A federal judge ruled the CDC has no authority to declare a nationwide eviction moratorium during the COVID-19 pandemic. What does this mean for renters?
The pace of disbursement of the new housing assistance has been slow. Four months after Congress approved its first tens of billions of dollars in emergency rental aid, only a small portion has reached landlords and tenants, and in many places it is impossible even to file an application.
Landlords and real estate agents downplayed concerns that lifting the moratorium will create an eviction crisis. “With rental assistance secured, the economy strengthening and unemployment rates falling, there is no need to continue a blanket, nationwide eviction ban,” a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors said in a statement.
Owners of residential apartment buildings have long argued that the moratorium is based on legally shaky ground, and questioned the constitutionality of tethering a major intervention in the nation’s housing market to a federal statute intended to stop the transmission of disease.
Christy Zahrt receiving the Pfizer vaccine at California State University, Northridge, in Los Angeles on Tuesday.Credit.Allison Zaucha for The New York Times
The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine is extraordinarily effective at protecting against severe disease caused by two dangerous variants, according to two studies published Wednesday.
The studies, which are based on the real-world use of the vaccine in Qatar and Israel, suggest that the vaccine can prevent the worst outcomes including severe pneumonia and death caused by B.1.1.7, the variant first identified in the U.K., and B.1.351, the variant first identified in South Africa.
“This is really good news,” said Dr. Annelies Wilder-Smith, an infectious disease researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “At this point in time, we can confidently say that we can use this vaccine, even in the presence of circulating variants of concern.”
Published May 05. 2021 8:41PM
Kyle Swenson, The Washington Post
Washington A federal judge in the District of Columbia on Wednesday ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overstepped its legal authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium, a ruling that could affect millions of struggling Americans.
U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich s 20-page order says that the protection, first put in place during the coronavirus pandemic under the Trump administration and now set to run out on June 30, goes too far. It is the role of the political branches, and not the courts, to assess the merits of policy measures designed to combat the spread of disease, even during a global pandemic, the order stated. The question for the Court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not.