New York’s Eviction Moratorium Ends Today

New York’s pandemic eviction moratorium expires today; it began in March 2020 when then-governor Andrew Cuomo ordered a temporary ban on eviction proceedings in response to eviction protests and calls for action to protect tenants. Hundreds of thousands of households across the state owe back rent and now face eviction. Forty-one percent of these households include children, and 72 percent of the affected renters are people of color. According to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, there have been 81,530 eviction filings in New York City alone since March 2020. Many are now set to proceed amidst a new Covid surge and sub-freezing temperatures.

After Cuomo’s executive order, the Covid-19 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act was enacted in December 2020, putting a temporary stay on eviction proceedings if tenants filed a form demonstrating they had suffered pandemic-related financial hardship.

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Community Begins Eviction Resistance To Combat Wave Of Displacement

Asheville, NC – Community members, including tenants and precariously housed people, have come together on November 4th to resist an eviction in support of a multi-generational family experiencing forced displacement by Buncombe County. A number of people have occupied the property and have refused to leave until the city and county enact real solutions to the widely experienced housing crisis. Dressed as woodland creatures, the group brought a banner that says “Everyone needs a home”.

The family being evicted—a mother, grandmother and two children under 5, who wish to remain unnamed due to fear of finding suitable housing in the future—has been living in their home in the Sweeten Creek area for six years in good standing, with part of their rent covered by the Section 8 program.

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More Than 60 Actions Nationwide Pile Pressure On Congress

As part of national days of protest called by Cancel the Rents, more than 60 demonstrations took place in cities and towns across the United States September 24-26 calling on Congress to immediately pass an indefinite nationwide moratorium on evictions. Protesters also demanded the cancellation of the crushing debt to landlords that had built up over the course of the pandemic as tenants’ were unable to work and back rent accumulated. Tens of billions of dollars have already been allocated for renter relief programs by the federal government, but is being distributed excruciatingly slowly — another focus of the protests. Congress has the authority to prevent 11 million evictions from taking place in the midst of a pandemic. This could be accomplished by incorporating an eviction freeze into the social spending budget that is currently under consideration.

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The Pandemic Has Made Homelessness And Eviction Even More Deadly

According to the Associated Press, a one-night tally in 2020 counted 580,000 people experiencing homelessness in the United States. Advocates say that total is almost certainly a severe undercount, with a more accurate total being upwards of 2 million people.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged both the difficulty of helping unhoused folks get vaccinated—most don’t have access to transit options—and the reality that they’re more likely to be at risk of severe illness because of compounding health issues. But how we actually help our unhoused neighbors get vaccinated varies from city to city, and often relies on NGOs like Southern Solidarity.

In Texas, the pandemic brought a swift pivot to healthcare support for Austin’s Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO), a nonprofit that plans and implements strategies to end homelessness in Travis County.

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Report Details Corporate Landlord Gluttony As Millions Face Eviction

Despite their loud public complaints to lawmakers about the supposed “economic hardships” caused by the CDC’s now-terminated eviction moratorium, large real estate companies have privately touted their solid performance during the coronavirus pandemic—and they’ve rewarded their CEOs with major pay increases.

A new report (pdf) provided exclusively to Common Dreams by the government watchdog group Accountable.US shows that large corporate landlords have reported “strong or stable” earnings to investors in recent months as millions of people across the U.S. worried about losing their homes. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against the eviction moratorium on Thursday, millions of people are now at imminent risk of eviction.

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Supreme Court Allows Evictions To Resume During Pandemic

Washington — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority is allowing evictions to resume across the United States, blocking the Biden administration from enforcing a temporary ban that was put in place because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The court’s action late Thursday ends protections for roughly 3.5 million people in the United States who said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to Census Bureau data from early August.

The court said in an unsigned opinion that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reimposed the moratorium Aug. 3, lacked the authority to do so under federal law without explicit congressional authorization. The justices rejected the administration’s arguments in support of the CDC’s authority.

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Billions In Rent Assistance Money Withheld From Millions Facing Eviction

Out of the $46.5 billion in funding provided for rental assistance under two bailouts enacted in December 2020 and March 2021, the vast majority has not been distributed, with only an estimated $3 billion of the funds being distributed as of August 3 according to CNBC, while millions are at risk of eviction or foreclosure.

According to the Eviction Lab, in the six states and 31 cities tracked by it, 480, 456 evictions have taken place during the pandemic. In just those areas alone, 6,108 evictions were filed in the last week. This is in spite of the announcement on August 3 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the extension of the eviction moratorium to October 3 for counties “experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission levels.”

