The Biden administration this week argued before the Supreme Court that the worsening pandemic in the United States justifies the administration’s executive extension of the federal eviction moratorium.
The Supreme Court earlier this summer had indicated that the moratorium, once it expired at the end of July, would have to be extended by Congress rather than the executive branch. The Biden administration nevertheless unilaterally proceeded with a new moratorium.
With the matter now before the high court, the Biden administration says that the “trajectory of the pandemic” requires a new moratorium, one the administration says it was justified in passing.
Current statute “grants the government broad authority that encompasses the CDC’s order adopting an eviction moratorium,” the administration said in its filing, arguing that “lifting the stay would cause great harm to the government and to the public.”
There are an estimated 11 million individual investor landlordsUnited States managing an average of two units each, many with just one unit. That compares with just 1 million “business entity” landlords who manage an average of 20 or more units.