The clock is ticking for Congress to extend the moratorium on tenant evictions before August rent is due, putting millions of renters, many struggling amid the pandemic, at risk of losing their homes.
The CARES Act pandemic relief bill, signed into law in March, prohibited landlords from evicting tenants who failed to make rent in properties that receive federal assistance. This protection covered between 12.3 million and 19.9 million households, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That protection ended on Friday, and it will take an act of Congress to extend it.
Absent that extension, landlords are required to provide a 30-day notice before evicting a tenant who cannot make his or her rent, which means that dislocations will likely begin at the end of next month.
However, some landlords have jumped the gun and filed eviction notices before the moratorium ended, potentially forcing some tenants to be removed from their homes earlier than expected. Eviction cases last month were filed in Tucson, Arizona; San Antonio, Texas; and Omaha, Nebraska — despite the federal moratorium.
On Monday, Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina and chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, called on mortgage guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose proprieties qualified for the moratorium, to remind their landlords that they must provide a 30-day notice before removing tenants from their homes.
“For the estimated 13 million adults behind on rent as of July 7, this 30-day period may be essential to find alternative housing and avoid homelessness,” Clyburn wrote.
The figure cited by Clyburn comes from a Census Bureau report that found that more than 13 million renters were behind on their payments as of July 7. The number represents the entire rental market, not just the properties that qualified for the federal eviction moratorium.
The properties that qualified for the federal eviction moratorium account for 28.1% of the rental market space, according to the Urban Institute. If that proportion held, of the 13 million tenants behind on their rent, roughly 4 million of them are no longer protected by the federal moratorium.
The Census Bureau also reported that more than 9 million tenants have no confidence that they can pay next month’s rent. An additional 14.3 million are only slightly confident about making rent next month. Again, these figures represent the total rental market and stem from interviews conducted between July 9 and July 14, meaning that more than 23 million renters are on the cusp of not making rent come August.
The Aspen Institute projects that without assistance, between 19 and 23 million renters could be evicted by the end of September.
While Congress has yet to act on extending the federal moratorium, both chambers are expected to support extending the protection.
House Democrats in May approved legislation that extends the eviction protections for 12 months from the bill’s enactment for all renters and homeowners, not just renters in properties that receive federal assistance.
The Senate has yet to propose how it will address the eviction situation, but on Sunday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said eviction moratoriums will be extended. He did not say for how long.
“We will lengthen the eviction [moratorium],” he said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “We will lengthen it.”
The exact terms of the new moratorium would be determined in negotiations with House Democrats.
