Consider This from NPR - Eviction Protection Extended, But Millions Of Renters Still Face Uncertainty

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

At the stroke of midnight last Saturday, a federal moratorium that had been in place for nearly eleven months expired. After the Supreme Court ruled that the CDC could not extend that moratorium, the Biden administration asked Congress to take action. But Congress failed to maintain protections for renters before the House went into August recess. Now, many renters fear eviction could coming knocking at their doors.Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., told NPR that she is urging local governments to institute any protections possible to prevent a wave of mass evictions across the country. The Virginia Poverty Law Center's Christine Marra explains where the national situation leaves renters in her state and across the country. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. One day last year, when Amy Kuzno was walking home from her morning shift as a chef at K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, she got a phone call. My boss called me and said, don't come back to work. It was March 15th, 2020, the beginning of the pandemic here in the U.S., and the restaurant industry was in really bad shape. And I said, OK, well, what do I do now? They were like, I don't know, here I go. She had moved from Detroit to New Orleans with the dream of becoming a chef.

But like millions of Americans, the pandemic cost Kuzno her job. Today, she's one of more than 7 million Americans who are behind on rent. I have no money to move anywhere, even if I had somewhere to move. At the stroke of midnight last Saturday, a federal eviction moratorium that had been in place for nearly 11 months came to an end. And I tried. I did actually get a job about four weeks ago. And the place that I got hired the day after my first day, they contact-placed me and then closed down my department because of Delta outbreak. This moratorium and unemployment checks had been helping keep people like Kuzno afloat for nearly a year. But in Louisiana, the supplemental $300 per week of unemployment benefits ended the exact same day as the federal moratorium did. Kuzno feels like she's just out of options now.

You know, I'm not a number. I'm not a statistic. I'm a real person that came here to live my dream and now it's gone. And not only that, but regular life itself is gone. I know what that minute by minute feeling is like and what happens to your mind and just how traumatic that that can be on you and your children, your family. That's Democratic Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, who says she relates very personally to the people facing eviction right now. I'm someone who has lived unhoused before, living out of a car with my two babies and my partner. And I know what I went through. Congress failed to extend the moratorium before it was set to end last weekend. And Bush told NPR that she thinks the White House should put in place a new moratorium

and that Congress should reconvene as soon as possible to prevent a devastating wave of evictions. But in the meantime, she's urging local governments to take matters into their own hands. I don't want anyone else to have to go through what I went through, especially because we're talking about it's a policy choice. It's unconscionable what's happening. Consider this. A federal eviction moratorium was extended four times during the pandemic. And now, as a highly transmissible coronavirus variant continues to spread, many renters could still be forced out of their homes.

From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday, August 3rd. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Nature Valley Granola Bars, who believes the best energy comes from nature. Whether you want to relieve stress or re-energize after a long day, Nature Valley invites you to take in the outdoors, starting with this nature break. For more, visit TakeInTheOutdoors.com. NPR's Planet Money Summer School is now in session. Everything you want to know about investing from expert guest professors. New classes every Wednesday till Labor Day in the Planet Money podcast feed.

It's Consider This from NPR. Landlords and tenants have been streaming into courtrooms across the country as rent becomes due again with the end of this federal eviction moratorium. You know, our president so deeply believes that every avoidable eviction of an American family hurt by this pandemic is an avoidable heartbreak and harm to a family's economic security and dignity. On Monday in a press briefing, White House American Rescue Plan coordinator and senior advisor to the president, Gene Sperling, addressed what could be a moment of crisis for millions. The protection for renters instituted by the CDC has been extended four times since last September.

Unfortunately, Supreme Court declared on June 29th that the CDC could not grant such an extension without clear and specific congressional authorization. Sperling said the CDC doesn't have the legal authority right now for a more targeted eviction moratorium that would focus on counties with the highest rates of COVID spread. Now, the Biden administration did ask Congress to pass an extension after the Supreme Court ruling came down, but they failed to pass new legislation before the House left for August recess. And last weekend, Representative Cori Bush and several other House Democrats slept outside the Capitol in protest. Here's Bush speaking to MSNBC. The wind was blowing through my sleeping bag as thick as it was. You know, I could not get warm. It was raining. The sleeping bag was wet. This is what people live through that actually have to live on the street. And here's Bush again speaking to NPR. We are asking the White House to set a new moratorium and let us get that action rolling while Congress reconvenes.

