Today, Explained - The fight to ban evictions

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

Democrats this week scrambled to extend a federal evictions moratorium amid the government's failure to deliver tens of billions of dollars to renters in need. Vox’s Ian Millhiser and Jerusalem Demsas explain. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. It's August, which chiefly means it's no longer July, which means that the federal eviction moratorium expired over the weekend. But that expiration was not the end of the moratorium. In fact, the expiration quickly placed housing policy front and center in just about every corner of the nation's capital this week. It involved Congress, the

Supreme Court, the White House, the CDC. It involved renters across America, landlords across America. It was big. And so the question is not just what happens next. It's what happens to potentially millions of Americans who could be thrown out of their home once this eviction moratorium lifts. Ian Millhiser has been following the story for Vox. And to start, we're going to go back to the beginning of this ban on evictions. Congress, early in the pandemic, issued a temporary pause on evictions.

When that pause expired at the end of the summer of 2020, the Centers for Disease Control said, well, Evictions pose a health hazard during the pandemic. Now, following a directive from President Trump, the CDC is now ordering a temporary stop on evictions. And so the CDC said, look, like, if people lose their homes, they're going to go couch surfing. They're going to move into homeless shelters. They're going to move into environments where they're surrounded by other people and could potentially spread COVID-19. And we don't want that.

So let's make sure that evictions don't happen. The other thing that happened is Congress passed about $45 billion worth of rent assistance for folks who lost their jobs, folks who are financially strapped because of the pandemic and who can't afford to pay their rent. And so in theory, what's supposed to happen is that there's an eviction moratorium that keeps people in their homes, but there's this rent assistance that's gonna come and make the landlords whole

so that the rent will be paid by the federal government rather than by the individual tenants. The problem is that the process of getting that money out has been extraordinarily slow. It just takes a lot of work to ramp up a $45 billion program. And so landlords have been waiting for the money. Many of them are themselves financially strapped. They want to evict their tenants and try to bring in paying tenants. And they've started suing. Bob Penninger is with the National Apartment Association, which has joined landlords in at least three states in a lawsuit against the CDC's federal ban on most evictions. We're concerned that an order like this could force many operators into bankruptcy and those properties could be lost.

And so the question is whether or not the Biden administration is legally allowed to extend the eviction moratorium any further. And is that how this ends up at the Supreme Court? to extend the eviction moratorium any further. And is that how this ends up at the Supreme Court? Yeah. So it wound up at the Supreme Court in June. So again, there was the eviction moratorium promulgated by the CDC. The Trump administration had done something very similar. The Biden administration continued that eviction moratorium. But in June, a bunch of

landlords and realtors went to the Supreme Court and said, we're sick of this. We want you to strike it down. And what happened is renters trying to get back on their feet because of the pandemic have more time to pay their rent. And that is due to a court order. Four justices said, oh, yeah, we don't like this either. We want the eviction moratorium to end immediately. The fifth justice, Brett Kavanaugh, said, I'm not going to strike it down immediately, but you can't go past July 31. Justice Kavanaugh wrote these next few weeks will allow for additional resources to be given out to those who need help. And so that's a majority.

You have four justices who say end it right away, plus a fifth who says that it must end on July 31. And so July 31 rolls around and it ends. And surely part of the reasoning here is we got to get back to business as usual, right? There's been a year of moratoriums, multiple stimuli. We got vaccines. We have employers saying they can't find people to come back to work. And surely landlords are hurting, too.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of landlords are upset. And like when I say landlords, I mean, some of these are like, you know, big landlords that own a million buildings and have, you know, who knows how many tenants. Some of them are smaller landlords. I mean, there are landlords who have come forward and have said, like, look, I can't afford to pay for my own home so long as I don't if I don't have this rent coming in. Marilyn Blackburn has been a landlord in Washington state for 20 years, but she said she's lost more than twelve thousand dollars in the last six months. It's just frustrating. And I think they're

going to make it worse before it gets better by changing these rules and forcing us to keep tenants longer. There is a lot of burden being placed on landlords here. That said, you know, the nature of the pandemic, I mean, lots of people had to make lots of sacrifices. You know, we basically turned the entire nation's economy off and now we're trying to turn it back on. And, you know, there was going to be struggle amidst all that. And I think part of the government's calculation here, and I think it's a fair calculation, is that someone was going to hurt because of the economic struggles caused by the pandemic. And you can place that burden on tenants as a class and like the people who are impacted by this moratorium, overwhelmingly low income tenants. Or you can place it on landlords as a class.

