President Joe Biden’s administration has extended the nationwide eviction moratorium for another 30 days in a bid to help tenants who’ve been unable to make their rent payments due to the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced that the moratorium would be extended from June 30 to July 31. The CDC said that “this is intended to be the final extension of the moratorium.”
The extension comes the same week that dozens of members of Congress wrote to Biden and Walensky calling for the moratorium to not only be extended but strengthened.
“The impact of the federal moratorium cannot be understated, and the need to strengthen and extend it is an urgent matter of health, racial, and economic justice,” the letter, spearheaded by Democratic Representatives Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Jimmy Gomez (Calif.), and Cori Bush (Mo.), called for an unspecified extension in order to allow the nearly $47 billion in emergency rental assistance included in the American Rescue Plan to reach tenants.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said President Biden “remains focused on ensuring that Americans who are struggling, through no fault of their own, have an off-ramp once it ends.” Yesterday, she said that the moratorium was “always intended to be temporary.”