Let's have Congress come back and reconvene. And while we're working on that, we will at least have the moratorium in place. If there is a challenge to the White House, that will take a little bit of time and that will give us time. Some states and counties do have their own moratoria in place that outlast the federal order. And the Biden administration urged other local governments to follow suit. What's exacerbating the situation right now for a lot of renters is that many of them still can't access pandemic rent relief that the federal government has allocated for them. We're talking about almost $47 billion. Many of

the local programs that are supposed to distribute that money cropped up during the pandemic. They were set up totally from scratch. And a lot of them have just been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of applications for aid. To date, by the end of June, only $3 billion of the over $46 billion in rental assistance had been distributed at all. That's Emily Bemfer. She teaches housing law at Wake Forest University. Tenants across the country have applied for rental assistance, but they've been met with barriers in the form of lengthy applications, inaccessible programs. And landlords and tenants across the country are largely still unaware of the availability of rental assistance. So that outreach to communities is really important in this moment. One state that's run out of both local and federal protections is Virginia.

The state got a billion dollars in federal aid to provide rent relief, and so far it's distributed only about $300 million of that aid. Many housing advocates in Virginia agree with Emily Benfer that most renters and landlords just aren't aware the aid is available. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly spoke to the Virginia Poverty Law Center's Christine Mara about what she expects to happen next in her state and around the country. There are still a lot of renters who lack confidence that they'll be able to pay next month's rent. They're behind on their rent. They are worried that they're going to be evicted. And in fact, according to data that I received the beginning of last week, there were 1,000 eviction

cases pending in court statewide. But when we take into account that there was a nationwide moratorium on evictions until Saturday night. The fact that there were still 1,000 cases pending here in Virginia tells you that the worst maybe isn't over and we still need to be making sure that renters are protected. It sounds like if cases are pending, if some people are already in the hole for their rent. They're worried about a knock on the door. Absolutely, absolutely. Now, there is some good news here in Virginia, and that is that Virginia still has just a little under half

of the nearly half a billion dollars it received from the stimulus package in emergency rental assistance back in the beginning of the year. You're talking about federal money that was sent to states to try to help people from being evicted. That's right. Help us understand this, because nationally, I was looking at the numbers, nationally there's more than $40 billion in this federal rental assistance that hasn't been dispersed. Is part of the problem to renters not knowing how to apply for this, not knowing how to navigate and what rights they have? That is a huge problem, and they need help actually applying. Many of

these tenants don't have access to the internet. Many of these tenants are not English speakers. Okay, so give us a tiny bit of just news you can use for people who may be listening, who may be waiting for that knock at the door. What's the first place they should go? Understanding that may vary a little bit state to state. Right. So the first thing that they need to do is find out who's giving that money out. Find out if there are rental assistance navigators in your state and get in touch with them. You can apply, at least in Virginia, for this funding, even if you haven't fallen behind on your rent yet. As someone who's worked on this challenge for many years, I wonder how long reasonably do you believe eviction protections should last? And I'm asking,

you know, no one, of course, would wish for any American to become homeless. And I get that a lot of people lost their jobs and have had desperate choices to make during the pandemic. But as we watch the economy pick up, as we watch labor numbers showing there is actually work in most parts of the country. Why are there so many people who still face being evicted? There is a lag for some folks in terms of finding employment and getting employment. We have a child care affordability crisis in this country so that my clients who are at the lower end of the income scale can't necessarily afford to take a minimum wage job if they have children who need child care. And so there are so many complicated factors.

I think it would be beyond shameful to allow people to get evicted when there is money available to pay their rent and enable the landlord to pay their mortgage. That's Christine Mara, Director of Housing Advocacy at the Virginia Poverty Law Center. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.