After talks with the White House on the next economic bailout package stalled on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans will publish their proposed legislation “early next week.” But Republican lawmakers are still divided over unemployment benefits, and the leadership has not made rent relief a priority.
On Thursday, Brown extorted McConnell in the Senate for allowing the House moratorium to “collect dust” on his desk.
“Right now, millions of Americans are in danger of losing their homes,” said Brown. “The last thing we need in the midst of a public health crisis is for families to be kicked off the streets.”
The Senate suspended hours later, allowing the federal ban, which covers some 12 million homes, to expire as scheduled on Friday.
However, there is still a grace period. Under the CARES Act, landlords who were subject to the ban must notify tenants 30 days in advance before filing eviction documents with the court.
“Families will not be expelled from their homes until the end of August, so there is still an always closed window where Congress can act,” said Yentel, who is leading a coalition of housing groups to pressure lawmakers for additional help. . .
Aid efforts so far have prevented a dramatic drop in rent payments, even though tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs: 91.3 percent of apartment homes had paid full or partial rent this month by July 20, according to the National Council for Multi-Family Housing: just 2.1 percentage points less than last year, and roughly in line with the 92.2 percent it had paid in mid-June.
But that will surely change quickly if Congress doesn’t reinstate the $ 600 per week supplemental unemployment benefit after it expires.
With current benefits, only 3 percent of renter households are “severely housing burdened,” meaning they pay more than 50 percent of their rental income, according to a Zillow analysis of rental homes. affected by the crisis published on Thursday. Loss of the federal benefit, even if state unemployment benefits remain stable, would cause the severely taxed share of tenants to skyrocket to 41 percent, Zillow found.
“Right now, we are in a situation where people will be evicted from their homes,” Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said in an MSNBC interview on Friday. “People will be on the street and people are hungry. These are the United States of America. So let’s find out how we can work together to move forward. ”
