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The clock is now ticking for millions of Americans who are set to face a series of stinging financial hardships in a matter of days, with the loss of federal protections against eviction and looming cuts to their weekly unemployment checks, the Washington Post reported. The two developments arrive at a moment of great tension in Washington, where the White House and Congress have grappled over the state of the country’s pandemic aid — and confronted their limited ability to authorize more of it — even as the economy shows potential signs of strain in the face of a resurgent coronavirus. The first blow arrived Friday, as landlords now can more easily begin removing tenants who have fallen behind on their monthly payments. The potential wave of evictions comes after the Supreme Court found the Biden administration’s recent eviction moratorium to be unconstitutional, leaving the White House powerless to issue its own new directive protecting as many as 6.4 million households that are not current on their rents, according to federal survey data. Many Americans also have struggled to obtain federal rental aid from state and local programs that were allocated tens of billions of dollars in past stimulus packages. Some of those same families could face additional financial peril as enhanced unemployment insurance benefits are set to lapse. Congress repeatedly has extended these weekly checks, but President Biden and some of his congressional allies have not sought to renew them ahead of their planned expiration Sept. 6. That could threaten 7.5 million people with the loss of much-needed income, according to a recent estimate from the Century Foundation. Read more. 

In related news, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is throwing support behind legislation aiming to expedite federal rental aid to tenants and landlords, The Hill reported. Pelosi yesterday lauded the efforts by House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) in seeking to reform the nationwide emergency rental assistance program, as state and local governments have been slow to distribute federal aid amid a housing crisis that has worsened amid the pandemic. Pelosi said that Waters was working on building a "consensus" behind the rental aid bill, which like many Democratic priorities will require compromise to overcome likely Republican resistance. In a Dear Colleague letter last week, Waters said the legislation she is working on — and plans to present for mark up on Sept. 13 — would require grantees “to accept the self-attestation of a tenant and to provide assistance directly to tenants in certain circumstances.” Waters said that the forthcoming bill would also allow landlords to “directly apply for back rent after providing notice to their tenants that they intend to apply” and instruct the Treasury Department and “grantees to conduct additional outreach to prospective tenants and landlords,” while also providing the Treasury with an additional $25 million to do so. Read more.

Congress is under new pressure to keep millions of Americans in their homes after the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration’s latest eviction moratorium, The Hill reported. The court said in its 6-3 ruling late Thursday night that it is up to Congress to authorize a freeze on evictions, but lawmakers have been unable to make that happen. Members of Congress are urging state and local governments to quickly get federal rental assistance funds into the hands of eligible recipients. They are also weighing additional legislative action to extend the moratorium and speed up the delivery of rental aid. Democrats narrowly control both the House and the Senate, making congressional action challenging on divisive issues like the eviction ban. But they say they want to prevent a wave of evictions at a time when coronavirus cases have increased due in part to the highly contagious delta variant and the number of unvaccinated Americans.

America’s tribal lands, home to more than a million people, are often credit deserts, lacking the access to capital necessary to make homeownership a reality for the Native Americans who desire to live on them, the Wall Street Journal reported. Traditional mortgages in the U.S. are secured by two valuable pieces of collateral: the home itself and the land on which it sits. But in Indian Country, swaths of land are held in trust, preventing lenders from staking a claim if the homeowner stops paying. There is a workaround, but it is complicated. Obtaining the necessary approvals can take years, even for borrowers working with experienced lenders like Mr. Burnette. It is one reason Native Americans are less likely to be homeowners: Some 57% of Native Americans owned homes in 2019, versus 72% of whites, according to the Minneapolis Fed’s Center for Indian Country Development. Still, there is some optimism in Indian Country that change is afoot. Deb Haaland this year became the first Native American to lead the U.S. Department of Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Marcia Fudge, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, spoke about mortgage access on reservations during her confirmation hearing. Two senators introduced legislation in June to expand mortgage credit on reservations through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Getting credit flowing is a tall task. Last year, lenders packaged up and sold less than $900 million of loans through the federal program that supports American Indian home buyers, a tiny fraction of the $4-trillion-plus U.S. mortgage market, according to industry research firm Inside Mortgage Finance.

