'The Squad' pleads with Pelosi and Schumer to act to combat evictions after Supreme Court blocks Biden's moratorium, arguing new ruling will bring more COVID deaths
Several progressive lawmakers wrote to leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on Friday to plead with them to act with the 'highest levels of urgency' to combat evictions after the Supreme Court blocked President Joe Biden's moratorium.
The lawmakers asked the leaders to work to revive the national eviction moratorium after the Supreme Court ruled congressional action is needed.
'Millions of people who are currently at risk for eviction, housing insecurity, or face becoming unhoused desperately look to their elected representatives to implement legislation that will put their health and safety first and save lives,' the letter read.
The effort was led by Squad member Rep. Ayanna Pressley and signed on by more than 60 Democrats, including former Squad members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush, who led a sleep out on the Capitol steps when the moratorium faced its end before the CDC expanded it.
The letter was led by Squad member Rep. Ayanna Pressley and signed on by over 60 Democrats including Rep. Cori Bush, who led a sleep out on the Capitol steps earlier this month to protest the expiration of the eviction moratorium
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seen above with Rep. Bush during the sleep out, also signed on
The lawmakers noted the Delta variant has kept COVID cases rising in the United States, making housing a critical health issue.
'The impending eviction crisis is a matter of public health and safety that demands an urgent legislative solution to prevent further harm and needless loss of human life. Allowing an eviction crisis to take hold will only erase the gains we’ve made and put our recovery further out of reach,' they wrote.
The group of liberals stopped short of asking the speaker to bring Congress back early - the House is scheduled to return on September 20th - but did push for urgent action.
'The eviction moratorium has ended. If we do not act, this will undoubtedly lead to the increased spread of COVID-19, more deaths, and community wide trauma. We implore you to act with the urgency this moment demands and include an ambitious legislative solution to extend the eviction moratorium in a must-pass legislative vehicle,' they wrote.
Bush, who led a five-day sleep out on the Capitol steps earlier this month before the Biden administration extended the moratorium, vowed to fight on.
'We were outside the Capitol for 5 days. Rain. Heat. Cold. If they think this partisan ruling is going to stop us from fighting to keep people housed, they’re wrong. Congress needs to act immediately. For every unhoused or soon to be unhoused person in our districts,' she wrote on Twitter.
Pelosi called the ruling 'arbitrary and cruel' in a statement. She said Rep. Maxine Waters, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, is looking for ways to get money allocated in an earlier round of COVID relief funding to states and communities faster.
About $45 billion set aside for rental insurance is waiting to go out the states.
'The House is assessing possible legislative remedies,' she said without getting into specifics. 'Families must be protected during the pandemic, and we will explore every possible solution.'
When the moratorium faced expiration at the beginning of August, Pelosi urged Biden to take action, saying it must come from the executive branch. Democrats did not have the votes in the House to extend the moratorium.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new 60 day moratorium, which the Supreme Court struck down in a 6-3 decision split between the court's conservative and liberal justices.
The White House sent a letter to governors and local leaders encouraging them to enact their own eviction moratoriums on a local level.
'The Department of Treasury and the Secretary of HUD sent a letter calling on all governors, mayors, county officials to put in place their own moratorium,' White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday. 'There are seven states across the country who have done that.'
In Thursday night's ruling, Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett voting to end the eviction moratorium, with Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan voting to keep it.
'It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken,' the court wrote. 'But that has not happened. Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.'
Liberals in Congress pleaded with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to take action
Real estate groups in Georgia and Alabama had argued this point and told the high court that the moratorium caused property owners across the nation significant financial hardships, USA Today reports.
Property owners had to continue to pay expenses while not receiving payments from renters. They were also banned from evicting nightmare tenants, who were given free reign to make their neighbors' lives a misery.
As of August 25, nearly 90% of the federal funds meant to help landlords make up for the loss of funds had not been distributed, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.
Roughly 3.5 million people in the United States said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to Census Bureau data from early August.