And, you know, ideally, you don't want those burdens to be placed on anyone. But I think it's reasonable for the government to say that landlords as a class are more likely to be able to withstand a little bit of financial struggle. They're more likely to be able to wait until the federal government is able to get the rent assistance to them than I think tenants as a class are going to be able to. And we should note that this weekend, this eviction moratorium didn't die in some sort of whimper. There was a lot of action in D.C. online. People were clamoring for the Biden administration or Congress to do something about this. Yeah, that's right. So like Thursday of last week, the Biden administration puts out a statement where they say, Congress, we need you to pass a new bill on the Supreme Court has said that we can't extend this any further. So it's up to you

guys. And Congress, you know, quickly figured out that it didn't probably didn't have the votes to do that. And so Pelosi and House leaders put out a statement saying, no, we we think you need to do it, Joe Biden, your administration has to extend this moratorium. So we would like the CDC to expand the moratorium. That's where it can be done. I mean, have you ever seen an eviction? Sometimes even the law enforcement people go into these apartments are crying because they know they're going to do something that's going to put babies cribs out on the street. And while Pelosi and a lot of House Democrats were trying to pin blame, I think unfairly on the on the Biden administration, Representative Cori Bush,

who has been homeless in the past, said this is unacceptable. Someone needs to extend this moratorium. I know what it's like to not be able to sleep because you got two kids. You got to make sure that you keep safe every single minute. I remember going, trying to go to sleep and finally just going to sleep from exhaustion and then waking back up because are my kids still OK? She had a big protest where she slept on the steps of the Capitol, sometimes in the rain for three days. It's important for me personally to be here and to spend the night out here because in just a few hours, we are at risk for having 7 million people who are unhoused,

who will receive eviction notices and will have just days to find a place. And the combination of the political pressure from House leaders and from Representative Bush, I think, was enough that the Biden administration decided, well, we'll try to extend this. Whether that option will pass constitutional measure with this administration, I can't tell you. I don't know. I think everyone in the administration, including Joe Biden, has made it pretty clear that they think that the Supreme Court is going to strike it down eventually. But, you know, you can extend it. Maybe you get a few more days, maybe you get a few more weeks before the courts strike it down. And that's worth something to people who get to keep their homes for all that time. At a minimum, by the time it gets litigated, we'll probably give some additional time while we're getting that $45 billion out to people who are, in fact, behind in the rent and don't have the money.

I mean, they're taking a big risk here. It's possible that the courts give him the time that he needs. I think it is equally possible that the Supreme Court gets vindictive and says, you know, we told you you couldn't do this, and now we're going to punish you by writing a broad majority opinion that takes away much of your power to act. Landlords just need to find one federal judge who's willing to issue a nationwide order striking down this moratorium. And that could potentially be it.

So Biden is taking a tremendous amount of risk here. And the question is whether his appeal to their humanity will be enough. President Biden, through the CDC, has extended the government's eviction moratorium for 60 days. The CDC says it covers 80 percent of counties experiencing substantial community spread in America. But there's this whole other issue. The government hasn't fully figured out how to get $45 billion of already approved housing aid to the people who need it most. That's in a minute on Today Explained comes from Aura. Thank you. Our AuraFrames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it. You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos.

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to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Jerusalem Dempsis, staff writer at Vox. We just heard all about the Biden administration's likely doomed effort to extend the eviction moratorium. But our colleague Ian Milhiser also mentioned that there's this huge slush fund that was meant to help renters, to relieve renters and help landlords. But it's been a nightmare to set up. How much of that money has actually made it to renters? There's been around $46 billion actually

allocated to rent relief. Around $25 billion was allocated under the Trump administration. Another $21.55 billion was allocated under the Biden administration. Of that, our most recent data we have from the Treasury Department says that through the end of June, only $3 billion, around 6.5% of that money, had actually gone out. My lord, so they basically doubled this program in March, even though they hadn't even used half of the initial money. Yeah, getting the money out the door has been a real problem. How difficult is the application process? They ask for a lot of information like state ID, birth certificates, 2020 tax returns. They make it so hard. Do you have a computer?

I was doing it all off my phone. How is this supposed to work, Jerusalem? So the way that Congress set this up is that it created this pot of money, and the Treasury Department is supposed to allocate it to states and localities that apply to create rent relief programs at the local level. What this has basically meant is that there are hundreds of rent relief programs in the country right now. Some of them are at the state level. Some of them are at the city level. There are ones that are at the county level. It's really a patchwork of programs that's been put together, mostly because this is something that we've never

done before as a country, administering this much rent relief at the federal level and distributing it through localities is a really difficult process. And the goal was to try to get that out before the eviction moratorium expired. But clearly that didn't happen. Look, what were the biggest snags here other than trying something that had never really been tried before? Yeah, there are three major problems. Time, knowledge, and bureaucracy. Time, knowledge, and bureaucracy. Yeah, those are the big three. One of the big problems is that this money wasn't allocated until the end of last year. Renters had been in distress since the beginning of the pandemic. Renters are disproportionately the group that suffered losses during the pandemic. They disproportionately work in industries that are affected by COVID-19,

whether that's service industries or in the hospitality sector. And they have disproportionately less wealth than homeowners who are more able to weather financial burdens like a pandemic or a lost job or things like that. And so, you know, time, we lost a ton of time last year without allocating resources until last December. And so, you know, time, we lost a ton of time last year without allocating resources until last December. And knowledge? A lot of people just don't even know that these programs exist. So, you know, if you're a low-income tenant, maybe you don't speak English, maybe you are inundated with trying to work several different jobs or applying to different jobs or hunting down your unemployment insurance if you're still able to get that. So a lot of people don't know

