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental assistance funds,” the stay should remain in place, Justice Kavanaugh said.

Millions have found themselves facing possible eviction despite bold promises by governors to help renters after Congress passed the sweeping CARES Act in March 2020, the Associated Press reported. Nationwide, state leaders set aside at least $2.6 billion from the CARES Act’s Coronavirus Relief Fund to prop up struggling renters, but a year later more than $425 million of that — or 16% — hadn’t made it into the pockets of tenants or their landlords, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and The Associated Press. Like many state leaders, North Carolina’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper pledged to roll out an ambitious program last year offering tens of millions of dollars in federal aid that would help cover unpaid rent. But it took months to get up and running and stopped accepting applications just weeks after it finally opened in October due to overwhelming demand. The 20 nonprofits designated to distribute the money often lacked the capacity to get it out quickly. Then, faced with the Republican-controlled Legislature’s takeover of CARES Act spending in January, the state had less money to award applicants. It eventually spent $133 million of a promised $167 million — far short of what some housing advocates say is needed. “We knew the money would not be enough. There were too many people who needed rental assistance,” said Pamela Atwood, director of housing policy at the North Carolina Housing Coalition. “There was a lot of poor execution in rolling out that first program and it caused a lot of inefficiency.” Tens of billions of dollars more in rental assistance have been delivered to states from the federal government in 2021, but that has been slow to be disbursed, too.

The Treasury Department said yesterday that more than half of the money disbursed in the third round of stimulus payments has gone to households with income of under $50,000, The Hill reported. About 52 percent of the funds sent out through June 3 went to households reporting adjusted gross income of under $50,000 on their 2019 or 2020 tax returns. An additional 10 percent of the stimulus payment amounts went to households that did not file tax returns in either of those two years, a group that typically has very low incomes, according to IRS data. About 85 percent of the payment amounts went to households reporting income of under $100,000 or nonfiler households, the IRS data showed.

Bankrupt mall owner Washington Prime Group Inc. is drawing interest from real estate investment trust RPT Realty Inc. after soliciting purchase bids as part of its “dual path” bankruptcy process, Bloomberg News reported. RPT Realty, which owns about 50 shopping centers across the U.S., is assessing Washington Prime’s properties as part of the mall owner’s chapter 11 restructuring, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing private negotiations. Washington Prime said at the time of its bankruptcy filing June 14 that it was already “in discussions with several potentially interested parties,” regarding a sale. The company said that it was exploring bids even after filing a restructuring plan to the bankruptcy court that would see it hand ownership shares to its unpaid creditors in a debt-for-equity swap. Its shares were trading around $2.42 Tuesday morning, down from around $5.00 ahead of the filing. Its plan provides a potential recovery of about 83 cents for common share holders.

The reopening of a bankrupt downtown San Jose hotel that’s been closed since March in the wake of the coronavirus has landed in limbo after a judge’s ruling, the East Bay Times reported. A set of decisions by a bankruptcy judge enables the start of an arbitration proceeding to resolve a dispute between the bankrupt Fairmont San Jose hotel’s owner and the iconic lodging’s operators. “It is likely that a decision will be made by the arbitrator at the end of the next 5 to 6 months, essentially by the end of the year,” said Sam Singer, a spokesperson for the group that owns the double-tower hotel in downtown San Jose. That in turn has left the date and circumstances under which the hotel can reopen up in the air. “We do not have a firm date on the property’s reopening,” Singer said. The 805-room Fairmont San Jose shut its doors in March, around the same time that the hotel’s owners, a group led by business executive Sam Hirbod, filed for a chapter 11 bankruptcy to attempt to reorganize the hotels’ shattered finances. In May, the ownership group picked Hilton Hotels & Resorts as the new manager and operator. “The Hilton bid contemplates that the hotel will assume the name ‘Signia by Hilton San Jose’ or another name that includes ‘Signia’ in it and that it will be managed by Hilton upon its reopening,” bankruptcy court records show. Court papers show that Hilton has agreed to inject about $45.8 million in financing to help stabilize the hotel. JPMorgan Chase Bank has also agreed to provide another $25 million in funding for the hotel to assist its emergence from bankruptcy.

U.S. consumer confidence rose for a fifth month in June to the highest level since the pandemic began last year as households responded to increased vaccinations and the further re-opening of businesses, the Associated Press reported. The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its consumer confidence index increased to 127.3 in June, up from a May reading of 120.0. The June increase reflected an improvement in consumers’ assessment of current conditions. Consumer sentiment is expected to keep rising in coming months which will provide more support for consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of economic activity. Consumers’ appraisal of current business conditions increased with 24.5% viewing conditions as good, up from 19.9% in May. Consumers’ assessment of the labor market was also up with 54.4% of consumers saying jobs were plentiful, up from 48.5% in May while 10.9% of consumers saw jobs as hard to get, down from 11.6% in May.

Suppliers to Walmart, Target, Amazon.com and other major retailers told Reuters they are placing holiday orders for Chinese-made merchandise weeks earlier this year, as a global shipping backlog threatens to leave many gift buyers empty-handed this Christmas shopping season. Reuters surveyed nearly a dozen suppliers and retailers of everything from toys to computer equipment in the United States and Europe. All expect weeks-long delays in holiday inventory due to shipping bottlenecks, including a global container shortage and the recent COVID-related closure of the southern Chinese port of Yantian, which serves manufacturers near Shenzhen. The risk for retailers is a rash of out-of-stock items just as shoppers are ready to open their wallets to splurge on toys, clothing and other merchandise. "It's going to be a major, major mess," said Isaac Larian, chief executive of Los Angeles-based MGA Entertainment Inc, which sells LOL Surprise, Bratz, Little Tikes and other toy brands to Amazon, Walmart and Target. His company has toys stuck in hundreds of containers at the Yantian port. If he can't get enough inventory for his retail clients, "it's going to hurt the Christmas sales big time," Larian said. The shipping logjams are due to more than just the backlog in Yantian, which is considered Amazon's No. 1 Chinese seaport, accounting for 32.4% of shipments handled by the e-commerce company in the three months to May 31, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence's trade data firm Panjiva. While Yantian port reopened on June 24, a shortage of containers was still constraining full activity, globally cargo ships are overbooked, containers are stranded in the wrong places, and ports are congested. Products are piling up on factory floors, in warehouse parking lots, on seaport docks and at rail yards — threatening more backups than last year's holiday "shipageddon," when many items arrived after Christmas.

Americans are cutting back on their credit card usage for the first time in three months but are making up for it with an increase in auto credit usage, according to the latest report from the Federal Reserve, FoxBusiness.com reported. n April, consumer credit increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.3%, or by $18.6 billion, the report showed. Revolving credit such as credit cards decreased at an annual rate of 2.4%, while nonrevolving credit like auto loans, personal loans or student loans increased at an annual rate of 7.6%. Mortgage loans are not included in the Fed’s report. The report showed that as of the first quarter of 2021, there is $1.24 trillion in outstanding auto credit, compared to $1.22 trillion in the fourth quarter and $1.18 trillion in the first quarter of 2020. The biggest factor contributing to the current auto market conditions is the limited supply of used cars. According to data from vAuto, there are approximately 2.34 million used cars available in America today. That's more than 530,000 less than a year ago, and about 430,000 less than during the same period in a more normal 2019.