--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup, of all things. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It is the ultimate celebration of sports and culture. You can get closer to the beautiful game with a hospitality package, closer to the action, the best seats, the best suites, closer to match day and that world-class food and that world-class entertainment, closer to the experience of a lifetime. Book a hospitality package at fifaworldcup.com slash hospitality.
--:-- Noel King: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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: I've 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.
--:-- Noel King: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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 going to come and make the landlord's hold so that the rent will be paid by the federal government rather than by the individual tenants.
--:-- Noel King: 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 Pennerger: I'm 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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? Yeah. So it wound up at the Supreme Court in June.
--:-- Noel King: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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'll 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.
--:-- Noel King: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Noel King: 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: I've been a landlord in Washington state for 20 years, but I said I've 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Noel King: 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 are overwhelmingly low income tenants.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Noel King: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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. The Supreme Court has said that we can't extend this any further so it's up to you guys.
--:-- Noel King: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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 baby's cribs out on the street.
--:-- Noel King: And while Pelosi and a lot of House Democrats were trying to pin blame, I think, unfairly on the Biden administration, Representative Cori Bush, who has been homeless in the past, said this is unacceptable. Someone needs to extend this moratorium.
--:-- Cori Bush: 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?
--:-- Noel King: 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 seven million people who are unhoused, who will receive eviction notices and will have just days to find a place.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Noel King: 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 court strike it down.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Noel King: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: President Biden, through the CDC, has extended the government's eviction moratorium for 60 days. The CDC says it covers 80% of counties experiencing substantial community spread in America.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: But there this whole other issue The government hasn't fully figured out how to get billions of already approved housing aid to the people who need it most.
--:-- Noel King: That's in a minute on Today Explained. Support for today's show comes from Adio.
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--:-- Noel King: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal, and so much more. You can go to adio.com slash todayexplain to get 15% off your first year.
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--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: We just heard all about the Biden administration's likely doomed effort to extend the eviction moratorium. But our colleague Ian Millhiser 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Noel King: My Lord. So they basically doubled this program in March, even though they hadn't even used half of the initial money.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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, It's 2020 tax returns. They make it so hard.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Do you have a computer? I was doing it all off my phone. How is this supposed to work?
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Noel King: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: Time, knowledge, and bureaucracy. Yeah, those are the big three.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: One of the big problems is that this money wasn't allocated until the end of last year. Renters have been in distress since the beginning of the pandemic.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: And bureaucracy. A lot of these programs have required certain levels of documentation before they actually start administering the funds.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Did anybody get it right? Did anyone use these monies to the best of their abilities?
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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, 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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?
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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. I mean, restaurant closed down. Over the last year, can you talk about your difficulties paying rent? Like, what happened?
--:-- Emily Ashbez: I literally donated eggs. Yeah. That's why. I'm selling off body parts, okay? Yeah.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: She sold her eggs to pay her rent, all while the government had allocated $45 billion to help people just like her.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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?
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 1.5 billion out of 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: But, you know, there are still people at the peripheries who are facing eviction, even though there is a moratorium. And it is it's a real problem that they might lose their homes while all this money still exists.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: There's no easy switch that Congress or the states could push. But one thing that I think that they should start doing is creating a federal rent registry.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: These are people who often don't have a lot of savings or wealth built up in their either retirement accounts or in their any kind of equity at all.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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?
--:-- Ian Millhiser: 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.
--:-- Jerusalem Dempsis: 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.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: is 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: Jerusalem Dempsis. She writes for Vox. So does Ian and Melheiser. You can find their work at Vox.com. Thank you.
