The White House is urging states and cities to speed up the deployment of federal aid to stave off evictions after a moratorium lapsed and Congress failed to extend it.
“State and local governments long ago received Emergency Rental Assistance— a $46.5 billion plan to protect millions of Americans facing deep rental debt and potential eviction during the pandemic,” press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Monday. “Too many states and cities have been too slow to act.”
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States have distributed only a fraction of the aid meant to support both landlords and tenants during the coronavirus pandemic, according to officials.
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“There is simply no excuse, no place to hide for any state or locality that is failing to accelerate their emergency Rental Assistance Fund,” White House American Rescue Plan Coordinator and Senior Adviser to the President Gene Sperling told reporters on Monday.
The White House made a last-minute request to Congress to extend the national eviction moratorium last month before it lapsed over the weekend. Biden officials said the administration can no longer act unilaterally to extend the moratorium due to a Supreme Court ruling last month. House Democrats failed to extend the moratorium last week through a fast-track process.
In an extended statement, Psaki said on Monday that President Joe Biden pushed federal health authorities to consider executive action, asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday to consider a 30-day eviction moratorium where the coronavirus is spreading rapidly.
But the “CDC Director … and her team have been unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium,” she said.
Both officials announced additional measures by the White House, including calling on landlords to halt evictions and instead seek out the Emergency Rental Assistance made available through coronavirus spending legislation, states to extend or put in place moratoria for “at least the next two months,” and urging federal departments to incentivize landlords to offer housing to people who have been evicted.
“The president is asking today that, at the state and local court level, they heed the call of the Department of Justice to pause evictions, to ensure that evictions are a last resort, not a first resort,” Sperling added.
“This president wants to do everything within his power,” he said. “This is a president who really understands the heartbreak of addiction. The reason why he is pressing and pressing, even when legal authority looks slim, is because he wants to make sure we have explored every potential authority.”
Sperling said the White House is continuing to investigate “what that legal authority is.”
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Asked about the timing of the push, which came one month after a Supreme Court decision on June 29, Sperling said the surge of the delta variant is driving the last-minute drive.
“This was us responding to a new reality,” he said.
