WASHINGTON: The White House said it regretted the Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday to end the Biden administration’s pandemic-related federal moratorium on evictions, and urged states, cities, landlords and others to do what they could to help.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the eviction moratoriums issued by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had saved lives by preventing the spread of the Covid-19 virus throughout the pandemic.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, granted a request by the challengers to lift the CDC moratorium that was to have run until Oct 3.

“The Biden Administration is disappointed that the Supreme Court has blocked the most recent CDC eviction moratorium while confirmed cases of the Delta variant are significant across the country,” she said, warning the decision would harm families and put communities at greater risk of exposure to Covid-19.

Around 3.5 million Americans have told the Census Bureau they face eviction in the next two months

Given the ruling, President Joe Biden was “once again calling on all entities that can prevent evictions — from cities and states to local courts, landlords, cabinet agencies — to urgently act to prevent evictions,” Psaki said.

The White House on Wednesday announced new steps to help renters and landlords hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, including moves by the Treasury Department to reduce documentation requirements to get emergency rental assistance flowing to hundreds of thousands of applicants stuck in administrative processing bottlenecks.

Treasury also warned state and local governments that have failed to provide relief payments to at-risk renters and landlords that they could lose funding to jurisdictions that were doing a better job disbursing those funds.

The White House said the US Department of Agriculture, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Veterans Affairs would also increase support for at-risk tenant and landlords to stave off evictions.

The Supreme Court’s unsigned majority opinion said the CDC had exceeded its authority with its latest order temporarily halting evictions in areas where coronavirus cases were surging.

“It is up to Congress, not the CDC, to decide whether the public interest merits further action here,” read the eight-page majority opinion.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented, citing fears that evictions could exacerbate the spread of the Delta variant.

The case was prompted by the CDC’s latest, two-month-long moratorium, rolled out on August 3.

An earlier, September 2020 moratorium issued by the CDC expired after a Supreme Court ruling in June said it could not continue beyond July 31 without authorisation from Congress.

President Biden’s administration had urged Congress to approve an extension, but US lawmakers failed to do so before summer recess. Under pressure from Democrats, the CDC ordered a new moratorium, citing public health risks posed by the pandemic.

The Supreme Court has now ended that moratorium.

The White House had expected the moratorium to be challenged in court, but hoped the extra time would allow for emergency rental assistance funds approved by Congress to reach those in need.

But much of that money is still caught in red tape, even as around 3.5 million people in the US told the Census Bureau they face eviction in the next two months.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2021