these programs exist and it's been a real hassle trying to reach people and let them know that it exists. And bureaucracy. A lot of these programs have required certain levels of documentation before they actually start administering the funds. Some of these things are things like make sure we can identify who you are, but others are really onerous. They're like, show us your lease. They're show us your proof of hardship during COVID. And for a lot of people who are low income, you maybe don't have a formal lease. You maybe only have a text message between you and your landlord. Maybe you don't even speak to your landlord that often and you talk to a property manager. There are a lot of different reasons why people maybe don't have the documentation

that they would need in order to prove to the state that they need help. And so that's been also a really big problem. Did anybody get it right? Did anyone use these monies to the best of their abilities? Yeah, I mean, it's a hard question because I definitely don't want to be blaming the state officials that are trying their hardest right now to set up these programs. The real problem is that we've had a long-term failure to actually engage with low-income renters and make sure they're directly talking to local housing authorities or are able to know where to go for help. We can contrast this very simply with the stimulus checks. Nobody asked me if I needed help before they dropped $1,400 into my account earlier this year. It took six days for that money to get there. I knew about these programs partially because of my job, but partially because people who are engaged on these topics are less likely to be on the brink

of eviction or on the brink of financial emergency. And so when we look at how these states and cities have often not really engaged with low-income populations because it's expensive, because it's hard, because it's hard, because it's, you know, perhaps they don't have the time for it. That leads to problems in emergencies where you can't get relief out quickly to the people who need it most. You've been reporting on these issues for some time now. Did you speak to anyone who could have used this money but didn't get it? Yeah.

So a few months ago in May, I actually spoke to a Floridian named Emily Ashbez. I'm a server. I work in a restaurant. And the restaurant closed down. Over the last year, can you talk about your difficulties paying rent? Like, what happened? I literally donated eggs. Yeah.

That's wild. I'm selling off body parts, okay? Yeah. She sold her eggs to pay her rent, all while the government had allocated $45 billion to help people just like her. Yeah. I talked to her in May. This is after both rounds of rent relief have been allocated by Congress. And she told me that she didn't even know that this rent relief existed.

She didn't know how to get it. And she also didn't believe that that this rent relief existed. She didn't know how to get it. And she also didn't believe that it would ever actually get to her. I feel like there's something I'm supposed to be doing, but I have no idea what it is. Like, it's my fault, but I don't know what I can do. Yeah. The president has now extended this moratorium, and he's trying to buy some time to get more of this relief money to renters. Did they fix any of these problems regarding time, knowledge, bureaucracy? Yeah, I mean, a lot of states are working really hard to try to reduce the costs of bureaucracy.

They've been redefining some of these standards to make it easier. And they are having some success in being faster at getting this aid out. $1.5 billion out of the the 3 billion that had been allocated by the end of June all went out in the month of June. So clearly they are accelerating, they're moving faster, they're doing their best. But there are still people at the peripheries who are facing eviction, even though there is a moratorium. And it is a real problem that they might lose their homes while all this money still exists. I mean, is there some broad stroke, like flip a switch kind of way to make this work a lot better the way you keep

referencing, you know, your stimulus check? It just landed in your bank account, direct deposit. There's no easy switch that Congress or the states could push. But one thing that I think they should start doing is creating a federal rent registry. And what this would do is affirmatively, and before another crisis or another recession hits, begin tracking all the landlords and renters and where they live. Most of this information is already held by the government. The government already knows where you live when you file your taxes.

The government already knows what property is owned by whom because you pay property taxes. The problem is this information is not aggregated in one place so that local agencies can easily access this information and reach out to tenants and to landlords when crises hit. In the future, renters are the types of people who are going to be disproportionately affected by major financial emergencies. These are people who work in sectors that are extremely sensitive to changes in the economic environment. These are people who often don't have a lot of savings or wealth built up in their either retirement accounts

or in any kind of equity at all. And so that's the situation that's going to happen again. And it's going to happen each time there's a financial emergency and we really need to be prepared. And the best way to do that is to create a database and ensure that we can actually reach out to landlords and

tenants immediately when there is a crisis. There's so much attention on this issue right now. Is anyone saying, hey, let's do this national registry so we can not screw this up next time? Well, I'm saying it, but not a lot of other people, people in the federal government haven't really started looking into how to do this. I think a lot of attention is just focused right now, primarily on trying to make sure money gets out the door quickly. But I hope that this is something that people are taking seriously. It's really going to require the federal government to come in, get the standardized information, make sure data collection is happening, and engage clearly with people to show them the benefits of engaging with a system like this.

Jerusalem Dempsis, she writes for Vox, so does Ian and Millheiser. You can find their work at Vox.com. Thank you.