A divided Supreme Court has ended a national moratorium on evictions in parts of the country ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, removing protections for millions of Americans who have not been able to make rent payments, the Washington Post reported. A coalition of landlords and real estate trade groups in Alabama and Georgia challenged the latest extension of a moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued Aug. 3 and intended to run through Oct. 3. In an unsigned opinion released last night, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority agreed that the federal agency did not have the power to order such a ban. “It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant,” the majority’s eight-page opinion said. “But our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends. . . . It is up to Congress, not the CDC, to decide whether the public interest merits further action here.” The court’s three liberal justices dissented and said the majority’s rush to end the moratorium was inappropriate and untimely. “The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90% of counties are experiencing high transmission rates,” wrote Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The National Association of Realtors said the court’s action was correct “from both a legal standpoint and a matter of fairness. It brings to an end an unlawful policy that places financial hardship solely on the shoulders of mom-and-pop housing providers, who provide nearly half of all rental housing in America, and it restores property rights in America.” The moratorium had already been considered once by the high court. A district judge in D.C., and several other courts around the country, said in a series of rulings that powers granted to the CDC to protect public health during a pandemic did not include a ban on evictions for those who fell behind on their payments. But U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich stayed her most recent order so that the administration could appeal.

An investigation by The Markup has found that lenders in 2019 were more likely to deny home loans to people of color than to white people with similar financial characteristics — even when we controlled for newly available financial factors the mortgage industry for years has said would explain racial disparities in lending, the Associated Press reported. Holding 17 different factors steady in a complex statistical analysis of more than 2 million conventional mortgage applications for home purchases, we found that lenders were 40% more likely to turn down Latino applicants for loans, 50% more likely to deny Asian/Pacific Islander applicants, and 70% more likely to deny Native American applicants than similar white applicants. Lenders were 80% more likely to reject Black applicants than similar white applicants. These are national rates. In every case, the prospective borrowers of color looked almost exactly the same on paper as the white applicants, except for their race. The industry had criticized previous similar analyses for not including financial factors they said would explain disparities in lending rates but were not public at the time: debts as a percentage of income, how much of the property’s assessed worth the person is asking to borrow, and the applicant’s credit score.

Sales of new homes rose a modest 1% in July after a string of declines as new home prices soar to record levels, the Associated Press reported. Sales last month reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 708,000, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Sales had fallen in April, May and June as builders confronted surging lumber prices and a shortage of workers. Home prices continue their upward trajectory to new heights. The median price of a new home sold in July climbed to an unprecedented $390,500, up 18.4% from a year ago, while the average sales price in July hit a record $446,000, up 17.6% from a year ago. Even with the small sales gain in July, new home sales are 27.2% below the pace of a year ago. Sales peaked at a rate of 993,000 units in January but have cooled since then, though remain at historically high levels.

President Joe Biden's administration yesterday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to leave in place a COVID-19 pandemic-related federal ban on residential evictions while the justices consider a challenge by landlord groups to the ban's legality, Reuters reported. In a court filing, U.S. Justice Department lawyers said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acted within its lawful authority this month when it renewed the moratorium through Oct. 3 after it had lapsed at the end of July. Groups representing landlords have sought to lift the moratorium, pointing out that even Biden administration officials have conceded it may not be lawful. The CDC first issued an eviction moratorium in September 2020, with agency officials saying the policy was needed to combat the spread of COVID-19 and prevent homelessness during the pandemic. Realtor groups in Alabama and Georgia were among those challenging the moratorium. Under heavy political pressure from Biden's fellow Democrats, his administration on Aug. 3 issued a slightly narrower eviction moratorium three days after the prior one expired. Biden initially had said that congressional action was needed to renew the moratorium, but his administration reversed course. The current moratorium, due to expire in October, covers nearly 92% of U.S. counties, but that could change based on COVID-19 conditions.

Most evictions for unpaid rent have been halted since the early days of the pandemic and there are now more than 15 million people living in households that owe as much as $20 billion in back rent, according to the Aspen Institute, the Associated Press reported. A majority of single-family rental home owners have been impacted, according to a survey from the National Rental Home Council, and 50% say they have tenants who have missed rent during the pandemic. Smaller landlords with fewer than four units, who often don’t have the financing of larger property owners, were hit especially hard, with as many as 58% having tenants behind on rent, according to the National Association of Realtors. More than half of back rent is owed to smaller landlords. Many landlords are saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in lost rent — money that was meant for retirement, a college fund or for their investors, who themselves had sought a safe investment. They are maxing out credit cards or dipping into savings to pay property taxes, staff salaries, insurance, water bills and maintenance. Landlords, big and small, are most angry about the moratoriums, which they consider illegal. Many believe some tenants could have paid rent, if not for the moratorium. And the $47 billion in federal rental assistance that was supposed to make landlords whole has been slow to materialize. By July, only $3 billion of the first tranche of $25 billion had been distributed. Many landlords are saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in lost rent — money that was meant for retirement, a college fund or for their investors, who themselves had sought a safe investment. They are maxing out credit cards or dipping into savings to pay property taxes, staff salaries, insurance, water bills and maintenance.