COVID-19 eviction ban expires, leaving renters at risk

By David Shepardson

A pandemic-related U.S. government ban on residential evictions expired at midnight on Saturday, putting millions of American renters at risk of being forced from their homes.

The expiration was a blow to President Joe Biden, who on Thursday made a last-ditch request to Congress to extend the moratorium, citing the raging Delta variant.

On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives adjourned without reviewing the tenant protections after a Republican congressman blocked a bid to extend it by unanimous consent until Oct. 18. Democratic leaders said they lacked sufficient support to put the proposal to a formal vote.

In Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney and the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services urged landlords and tenants to apply for aid through the Phase 4 of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. The new round of funding — authorized by the federal government — will be able to help approximately 15,000 renters avoid eviction. According to the Mayor’s Office, since May 2020, the city has made over 23,000 payments to Philadelphia households totaling over $122 million to help those at risk of eviction or utility shutoffs because of COVID-19.

“Keeping people in their homes and supporting landlords affected by COVID-19 has been our priority,” said Kenney in a statement. “The pandemic and the availability of federal funds made creating the program more urgent, more feasible, and more scalable.”

More than 15 million people in 6.5 million U.S. households are currently behind on rental payments, according to a study by the Aspen Institute and the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project, collectively owing more than $20 billion to landlords.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren on Saturday said that in “every state in this country, families are sitting around their kitchen table right now, trying to figure out how to survive a devastating, disruptive and unnecessary eviction.”

Democratic Representative Cori Bush and others spent Friday night outside the U.S. Capitol to call attention to the issue.

She asked how parents could go to work and take care of children if they are evicted. “We cannot put people on the street in a deadly global pandemic,” Bush said on Saturday.

Landlord groups opposed the moratorium, and some landlords have struggled to keep up with mortgage, tax and insurance payments on properties without rental income.

An eviction moratorium has largely been in place under various measures since late March 2020. The ban by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) went into effect in September 2020 to combat the spread of COVID-19 and prevent homelessness during the pandemic. It has been extended multiple times, most recently through Saturday.

CDC said in June it would not issue further extensions. A CDC spokeswoman confirmed that the moratorium had expired but declined to comment further.

Metro staff contributed to this article. 

Reuters