Pelosi, Yellen to Discuss Rent Aid as Eviction Crisis

Mr Biden acknowledged Tuesday that the new approach could be rejected by the courts as exceeding the executive. But he suggested the move could help buy management time as states seek to get tenants to pay billions of dollars in benefits to help them meet their obligations to landlords.

Congress has previously allocated $46.5 billion in rental aid in two coronavirus relief packages, but only about $3 billion had been delivered to eligible households by June, according to Treasury Department data.

“I cannot tell you whether this option will pass through constitutional measures with this administration. I don’t know,” Mr. Biden said about a new moratorium. “There are a few scientists who say it will, and there are others who say it probably won’t. But at least we’ll probably give it a little more time until the lawsuit is filed, giving $45 billion to people who are left behind in rent and who don’t have any money.”

For days, some of Mr. Biden’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, including some of the most progressive Democrats in Congress, have been attacking the lack of action to help tenants, publicly and privately, accusing the president and his vice presidents of not finding a new one. for a moratorium on eviction until it’s too late.

A few days before Saturday’s ban expired, Mr. Biden urged Congress to pass legislation to extend the ban. But as the House of Representatives is about to leave town for a seven-week vacation and Republicans are firmly against the extension, progressive Democrats have described the White House call as a cynical attempt to shift the blame on lawmakers. The administration, for its part, feared that any unilateral action would open the White House to legal challenges that could ultimately erode Mr Biden’s presidential powers.

The ending presented the president with a tough choice: he favored the CDC and its own lawyers, who saw the extension as a dangerous step that could limit executive power during health crises, or heeded urgent demands from his party’s progressive wing. Stop what they see as a preventable housing crisis.

Under intense pressure from spokesperson Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats, Mr. Biden’s team chose an approach that would give them a chance to satisfy both camps, creating a new moratorium based on the recent rise in infections from the Delta variant. risks associated with the movement of displaced tenants in areas where the virus is severe.