Administration Seeks to Blunt Effects From End of Eviction Moratorium

Kyle Webster, who works for one of the largest affordable housing groups in Pittsburgh, braced himself for a busy weekend, but was unprepared for the volume of phone calls that his office got from panicked, angry and confused tenants wanting to quickly expedite their aid applications — 1,200 of them.

“It’s overwhelming, and, to be honest, we don’t know if we can actually call all of those people back,” said Mr. Webster, whose organization, ACTION-Housing, manages about 1,500 units in Allegheny County, Pa.

The most striking difference between conversations with tenants before the moratorium lapsed and now is the length of each phone call, Mr. Webster said: In the past, people would rush off the line — now, they linger for a half-hour or more, repeatedly asking lawyers for assurance their families will not be thrown out on the street.

Landlords have long argued that eviction moratoriums violate their property rights, and deny them their most effective mechanism for dealing with problematic tenants. Last week, the country’s biggest trade group for residential landlords, the National Apartment Association, sued the federal government, claiming that the freeze cost owners around $27 billion not covered by existing aid programs.

On Monday, administration officials made clear that they could do only so much, blaming sluggish implementation at the state level for the fact that the $47 billion Emergency Rental Assistance program has disbursed only $3 billion — just 7 percent of the total.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/us/politics/administration-seeks-to-blunt-effects-from-end-of-eviction-moratorium.html