WASHINGTON — Members of Congress scrambled at the eleventh hour Friday to extend the pandemic eviction moratorium, making a last-ditch effort to avert its expiration Saturday that could allow thousands of people to be kicked out of their homes.
In a late-night letter to House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., urged her caucus to support a measure that would extend the moratorium through the end of the year.
“I am writing to call your attention to the imperative for us, the Congress, to meet the needs of the American people: both the families unable to make rent and those to whom the rent is to be paid,” she wrote.
The White House has already said that a recent court ruling means the administration lacks the power to extend the moratorium and pushed responsibility to Congress.
Pelosi aims to hold a vote on legislation sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., before the House leaves for its August recess Friday, but there’s no guarantee it will happen. Even if she succeeds, it remains unclear if the Senate has the votes needed to pass an extension.
The House doesn’t return to Washington until mid-September and the Senate is set to leave for recess next week.
The speaker explained that the American Rescue Plan passed in December provided more than $46 billion to help renters and housing providers.
“This emergency assistance was accompanied by a moratorium on residential evictions that kept millions of renters stably housed during the pandemic,” Pelosi said, of the moratorium which ends Saturday. “Of the more than $46 billion provided by Congress, only $3 billion has been distributed to renters by state and local governments. Families must not pay the price for that. Congress must act again.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Thursday that President Joe Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to extend the moratorium for renters, but she said, “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available.”
Only Congress, Psaki added, can make it happen by passing legislation.
“In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the President calls on Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay,” she said in a statement.
The House Rules Committee debated Waters’ legislation Friday morning, with Republicans arguing that Democrats were rushing the process and blaming them for not taking action sooner.
“I oppose this rushed partisan legislation for several reasons,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., testified. “First, the bill before us does not provide clear and specific clarification on CDC’s authority. It simply extends the CDC’s moratorium, based on an authority the courts have ruled does not exist. The reason this bill simply extends the unlawful order is because it was written last night at the last minute, despite the White House and congressional Democrats’ full knowledge for over a month that this moratorium would lapse absent congressional action.”
Waters, meanwhile, called the situation a “crisis” and stressed that Congress must take immediate action.
“When an emergency occurs, you have to determine what are you going to do with it,” she told the Rules Committee. “Is it an emergency enough that you’re going to stop families from being put on the sidewalk? Is it an emergency enough that you’re going to need to wonder what the hell is going to happen with these children that won’t be able to go back to school because they don’t even know where they’re going to be sleeping?”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