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The Eviction Crisis Is A Race And Gender Wage Gap Issue

The federal eviction moratorium coincided with Black Women’s Equal Pay Day 2021, which marks the number of days into the year that the average Black woman has to work to catch up to the average white man’s annual earnings in 2020. Based on recent Census data, Black women make just 63 cents for every dollar earned by a white man.

If Black women’s earnings continue to grow as slowly as they have since the mid-1980s, it will take them more than 100 years — until 2133 — to reach pay equity with white men.

“Lower pay deprives Black women of resources they need to provide for themselves and their families and over a lifetime can really add up — the loss of earnings in D.C. alone adds up to almost $1 million dollars over 20 years,” said Chandra Childers, lead author of a new report on the wage gap from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

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It’s Not Enough To Restore Eviction Protections

With a new wave of COVID-19 cases rapidly increasing in the US, this victory, while for the moment averting disaster for millions of poor Americans, is ephemeral at best. If we are to truly protect Americans from a tsunami of evictions caused by pandemic-related lockdowns, US President Joe Biden must also cancel the rents.

The White House initially waffled on the issue of extending the moratorium, having been told by Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a late June ruling that he would oppose any further extension of the ban if done by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), providing a crucial fifth vote to strike down the order. However, with Congress heading into a seven-week summer recess having never attempted to pass such a law, activists and local residents joined Rep. Cori Bush’s (D-MO) occupation-style protest outside the Capitol building to demand the ban be extended past July 31.

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Relief For Millions As US Apex Court Keeps Eviction Bans In Place

In a step that brings relief for millions of low-income families across the United States, the Supreme Court decided against a stay on a federally-imposed eviction moratorium. On Tuesday, June 29, the Supreme Court decided by a split vote (5-4) to deny a request by a group of landlords seeking to impose a federal district court’s ruling to block a residential eviction moratorium put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The justices decided to not allow the stay as the federal judge’s ruling is being appealed by the federal government. In May this year, a group of corporate landlords and realtors’ association secured a judgement to block the Joe Biden administration’s decision to extend the CDC eviction moratorium until July 31.

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Oregon Landlords’ Interests Upheld Vs. Tenants As Evictions Loom

The State of Oregon’s eviction moratorium officially ends on June 30. Millions of working class tenants across the state are bracing for an onslaught of evictions after more than a year of pandemic-era difficulties. Two contrasting interests intersect now that the moratorium is ending: more than 89,000 Oregon renters who owe back rent, and thousands of landlords who lost income in the last year while renters struggled to make ends meet after unprecedented job losses. An estimated $375 million in unpaid rent has accrued since April 2020.

Last week, the Oregon state legislature approved a 60-day hold on evictions in cases where the tenant can prove that their application for state rental assistance is pending.

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Biden Extends Eviction Moratorium For One Last Month As Crisis Looms

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Thursday that it would be extending a moratorium on evictions until July 31. This will be the last time the CDC extends the moratorium, the Biden administration said.

The moratorium was originally scheduled to end at the end of this month on June 30. Over 6 million Americans are behind on rent payments, according to recent Census Bureau data, meaning that many are likely to face the possibility of eviction when the moratorium is lifted. The Biden administration is hoping that the extension will help to stymie a potential crisis, officials said, but emphasized that the postponement will last only “one final month.”

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San Francisco Tenant Lawyers Anticipate Flood Of Evictions

A wave of evictions could wash across the city next month, tenant attorneys say, even as lawmakers scramble to prevent widespread displacement.

“I’m afraid that we’re talking about thousands of people,” said Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative.

The statewide moratorium on evictions for unpaid rents that were due during the pandemic ends June 30 — and recent legislation by San Francisco lawmakers will not change that. State officials are working to extend the moratorium but have yet to reach an agreement. Prochovnick is preparing for a cascade that could overwhelm the city’s free legal defense system if state talks fall through and throngs of residents get pushed from their homes.

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Millions In US ‘Race Against The Clock’ To Pay The Rent And Stave Off Eviction

Millions of Americans are in a “race against the clock” to receive rental assistance before the end of the month, when a federal eviction moratorium designed to help people cope during the coronavirus pandemic expires.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) eviction moratorium ends on 30 June, and some states will still have local renter protections in place. But in the vast majority of states, rental assistance – an essential lifeline for millions – could arrive too late, according to housing advocates.

“At this point it’s a race against the clock to try to get the money to the tenants who need it to keep them stably housed when the eviction moratorium expires,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC).

In mid-May, 7.49 million US adults said they were not current on rent or mortgage payments and had slight or no confidence they could make next month’s payment, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

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