“Congress passed the eviction ban amid the pandemic and extended it through Jan. 31 of this year. But the CDC then chose on its own, without a new command from Congress, to extend the ban three times, most recently through July 31… [Judge John Bush] said that the CDC interpreted a sentence to give itself expanded power to do whatever it wants in the name of public health, though Congress in that sentence intended to circumscribe the CDC’s power by listing precise actions it can take…

“Under the CDC’s interpretation, Judge Bush wrote, the agency ‘can do anything it can conceive of to prevent the spread of disease. That reading would grant the CDC director near-dictatorial power for the duration of the pandemic, with authority to shut down entire industries as freely as she could ban evictions.’ Hear, hear. Federal and state governments have too often used the pandemic as a license to restrict liberty without a legal basis.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal

“When Massachusetts’s state eviction moratorium expired, lease violations, rather than nonpayment of rent, made up the largest share of eviction actions. So strong is the eviction crisis narrative, however, that the case of a Boston apartment complex in which 113 tenants—some of whose rent assistance was mired in red tape—received eviction notices was headlined for its supposed lasting ill effects, even though ‘few if any’ of the tenants will be physically evicted…

“Data from Monarch Investment and Management Group, a major property management firm, indicate that only 10.5 percent of tenants facing eviction are physically forced from the premises. The majority go on to stay and pay or leave on their own. In many cases, eviction filings are part of a de facto arbitration process in which property owners, many of whom rely on rental income to meet mortgage payments and perform crucial maintenance, use the courts to work out a compromise on back rent…

“The push to make evictions more difficult, or even to ban them outright, is a misguided effort that threatens the income of rental-property owners of modest means and puts at risk the safety and building maintenance of tenants who do pay their rent.”
Howard Husock, City Journal

“Most of the places that removed eviction bans in May and June last year didn’t see a resulting surge in evictions. Even in states and cities that did see a spike, they were all less than pre-COVID levels…

“The market and generous government aid seem to have done far more to avert an eviction crisis than the various moratoria on the books. The share of households paying their rent on time did fall in 2020 but not by much, declining by an average of just 1.5 percent from April to December compared to the same period in 2019. Stimulus checks combined with an extra $600 a week for many unemployed workers made a remarkable difference for helping tenants make rent…

“Helping renters receive financial aid and get better terms from property owners would do far more to avert painful evictions. Nearly $50 billion in federal rent relief money is now available to renters. The problem is processing these dollars through some 400 state and local housing programs; Texas has issued 37 percent of its relief funds to renters, compared to less than 4 percent in Arizona. There is every reason to push for this money to be distributed quickly and efficiently.”
Michael Hendrix, Governing