In US, Joe Biden calls on Congress to extend moratorium on evictions

President Joe Biden, at the White House, Washington, July 29, 2021.

Joe Biden asked, Thursday, July 29, the US Congress to extend the moratoriums that prevent rental evictions in the United States, which run until July 31, announced the White House, in full rise in contaminations because of the Delta variant .

A moratorium was put in place in September 2020 by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), which is the main federal public health agency in the United States.

“Keep people in their homes and out of crowded or gathering places like homeless shelters by preventing evictions is a key step in helping to stop the spread of Covid-19 ”, detail the CDC on their website.

It succeeded the one that had been planned in March 2020 by the Trump administration and Congress, to prevent the millions of people who had lost their jobs because of the pandemic from being homeless. It was then extended several times.

Corn “A Supreme Court decision ruled thatclear and specific authorization from Congress (…) would be needed for the CDC to extend the moratorium beyond July 31, regrets the spokesperson for the White House, Jen Psaki, in her press release.

Speed ​​up the payment of aid

Joe Biden also asked the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Department of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, who manage the rental of some housing, “To extend their respective moratoriums until the end of September”, she specifies.

The Treasury Department, for its part, called on Wednesday to accelerate the payment to tenants of funds provided by the federal government to help them pay their rent.

Of the 46 billion dollars made available to states and local communities to help tenants in difficulty financially, only 3 billion actually reached the bank accounts of the latter, confirmed to Agence France-Presse a responsible for the Treasury.

Some Republicans, however, accuse Joe Biden of having waited until the last moment to act. “We’re three days away from the end of the unconstitutional moratorium on CDC expulsions, and what is President Biden’s solution?” Blame the Court and call on Congress to fix it ”, deplored the Republican Vice-President of the Financial Services Commission of the House of Representatives, Patrick McHenry. He stressed that the Republican members of this commission had established a text to be able to extend the moratorium, but that they had not received a response.

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The World with AFP

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