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The Biden administration is rushing to avoid millions of evictions during a brutally hot summer with a push to get billions of dollars in rental assistance out to tenants and landlords, The Hill reported. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week issued what will likely be the final extension of its eviction moratorium, essentially lighting the fuse on a potential eviction time bomb. “It really raises the stakes for all of us,” said Gene Sperling, the White House COVID-19 aid czar, on a Monday webinar hosted by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Democratic lawmakers and housing advocates who fiercely supported the CDC’s earlier eviction bans have been silent on calling for a longer extension but have voiced concerns about several obstacles hindering the White House’s rental aid efforts. “This is the right thing to do to prevent increases in homelessness as Congress and the administration work together to ensure pandemic housing relief provided by Congress,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee. “Extending the moratoria until local communities can distribute this relief will be the difference between millions of families losing or remaining in their homes.” The Treasury Department has already disbursed the entirety of roughly $46 billion in rental aid approved through several COVID-19 relief laws intended to keep renters current with landlords they have been unable to pay during the pandemic. Even so, it’s unclear how much of that aid has actually made it to either landlords or tenants with just over a month before the ban expires.

Millions of homeowners who are behind on their mortgage payments would get added protections from foreclosure through the end of 2021 under a set of rules completed yesterday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Wall Street Journal reported. Under the rules, mortgage lenders generally can’t foreclose on a home without first contacting homeowners to see if they qualify for a lower interest rate or some other loan change that makes it easier to repay. “We want servicers and homeowners to be actively engaged in loss-mitigation throughout the summer and the fall so that we can get as many people as possible to a good outcome,” Diane Thompson, a senior adviser to the agency’s acting director, said on a call with reporters. If a modification isn’t possible or a homeowner doesn’t respond—or the property is unoccupied—the foreclosure can proceed after the rules go into effect on Aug. 31. The purpose of the rules, agency officials said, is to ensure that mortgage companies thoroughly process the large number of borrowers expected to exit from temporary pandemic-relief programs that have allowed homeowners to postpone monthly payments until the fall. CFPB officials say they want to prevent any avoidable foreclosures. An existing foreclosure moratorium for borrowers with mortgages backed by the federal government currently expires July 31. A preliminary version of the rules could have effectively forbidden any foreclosures until 2022. Agency officials said that proposal might have given some mortgage services a disincentive to help borrowers this year.

Relief programs created during the COVID-19 pandemic provided many Americans with pauses on their largest debts, particularly mortgages and student loans. Other people came to agreements with auto loan and credit card lenders about payment. This relief helped many people survive, freeing up money to pay for necessities. But forbearance does not equal forgiveness, according to a commentary in The Hill written by Profs. Pamela Foohey of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Dalié Jiménez of the University of California, Irvine School of Law and Christopher K. Odinet of the University of Iowa College of Law. People will have to face the debt obligations that come with mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and student loans. Yet in the interim, people have faced persistent unemployment and depleted what little savings they may have had. Many will likely be unable to resume all of their regular debt payments. And people who did not need forbearance during the pandemic may find themselves in danger of defaulting on their debts, according to the commentary. The pandemic disproportionately harmed communities of color, particularly Black women. Given these households’ pre-existing wealth disparities, Black Americans and other minorities are likely to bear the brunt of the economic fallout of the pandemic, according to the commentary. Part of this fallout will be a need to ask their lenders for loan modifications. The professors are calling on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to use its authority to prevent what we term modification failures. This is when a borrower’s ability to repay is intentionally, negligently, or merely inattentively not taken into account during loan modification discussions. The CFPB has the authority to identify abusive acts or practices by a wide-range of financial institutions, including issuers and servicers of certain auto loans, credit cards and other installment or revolving loans. It can issue a compliance and enforcement bulletin directing loan servicers to make a reasonable determination that a borrower has the ability to make all required, scheduled payments in connection with any modification. Read more.

*The views expressed in this commentary are from the author/publication cited, are meant for informative purposes only, and are not an official position of ABI.

Republic Airways, which operates regional flights for the three largest U.S. carriers, is exploring going public as soon as this year, Bloomberg News reported. The company is working with underwriters including Raymond James Financial Inc. as it prepares for an initial public offering as soon as the third quarter. Its targeted valuation couldn’t immediately be learned. Founded in 1974, Indianapolis-based Republic is led by Chief Executive Officer Bryan Bedford. It operates flights through fixed-fee agreements for American Airlines Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc. and United Airlines Holdings Inc. under the brands American Eagle, Delta Connection, and United Express, its website shows. With a fleet of more than 220 Embraer SA planes, the company ferries passengers from small and mid-sized cities to major airport hubs where they often catch other flights. It emerged from a bankruptcy restructuring in April 2017, with ownership stakes totaling 61% at that time held by American, Delta and United. A public offering by Republic would be the third this year for a U.S. airline, following Frontier Group Holdings Inc. and Sun Country Airlines Holdings Inc., as carriers seek to capitalize on a surge in domestic travel demand following stay-at-home orders during the pandemic.

