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January 22, 2021

The Eviction Moratorium Should Have Been Improved, Not Just Extended

The result is empowering large corporate landlords

 

Tenants' rights advocates in Boston. The eviction moratorium has not
prevented thousands of evictions. (Michael Dwyer/AP Photo)

The Chief

Joe Biden has spent the first three days of his presidency signing
executive orders and memoranda. As I mentioned in this preview of
Biden's Day One Agenda
,
this is normal for presidents, particularly ones who want to establish
themselves and reverse the actions of their predecessors with which they
disagree.

We at the Prospect of course are keen to assess the Day One Agenda
, having spent over a year crafting
our own. We're going to have something special to announce on this
soon. But for now, I'd say the Biden Day One actions fall into a
handful of buckets. First, there's reversing Trump-on the border
wall, the Paris climate agreement, the World Health Organization, the
Muslim travel ban, etc. One of today's orders restores collective
bargaining rights for some federal workers and eliminates Trump's
"Schedule F" order that undermined federal worker protections.
Reversing Trump constitutes the majority of the actions.

Second, there are some pretty novel advances, including a few things we
called for in the D1A. The recalculation of the true cost of carbon
pollution
is important to create momentum for bold climate action. The executive
action on "modernizing regulatory review
"
targets something we've highlighted repeatedly, the Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs
,
which is a bottleneck for regulations across the government. Biden's
order encourages the acceleration

of regulations rather than delay, and seeks to add concerns like public
health and racial equity into cost-benefit analysis. Sharon Block, who
actually wrote this Prospect piece

last year about getting regulatory review right, was named to a key
position within OIRA
.
So while my ultimate dream would be no White House regulatory review
agency ,
this is a close second.

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Finally, today's actions on economic relief

appear to creatively seek help for vulnerable Americans, by increasing
nutrition assistance, streamlining direct payment delivery, having the
VA pause debt collection, allowing those who refuse work because of
unsafe COVID-related conditions to maintain unemployment insurance, and
moving toward a "high road" contracting order (as we called for

in the Day One Agenda) that requires federal contractors to pay a
$15/hour minimum wage. These are all a little tentative and dependent on
developing the rules but they are a good start.

But because I'm a stinker, I have to talk about where the Day One
actions fall short. I've noted a couple creative areas but they have
been rare. Many just mechanically extend policies without the nuance of
understanding how they affect people. And let's single out one in
particular: the eviction moratorium.

Biden merely extended the existing eviction moratorium

out to the end of March. That order comes out of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
,
and has its basis in public health, to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
But as I have noted before
,
it's a very imperfect solution. Renters have to attest under penalty
of perjury to their inability to pay. They continue to accrue unpaid
rent and interest. And any evictions for something other than
non-payment of rent are still allowable. It just forces landlords to get
a little creative about dumping people on the street.

That's exactly what has happened since the order went into effect in
September. Hundreds of thousands of tenants have been losing their homes

because the CDC order is vague and limited. Even when the CDC order
qualifies, there's no enforcement mechanism and it has been ignored by
states and housing courts. As Right to the City Alliance noted in a
statement :
"Trump's federal eviction moratorium was intentionally weak, leaving
millions of tenants unprotected... it's hardly a policy that inspires
confidence for communities struggling under the pandemic."

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Biden could have removed the loopholes and strengthened the order, but
instead he just auto-piloted an ineffective policy
forward.
He also only extended it to March, when everything in his American
Rescue Plan extends to September.

One of the corporate landlords pursuing evictions

despite the moratorium is called Progress Residential, continuing a
pattern of high eviction rates
.
Progress is a single-family rental company with over 40,000 homes in the
U.S. Born out of the financial crisis, these Wall Street landlords

scooped up foreclosed properties and turned them into rental units.
Complaints about Progress

and other single-family rental companies are common. Rents are jacked
up, units are substandard, and it's impossible to get repairs.

Progress was in the spotlight recently because, a month after a buyout
that put it in the hands of private equity firm Pretium Partners, it
merged with FrontYard Residential, another single-family rental company
with close to 15,000 units, creating the second-largest SFR firm in the
U.S. This is the kind of private equity roll-up we've seen across the
economy. "You have a platform that exists and you just add on," said
PE expert Eileen Appelbaum of the Center for Economics and Policy
Research.

Jennifer Arnold of Inquilinxs Unidxs, a grassroots housing advocacy
group in Minneapolis, told me that the former Front Yard was "one of
the biggest evictors nationally," and now it's been folded into
Progress. She highlighted various problems with Progress/Front Yard
homes, including consistent problems like black mold, infestations, and
shorted wiring, There's been a lack of responsiveness on repairs
during COVID. "We've been working with a family that had a hole in
their roof," Arnold said. "They said during the pandemic they're
not making repairs unless they are serious."

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The only way residents can pay their rents, because of social distancing
efforts, is electronically, which includes a $10 hidden fee for online
payment. This nickel and diming is common, and with a bigger corporate
landlord, it's harder for grassroots groups to get noticed. "We find
ways to get landlords to pay attention to us," Arnold said. "With
these guys we're really struggling, there's no way to go up the
chain to find someone to talk to." She notes that Pretium, the private
equity parent, has boasted of using "cost-saving technology" to
produce return on their investments.

The leaky CDC order helps these corporate landlords, which are
consolidating during the crisis. Though homeowners are staying put

for now, eventually when the moratoria expire, there's going to be a
large inventory of more homes, and these firms are bulking up in
anticipation. Once the large landlords reach a point of concentration
within a community, they have power to shape rental trends and set
policy. Just a handful of evictions send "a chilling message," said
Sara Mykelbust of Georgetown University, who has been studying the
single-family rental phenomenon. "Folks have to find the money" if
they know they can be evicted, she said.

Even larger players like Blackstone (which once owned the largest SFR
firm, Invitation Homes, and maintained a stake in them) and JPMorgan are
getting back into this space, preparing for the future. There's a big
pot of $25 billion in rental assistance, passed in the last relief bill.
Most people on the ground say it's been difficult to access the funds,
as there are complicated rules

around them. The money goes directly to landlords, once tenants are
found to be eligible. So guess who has sophisticated teams working on
rental assistance? The corporate landlords.

This creates an inequitable relationship that puts large landlords in a
better position than their counterparts. So does the leaky eviction
order. Biden could have improved both of these, but housing policy is on
auto-pilot. This is why executive action needs to be more comprehensive
and more deeply considered than the current state of affairs.

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What Day of Biden's Presidency Is It?

Day 3.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* I'm on KCRW's popular Left Right and Center
program today. You
can pick up the podcast at some point here
. (KCRW)

* We ran polls on this last year, but to make the point again: executive
action is popular
.
The Day One Agenda is popular. (Vox)

* One thing I neglected-maybe I'll have more later-is Biden's
"wartime" COVID response strategy
,
announced yesterday. (New York Times)

* Republicans seem completely disinterested

in the American Rescue Plan, Biden's relief package. (Politico)

* Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland seen as a tough foe

for Big Tech? Hmm... (Yahoo Finance)

* A Super Bowl ad campaign

on vaccination is a good idea. (Will Raderman)

* Ezra Klein's article

on how Democrats must deliver fast and visible relief is being rightly
praised. (New York Times)

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