NLIHC and Partners Urge Immediate Action against Landlords Who Violate Eviction Moratorium

NLIHC, the National Housing Law Project (NHLP), and Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) sent a letter on May 12 to Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Mark Calabria, urging him to take immediate action against landlords who violate the federal eviction moratorium issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The letter highlights concerns about growing reports of landlords, including those who receive federally backed loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who continue to evict renters from their homes without consequence, despite the CDC eviction moratorium.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic fallout, Congress provided $46 billion in emergency rental assistance and the CDC issued and further extended a federal eviction moratorium to help keep renters in their homes while aid is distributed. Despite these historic efforts, a growing number of renters is facing eviction, as landlords circumvent the moratorium’s protections. According to the PESP, which has been closely tracking evictions by large corporate landlords in six cities, at least 57,000 evictions have been filed since the federal eviction moratorium went into effect. These evictions are driven by a small number of large corporate landlords and their affiliates.

Despite NLIHC’s recommendations to the contrary, the CDC eviction order has been interpreted to allow eviction lawsuits to be filed as long as the physical eviction of the tenant does not occur while the order is in effect. Many of the filed cases may not have resulted in actual, physical evictions – though, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently noted, this dynamic leads many tenants to “self-evict” before an eviction case is filed to avoid acquiring an eviction case record that will significantly reduce their future rental housing opportunities. In some jurisdictions, however, these large landlords have been able to evict tenants covered by the CDC moratorium.

The letter urges Director Calabria to take action against landlords with federally backed mortgages who violate the CDC moratorium, including by finding them in technical default on their loans and barring them from receiving future federally backed loans. Enforcing the CDC eviction moratorium is critical to ensuring that the lowest-income and most marginalized renters living in federally backed properties are safely and stably housed during and after the coronavirus pandemic.

Read the full text of the letter at: https://bit.ly/3vYL3l2