CDC Issues New Ban on Eviction of Most US Tenants After Protest | Housing News

[ad_1]

Action requested by President Joe Biden after Congress failed to act on expired national ban on forced evictions.

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new 60-day moratorium on rental evictions, a measure the U.S. public health agency said would protect about 90 percent of Americans.

Tuesday’s announcement comes in the middle a wave of COVID-19 cases related to the spread of the Delta variant and follows the July 31 expiration of the CDC previous ban on the forced relocations of millions of tenants who could not pay their rent during the pandemic.

The new ban applies specifically to US counties with “high levels of community transmission” of the virus, the CDC said in a statement.

“The emergence of the Delta variant has led to a rapid acceleration of community transmission in the United States, putting more Americans at increased risk, especially if they are not vaccinated,” said the CDC director, Rochelle Walensky.

President Joe Biden told reporters at the White House that the new eviction ban was intended to give tenants and landlords more time to obtain financial assistance through a state and local administered federal aid program.

The aim is to avoid throwing “someone off the street”, keeping families in their apartments, “children in the same school district”, and giving people the opportunity to find jobs for ” pay their rent, ”Biden said.

The CDC’s measure was applauded by Democratic lawmakers who had pushed the White House to reinstate the moratorium, saying millions of vulnerable Americans would be forced to leave their homes starting this week.

“Today is a day of extraordinary relief,” Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “The imminent fear of being evicted and put on the streets has been lifted for countless families across America.”

A small group of progressive Democratic lawmakers led by Representative Cori Bush had camped on the steps of the US House of Representatives to protest official inaction on the deportation ban after the House of Congress left Washington , DC, for a month-long hiatus.

U.S. Representative Cori Bush camped outside the U.S. Capitol for days protesting expiration of pandemic eviction moratorium [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]

“The idea that we could go on vacation and that we could go on vacation as a House of Representatives, when millions of people – over 11 million people – could end up being forced out of their homes, it doesn’t “There was no way… absolutely no way,” Bush told MSNBC news outlet on Tuesday.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the CDC did not have the legal authority to extend an emergency moratorium on forced evictions of people from their homes during the pandemic without specific authorization from Congress.

Biden said there had been debate among constitutionality scholars over the scope of the court’s decision, reflecting some uncertainty among administration officials as to its legal authority.

But United States Democratic Representative Maxine Waters questioned whether the Supreme Court’s ruling was final and tweeted “every minute lost means another family could be forced to take to the streets.”

“Biden, #ExtendTheMoratorium now! She wrote on Tuesday.

Biden and other U.S. lawmakers are hopeful that such an extension would give more time to speed up the distribution of $ 46.5 billion in tenant and landlord rental relief already allocated by Congress to U.S. states.

“By the time he is litigated, it will probably give a little more time as we distribute this $ 45 billion to people who are in fact behind on rent and don’t have the money,” Biden said. .

He also called on state and local governments to extend or implement statewide and local eviction bans for the next two months. These bans already cover about a third of the United States.

Meanwhile, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that he “does not seem to me to require further legislation to get the money that has already been made available, so that it can fix the problem.” “.

According to a study by the Aspen Institute and the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project, more than 6.5 million American households are currently behind by $ 20 billion in rents.



[ad_2]

Source Link