Calls for extension of eviction ban as new deadline looms

WASHINGTON (AP) — With one week to go before the nationwide ban on evictions expires, the White House is acknowledging that the emergency pandemic protection will have to end at some point. The trick is devising the right sort of “off-ramp” to make the transition without massive social upheaval.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the separate bans on evictions for renters and mortgage holders were “always intended to be temporary.”

Both will expire on June 30 unless extended. But Psaki would not say whether the administration was planning another extension. That decision, she said, lies with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which imposed the bans on the rationale that allowing people to lose their housing during a pandemic was an unacceptable public health risk.

Psaki said the decision on the moratorium “will be made by the CDC, based on public health conditions.”

The White House, she said, "wouldn’t get ahead of their assessment"

Psaki added that President Joe Biden “remains focused on ensuring that Americans who are struggling, through no fault of their own, have an off-ramp once it ends.”

But even as the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic gradually recedes, there remains pressure on Biden to maintain the eviction moratorium for nonmedical reasons.

This week, dozens of members of Congress wrote to Biden and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky calling for the moratorium to be not only extended but also strengthened in some ways.

The letter, spearheaded by Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Jimmy Gomez of California and Cori Bush of Missouri, called for an unspecified extension in order to allow the nearly $47 billion in emergency rental assistance included in the American Rescue Plan to get into the hands of tenants.

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