Biden leans on governors and mayors to deflect heat over evictions
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will brief House Democrats Tuesday morning on the distribution of federal rental assistance, Pelosi told her caucus Monday. Pelosi also directed members, who departed Washington on Friday until September, to press officials in their districts to speed up the disbursement of the funds.
Thurmond, the CEO of DeKalb County, said the 60-day eviction moratorium that went into effect locally this weekend would give his county more time to get aid into the hands of renters financially hobbled by the pandemic. The county had distributed 11 percent of its rental aid funds as of July 29.
Local officials have struggled to set up rental aid programs, and it was unclear Monday to what extent things would change in the absence of the federal ban.
“Local jurisdictions — DeKalb and many others — we just did not have the infrastructure set up to distribute rental assistance at this scale,” said Thurmond, a Democrat. “These programs had to be built from the ground up and we had to do it in the middle of a pandemic.”
One in three Americans live in states where they have some additional protection because of state and local eviction moratoria, Sperling said Monday.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office said it would not reinstate a statewide moratorium, calling eviction bans a “means to an end.”
“A longer-term solution is the distribution of congressionally-appropriated rental assistance funds,” said Christina Pushaw, a spokesperson for the Republican governor.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, said at a press conference earlier Monday that “we’re pretty well-positioned to make sure we help people deal with some of these issues and consequences” after the state poured money into an eviction-diversion program.
Even in New York, where state-wide eviction restrictions are in place through August, officials appeared hesitant to immediately pursue an extension.
State Sen. Brian Kavanagh, a Democrat who introduced legislation establishing the renter protections in December, said in an interview Monday that he was “neither backing an extension nor backing letting it expire.”
“I don’t want to make a decision today, based on the information we have today, of what should happen at the end of August,” he said.
Lisa Kashinsky, Gary Fineout and Janaki Chadha contributed to this report.