Credit firms including Caspian Capital and Oaktree Capital Management are considering providing new financing to business travel company CWT as the firm engages in restructuring talks, Bloomberg News reported. Early talks between Caspian, Oaktree and other potential capital providers have been around ways to assist a group of third-lien bondholders in discussions with the company, the people said. The firms haven’t lent CWT money or otherwise built a position in its debt, but are weighing participating in new financing for the company. No formal offer has been made and any decision will depend in part on the company’s recent financial performance. CWT, which shortened its name from Carlson Wagonlit Travel in 2019, entered into formal talks with creditors after it skipped June 15 interest payments on its bonds, Bloomberg reported. The missed coupons started the clock on a 30-day grace period, and the company is using that time to try to reach a restructuring deal. Privately held CWT coordinates business travel, meetings and events for companies. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it handled around 100 meetings and events daily and corresponded with about 60,000 travelers, according to its website. The Minneapolis-based company has around 15,000 employees and was founded in 1994 through a combination of two travel agencies.

Business owners in Missouri had complained that enhanced unemployment benefits, as Gov. Mike Parson put it, “incentivized people to stay out of the work force.” He made Missouri one of the first four states to halt the federal aid; a total of 26 have said they will do so by next month. But in the St. Louis metropolitan area, where the jobless rate was 4.2 percent in May, those who expected the June 12 termination would unleash a flood of job seekers were disappointed, the New York Times reported. Work-force development officials said they had seen virtually no uptick in applicants since the governor’s announcement, which ended a $300 weekly supplement to other benefits. And the online job site Indeed found that in states that have abandoned the federal benefits, clicks on job postings were below the national average. Why businesses are having such trouble hiring when 9.3 million people were unemployed in May is a puzzle that has generated lots of speculation, but little hard evidence. Many economists are skeptical that enhanced jobless benefits have played an outsize role in the hiring squeeze. They are more likely to point to child care and continuing health fears with less than half the population fully vaccinated. Nor should it be surprising that the nation’s road back from the harrowing limbo of the pandemic, in which millions of jobs vanished and more than 600,000 people have died, is bumpy.

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that corporations set up by Congress for Alaskan Natives are eligible for a portion of the $8 billion in coronavirus relief funds that lawmakers set aside for tribal governments, The Hill reported. The case hinged on whether Alaska Native corporations (ANCs), which Congress established five decades ago to manage land and settlement issues, qualified as “Indian tribes” under federal law. In a 6-3 decision penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the majority ruled that ANCs met the definition under a 1975 statute called the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDA). “The Court today affirms what the Federal Government has maintained for almost half a century: ANCs are Indian tribes under ISDA,” wrote Sotomayor, one of the court’s more liberal members. In turn, the majority ruled, ANCs are entitled to receive roughly $500 million earmarked to them under the CARES Act, the first major coronavirus relief bill that Congress passed in March 2020.

Though Congress approved billions in aid for small companies to help them keep paying their employees during the pandemic, there was a big problem: It wasn’t reaching the tiniest and neediest businesses. Then two small companies came out of nowhere and, through an astute mix of technology and advertising — and the dogged pursuit of an opportunity that big banks missed — found a way to help those businesses, the New York Times reported. They also helped themselves. For their work, the companies stand to collect more than $3 billion in fees, according to a New York Times analysis — far more than any of the 5,200 participating lenders. One of the companies, Blueacorn, didn’t exist before the pandemic. The other, Womply, founded a decade ago, sold marketing software. But this year, they became the breakout stars of the Paycheck Protection Program, the government’s $800 billion relief effort for small businesses. Between them, the two companies processed a third of all P.P.P. loans made this year, the Times analysis found. Blueacorn and Womply aren’t banks, so they couldn’t actually lend any money. Rather, they acted as middlemen, charging into a gap between what big banks wouldn’t do and what small banks couldn’t do. First, they unleashed marketing blitzes encouraging freelancers, gig workers, sole proprietors and other small merchants to apply for loans through their websites. Next, they directed those applications to lenders. In return, they took a hefty cut of the fees that lenders made on each loan. “Millions of businesses were being left out,” said Barry Calhoun, the chief executive of Blueacorn, which was founded last year solely to help companies obtain P.P.P. loans. “Tiny businesses, self-employed individuals and minority communities are left out in the cold, over and over and over. Addressing that is a core mission for us.” When the government started the Paycheck Protection Program in April 2020, it quickly found that banks, from national giants to regional players, gravitated to bigger loans to more established businesses because they were easier to make and more lucrative. The program’s largest lender, JPMorgan Chase, refused to even make loans of less than $1,000. To encourage banks to lend to smaller businesses, Congress in December raised the fees for small loans. And in February, the government tweaked the program’s rules so that unprofitable solo businesses, which had previously been ineligible, could get loans. Suddenly, there was a lot of money to be made — if only someone could get businesses in the door. From late February to May 31, when the program ended, the companies processed 2.3 million loans. Most were for less than $17,000, and the vast majority went to solo ventures, which are more likely to be run by women and people of color. All that hustle had downsides, including widespread customer service failures. And some lenders now have regrets about signing rushed deals that delivered most of the profit to their partners.