PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Tenants, who crowded housing courts amid concerns about a spike in evictions, got a reprieve Tuesday after the Biden administration announced …
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Tenants, who crowded housing courts amid concerns about a spike in evictions, got a reprieve Tuesday after the Biden administration announced an eviction ban that lapsed over the weekend would be extended 60 days in most of the country. The move will protect areas where 90% of the U.S. population lives, making the drama that played out a day earlier in Rhode Island, Ohio, North Carolina and elsewhere in the country short-lived. Among them was Gabe Imondi, a 74-year-old Rhode Island landlord who went to court Monday hoping to get his apartment back. He was tired of waiting for federal rental assistance and wondered aloud „what they’re doing with that money?“ Hours later, Luis Vertentes, in a different case, was told by a Rhode Island judge he had three weeks to clear out of his one-bedroom apartment in nearby East Providence. The 43-year-old landscaper said he was four months behind on rent after being hospitalized for a time. „I’m going to be homeless, all because of this pandemic,“ Vertentes said. „I feel helpless, like I can’t do anything even though I work and I got a full-time job.“ But by Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had identified a legal authority for a new and different moratorium that would be for areas with high and substantial increases in COVID-19 infections. The move followed protests from Democratic lawmakers over the swift end to the moratorium and concerns that the historic amount of rental assistance allocated by Congress wasn’t reaching tenants. That assistance had been expected to avert a crisis, but the distribution has been painfully slow. Only about $3 billion of the first tranche of $25 billion had been distributed through June by states and localities. A second amount of $21.5 billion will go to the states. More than 15 million people live in households that owe as much as $20 billion to their landlords, according to the Aspen Institute.
