Millions of renters still haven't been able to pay back rent as Biden

MIAMI — Belkys Peñate began selling off her and her husband's furniture ahead of the federal government's eventual lifting of its months-long COVID-19 eviction moratorium."We are both sick. We don’t have the physical strength to take things with us if we are turned out on the street," said Peñate, 54, who stopped paying rent when her leukemia and chronic asthma worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Peñate's husband, a 66-year-old retired law enforcement officer, is also homebound because of chronic heart failure and a mental health condition. Their landlord filed for eviction in August. The only thing keeping them inside the house is the federal moratorium. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday a 30-day extension to federal protection for renters through July 31. The moratorium prevents tenants who are behind on rent from being removed from housing on public health grounds amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The order itself does not eliminate rental costs for families, leaving millions of families behind on payments. For Peñate and other rents, the extra reprieve could mean more time to find a place to live and financial assistance to pay off their rent. More than 6 million households are at risk for eviction, according to the latest U. S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey. But policy experts and analysts said more needs to be done to avoid the largest housing crisis in more than a decade. They want the administration needs to ramp up efforts to distribute Emergency Rental Assistance funds from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Package passed by Congress in March and protect people like Peñate from being kicked out before the help they so desperately need gets to them."The $46 billion in rental assistance has yet to reach the hardest-hit landlords and renters across the country," said Emily Benfer, visiting professor of law at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and chair of the American Bar Association's COVID-19 Task Force Committee on Eviction. "If it doesn't before the moratorium lifts, we can expect millions of families and individuals to be pushed out and off the cliff."She added: "If nothing changes this is going to be the summer of evictions in the United States."White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday the moratorium was “always intended to be temporary.” While the White House defers to the CDC on when it is best to lift the federal eviction moratorium, Psaki said, the administration promised additional steps to prevent evictions and stabilize families. On Thursday, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta sent a letter to state courts calling on them to adopt anti-eviction diversion practices in new guidelines. The White House also announced that it will be convening a summit to coordinate immediate eviction prevention plans and raise awareness about the issue across federal agencies.

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