Nearly Half Of Voters Question CDC's Authority To Issue Eviction Bans
Opinions are divided along political lines.
Nearly half of voters say they support the CDC’s new eviction moratorium, but 45% of voters say the agency shouldn’t have the authority to issue the ban.
A recent Morning Consult/Politico poll shows that nearly 3 in 5 Democrats support the CDC’s ability to ban evictions, while just 16% of Republican voters felt the same way. Nearly three-quarter of Democrats said they support the moratorium for areas with substantial or high COVID transmission risks, while 31% of GOP voters said the same. About 50% of Independents supported it.
The CDC’s eviction moratorium was extended in early August and is set to expire October 3. Some analysts argue that once it does, the country may grapple with a ‘new pandemic’ of evictions. County-level analysis from Surgo Ventures shows that about 6.2 million renting households were behind on rent as of July 31, an amount that represents about 15% of the total renting population in the US. In about 250 counties across the country, more than one in five renters are behind on payment. The average bill is $3,700 per household in arrears, a total of $23 billion nationally.
“Ever since the early days of COVID-19, we’ve been concerned about ‘vulnerability,’ a term we use to define a community’s ability to weather this pandemic based on a number of structural, socioeconomic, and health-related factors. Housing vulnerability is very much a part of this equation,” said Dr. Sema Sgaier, Co-Founder and CEO of Surgo Ventures and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We believe there are sufficient federal and local funds to cover our most vulnerable families; we just need to make sure they are distributed appropriately so that at-risk families have the financial and programmatic support they need to stave off a crisis.”
The most recent extension has already been met with legal challenges, including a complaint filed by the National Apartment Association, Darby Development Company, GWR Management, McLean Investments, and Shander International.