There simply is no looming eviction emergency that demands extralegal action from the federal government.
A Washington Post story from yesterday begins:
When the Supreme Court decided to strike down a federal ban on evictions in August, lawmakers and housing experts mentioned a slew of devastating metaphors — cliff, tsunami, tidal wave — to describe the national eviction crisis they saw coming. One month later, however, many of those same authorities find themselves wondering: Where is the cliff?
Where, indeed? Lawmakers didn’t merely use strong figures of speech. One of them camped out on the steps of the Capitol to share in the plight of the soon-to-be-evicted. That lawmaker, Cori Bush of Missouri, used the E-word to describe the problem, “We have an eviction emergency, and so that has to be the focus, making sure people are not forced out of their homes right now.”
The eviction moratorium has been over for a month now, and it looks like there was no emergency after all. That’s not to say some people aren’t having a hard time paying rent. But there are always some people having a hard time paying rent, pandemic or not, and that is not an emergency in demand of an unconstitutional and destructive policy.
“Housing and eviction experts offered a mix of guesses about why an expected onslaught of evictions has not yet materialized, including that the wave could still be coming,” the Post reports. They don’t seem to have considered that they may have been caught up in a political frenzy about an emergency that didn’t exist. The Post continues:
The pace at which courts handle cases varies widely across the country, and some courts may be severely backlogged. In some regions of the country, the federal eviction moratorium did little to slow filings amid the pandemic and, in other areas, protections are in place. Some tenants may have also moved on their own to avoid an eviction.
In other words, we already had the necessary institutions to prevent a crisis or emergency from ensuing without doing an end-run around the Constitution with an incredibly sloppy executive branch action.
The Post quotes one housing expert who said that, “This may not take the form of a sudden spike in eviction cases all at once. It may be something that’s much more delayed and diffuse.” We were told to expect a sudden spike, though, if the eviction moratorium was lifted. We were told that not extending the moratorium was arbitrary and cruel. We were told the mass wave of homelessness would spread COVID.
It hasn’t happened, and in the Atlanta region, the Post reports, eviction filings are actually down. “In the first three weeks following the Supreme Court ruling — Aug. 29 to Sept. 18 — landlords in Atlanta made far fewer eviction filings then they did during the same period in 2019, when the economy was strong,” the story says. “This year, landlords made fewer than 6,490 eviction filings during those three recent weeks, which is 41 percent lower than the more than 11,100 eviction filings for the same period in 2019.”
The White House declined to comment to the Post about the eviction data, but progressive lawmakers are still convinced there’s an emergency:
Those lawmakers continued to suggest the worst is yet to come. Last week, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) warned of a “national tent city” and an “eviction tsunami” should Congress take no action. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said the country would face a “historic and devastating wave of evictions in every corner of the country.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) compared the number of renters of “being evicted overnight” with the entire population of New York City, or nearly 9 million people.
There’s no such thing as good news to American progressives. Millions of people haven’t been evicted, contrary to their own expectations. That’s terrific! There simply is no looming eviction emergency that demands extralegal action from the federal government. There are already a zillion different ways — public and private, state, local, and federal — that people can get assistance when they fall on hard times. On top of that, Congress has authorized $46.5 billion in rental assistance for the pandemic. And the United States overall, since the beginning of the pandemic, has provided more relief to its citizens than almost any other country, providing over $60,000 in relief to many families.
It’s time to retire the talking points about eviction and realize that there’s no emergency. The moratorium wasn’t necessary. Ending it wasn’t cruel, and there’s no reason to bring it back.