Wednesday, May 5, 2021

"National Eviction Moratorium Invalidated by Federal Judge"

Well duh.
(oops, sorry. I'm supposed to avoid the 'Well, duh' formulation)

From a September 2020 post::

Before we get to the story, the question:

How the heck does the CDC have any jurisdiction over evictions?

Rental law is contract law governed by the individual states and eviction law is administered by state subdivisions: counties, municipalities etc.

To as recently as April 21, 2021:

I still have trouble understanding how the Centers for Disease Control could mandate an eviction moratorium but they did.... 

And from the Wall Street Journal today:

Ruling negates program that has helped millions of tenants who have fallen behind on rent during the coronavirus pandemic

WASHINGTON—A federal judge on Wednesday threw out a national eviction moratorium, saying the Covid-19 pandemic-relief measure exceeded the powers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The CDC, citing public health grounds, had implemented the temporary halt on evictions, extending protections for millions of tenants who have fallen behind on their rent during the pandemic. But a series of conflicting lower court rulings has called into question the legality of the moratorium, creating uncertainty for landlords and tenants alike. 

Wednesday’s ruling from Judge Dabney Friedrich, from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is the first to set aside the moratorium on a nationwide basis. The Justice Department had requested that any ruling only apply narrowly to the housing providers and Realtors associations who brought the case. 

Judge Friedrich, a Trump appointee, said that while it was the role of the political branches of government to address the pandemic, current federal law on public health didn’t give the CDC broad authority to impose the moratorium. 

“Because the plain language of the Public Health Service Act unambiguously forecloses the nationwide eviction moratorium, the court must set aside the CDC order,” Judge Friedrich wrote.....

Figure out another way to achieve the goal and leave the CDC to do what it does best: NOT control diseases. They have a dandy Zombie Preparedness page though.

Re:the CDC, they waited their entire careers and their entire institutional lifetime for the Big Pandemic and failed, miserably: 

The Convexity Maven And The Failure Of The U.S. Centers For Disease Control

And just so you know we're not nearly the cold-hearted bastids the intro might portray:

"Eviction’s long reach"

Following up on the earlier "Real Estate: These Big Cities Have Big Problems".

Because you are dealing with people who don't have enough money, when you see their valueless—in the loan value or resale value sense—belongings in front of the property it is just sad.
The event is so emotional that artists have been trying to capture what's going on for hundreds of years. Wikipedia uses an 1892 Danish painting to illustrate the page on evictions:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Sat_ud_%28Henningsen%29.jpg

117 years later Curbed used this image:

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Co1JMcitOpVRlxBjlVvi9Ng3Muo=/0x0:3888x2592/920x613/filters:focal(1633x985:2255x1607):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/59253351/GettyImages_84590728.0.jpg

....MORE