U.S. Supreme Court strikes down CDC's eviction moratorium as Black America braces itself for a wave of evictions...Evictions filings are happening in the Black community at a disproportionate rate, a report by the Aspen Institute says.....By Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's leaders in black and alternative digital news

 

Clevelandurbannews.com and-Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief

WASHINGTON, D.C.- I n a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme court on Thursday struck down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) eviction moratorium saying the federal agency lacked authority to issue such a mandate and paving the way for a flood of evictions nationwide as new variants of the coronavirus continue to emerge and Black America embraces itself to be among those hardest hit by the never-ending eviction crisis. 

Led by the more conservative arm of the court, and with the court's three liberal justices dissenting, the court sided with a group of landlords and ruled that the  CDC does not have statutory or any other authority to bring evictions to a standstill.

"It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken," the court's majority wrote in an unsigned opinion. "But that has not happened. Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts."

A report by the Aspen Institute that came out last year during the height of the pandemic says an estimated 30 million to 40 million people in the U.S, both renters and home dwellers alike,  are at risk of eviction due to the COVID-19 housing crisis. And Black neighborhoods should embrace themselves for the worst 

According to Aspen, there were averages of 1,880,053 eviction filings and 665,668 evictions per year. Each year, an average of 666,396 of these eviction filings (35.4%) and 181,495 of these evictions (27.2%) took place in Black-majority neighborhoods, the report says.

Research continues to show that Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be suffering economically during the pandemic and remain at greater risk for evictions than their White counterparts. A  report dubbed "The State of the Nation's Housing 2020" found that over half of Black and Hispanic renter households were cost burdened going into the pandemic,compared to 42 percent of Asian and white households.

Issued earlier this month after Congress could not agree on evictions legislation and President Joe Biden would not sign another executive order banning such evictions, the CDC evictions ban had been applicable to areas of the country with high or substantial transmission of  COVID-19 and was set to expire Oct 3, CDC officials said in an announcement at the time. 

Prior to the CDC taking its latest action on evictions, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats  demanded that the Biden administration extend the national eviction moratorium put in place a year and a half ago to protect renters and keep people in their homes as the coronavirus pandemic continues to escalate. 

Pelosi issued a written statement calling for immediate action by the Biden administration. It was also signed by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark, and Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat and the highest ranking Black in Congress.

Calling it a "moral imperative," House Democrats had called for the president to use his executive powers to extend his executive eviction moratorium that had been in place since March 2020 until  Oct 18.

Amid strong opposition from Congressional Republicans, who control the Senate , as well as a cadre of more moderate Congressional Democrats, Pelosi and House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters led a failed effort to try to reach a legislative solution after Waters, a seasoned Democrat out of California, introduced a bill to renew the eviction moratorium.

But she and Pelosi were at odds over whether the Democratically-controlled House vote on the last minute extension bill should be made public with Waters wanting the latter.

The measure failed in the House after Stoyer stepped in and called for a unanimous consent, which does not require a vote. After that occurred the CDC, with Biden's support, stepped in and issued its moratorium, the one that was unceremoniously rejected by the Supreme via its ruling on Thursday that says the CDC acted in an arbitrary and capricious fashion. 

Meanwhile, the delta variant, a more contagious strain of the coronavirus, continues to spread. It has quickly become the dominant SARS-COV-2 in more than a dozen countries worldwide.

Clevelandurbannews.com and-Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.