Congress Seeks to Extend Federal Eviction Ban, Unemployment Benefits

Senate Republicans are expected to unveil a $1 trillion coronavirus aid bill on Monday that will include a few key measures that will directly affect the commercial real estate industry.

One of these measures is an overhauled unemployment benefit that would pay 70% of a person’s former wage, instead of the current $600 weekly benefit.

Another is an extension on the federal ban for evictions. Apartments with a Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae loan fall in this category.

To be sure, this bill must be reconciled with the House of Representatives’ version—a roughly $3.5 trillion measure that passed in May—which varies significantly in some areas.

A sneak peak at the Senate bill was revealed over the weekend as Senate and Administration leaders spoke to television reporters about what it would contain.

The greatest focus was on the unemployment benefits, understandably, given the high rate of joblessness in the economy. Many Republicans were against extending the blanket $600 weekly payment on the grounds that it discouraged people from going back to work.

“We want to make sure that there’s a technical correction, so that people don’t get paid more money to stay home than to work,” US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.

Critics of the proposed new schedule warn that the states’ unemployment systems, already staggering under the load of applications caused by the coronavirus, are not up for this level of calculation. It could take months or more to adopt such a proposal for modifying the benefits, according to memos obtained by NPR.

A delay in unemployment payments would likely have an impact on the multifamily sector, to say nothing of the cash that has continued to flow through the economy because of these payments. Apartment owners have been finding that tenants, by and large, are continuing to pay their rent precisely because of this support.