The order will “mislead tenants into believing they are protected when they are not,” Niane President and CEO of Coalition for Housing Diane Yentel said in a statement.
“This executive order is reckless and harmful, offers false hope and risks increased confusion and chaos at a time when tenants need the guarantee that they will not be evicted from their homes during a pandemic,” she added.
The four-month CARES moratorium ended July 25, and most states let their own temporary protection disappear. At the same time, the federal improvement in unemployment benefits – an incentive of $ 600 a week that helped tenants pay at least some of their rent – has also passed.
Expiring these benefits means somewhere between 19 million and 23 million people – about one in five tenants in the U.S. – will be at risk of eviction by the end of next month, according to an analysis by the Aspen Institute. Negotiations to renew both measures as part of the next relief package were aborted last week.
Trump, speaking at his news conference Tuesday on the prospect of mass eviction, said, “We will not let that happen.”
“We stop evictions,” he added, referring to the executive order.
Waters called on Monday with housing lawyers, urging the “passage of a legal extension of the eviction moratorium and the establishment of an emergency relief fund.”
The House of Representatives has passed two bills that would provide $ 100 billion to help tenants pay their rent, but the House of Representatives has not passed any of that legislation.
Saturday’s order hints at aid rentals without specifying an amount as to where Treasury and HUD should withdraw the money.
HUD twice refused to provide details on what the agency plans to do differently as a result of the order. Treasury said it had no comment.
“We are in close contact with the White House and other federal agencies regarding the Executive Order and its implementation,” HUD spokesman Brad Bishop said Tuesday. “We will provide additional information as these conversations continue.”
The White House, meanwhile, insists the new order will prevent people from losing their homes.
“There will be no expulsions,” economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
When the CNN anchor pressed him on the question of whether the order would stop evolutions, as some troubled tenants may believe, Kudlow said it would provide a ‘mechanism’ to do so.
‘We set up a process, a mechanism, OK? I can not predict the future very much, “he said.
