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A temporary U.S. ban on evictions in parts of the country hit hard by the pandemic can remain in place, a federal judge in Washington ruled, a victory for the Biden administration’s efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Bloomberg News reported. In a ruling on Friday, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich rejected a plea by landlord groups to block the new eviction moratorium established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even as she voiced concerns over the legality of the policy. The decision means the ban, set to last until Oct. 3, can stay in place for now, though it will face further court challenges from landlords. Friedrich, a critic of the moratorium, wrote that she was forced to keep the freeze in place because of a ruling by the U.S. appeals court in Washington that allowed a previous nationwide version of the policy to stand. “Throughout the pandemic, preventing evictions and keeping people in their homes has been a proven way of slowing the spread of Covid-19,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. “We are pleased that the district court left the moratorium in place, though we are aware that further proceedings in this case are likely.” Psaki also urged state and local officials to move faster in distributing almost $47 billion in emergency rental assistance as the legal wrangling over the moratorium continues. Just 12% of the first $25 billion Congress allocated had made its way to eligible households in the first half of the year, Treasury Department data show, though the pace has been accelerating, with more than $1.5 billion doled out in June alone. While she believes the moratorium is legally dubious, she wrote, “the court’s hands are tied.”

A recent report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) found that many servicers were initially overwhelmed as the pandemic resulted in millions of people losing their jobs, the Washington Post reported. For example, one large servicer received about 650,000 inquiries to its call center in February 2021. The number increased to 750,000 in March and then dropped to 625,000 in April. The uptick in March tracked the expiration of forbearances for borrowers who enrolled at the beginning of the pandemic and who were probably calling to discuss additional relief, the CFPB said. As of July, more than 1.8 million borrowers were enrolled in active forbearance plans, the CFPB said. The agency has warned mortgage servicers to take proactive steps to assist borrowers, including dedicating resources and staffers to stay in contact with borrowers to ultimately reduce foreclosures and foreclosure-related costs. The CFPB said about 569,000 borrowers are in the early stages of delinquency but aren’t participating in a forbearance plan. “The overall message is that the bureau will be watching closely this fall to see how servicers handle the wave of forbearance exits and take appropriate action as needed,” said Mark McArdle, the CFPB’s assistant director for mortgage markets. Some homeowners will not be able to resume making payments on their mortgages, and that means some foreclosures are unavoidable. But the CFPB is doing what should have been done during the housing crisis. The agency is holding mortgage servicers accountable if they don’t do enough to help people avoid losing their homes.

More than seven months after it was launched, the biggest rental assistance program in U.S. history has delivered just a fraction of the promised aid to tenants and landlords struggling with the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported. Since last December, Congress has appropriated a total of $46.6 billion to help tenants who were behind on their rent. As of June 30, just $3 billion had been distributed, though a senior official said the Biden administration hoped at least another $2 billion had been distributed in July. While the program is overseen by the Treasury, it relies on a patchwork of more than 450 state, county and municipal governments and charitable organizations to distribute aid. The result: months of delays as local governments built new programs from scratch, hired staff and crafted rules for how the money should be distributed, then struggled to process a deluge of applications.

The apartment was just what Chanque Jones needed: four bedrooms, and $500 cheaper than the run-down house she had been renting back in Chicago. It was a fresh start for her three sons, as well as for her mobile manicure business. Then an old eviction case turned up on a routine background check prepared for her landlord. It didn’t matter that she had gone to court and won. The fact that the case was filed at all was enough to mark her as a risk: what tenant advocates call a Scarlet E — the E standing for eviction, the New York Times reported. Eviction cases are a stubborn blot on any renter’s history. They are nearly impossible to scrub away, even if the tenant made good on obligations or it was only a scare tactic by an aggressive landlord. The pandemic has given the problem new urgency: Although the Biden administration has announced a new eviction moratorium for much of the country through Oct. 3, millions of renters are behind on their payments after more than a year of economic upheaval and could face eventual eviction.

Landlords filed a legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s extension of the coronavirus eviction moratorium until October, saying it goes against a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in July, Bloomberg News reported. The Biden administration’s edict should be struck down because the high court clearly said when it allowed the moratorium to be continued it was relying on an assurance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the agency had no intention of authorizing a further extension, according to a filing late Wednesday in the Atlanta-based federal court of appeals by the Alabama Association of Realtors. The CDC extended a ban on evictions in areas of the country with substantial and high transmission of COVID-19 on Tuesday, after a firestorm of criticism from Democrats following the lapse of a previous moratorium on Saturday. In July, the justices rejected calls by landlords and real-estate trade associations from Alabama and Georgia to block the moratorium while their challenge played out in court. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberals in the majority. Kavanaugh cast the pivotal vote, saying he was letting the ban stay in effect temporarily even though he thought the CDC had exceeded its power.