This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.
Saying that it has not been a good week for President Biden may be the understatement of the year as along with the Supreme Court’s decision to force the administration to reinstate Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ immigration policy, and the terrible situation still unfurling in Afghanistan, The US Supreme Court on Thursday lifted the temporary eviction ban, originally imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 120 days starting in March 2020, but repeatedly extended first by the Trump administration, then by the Biden administration (which was finally-finally-maybe set to expire on October 3, 2021).
“The Biden Administration is disappointed that the Supreme Court has blocked the most recent CDC eviction moratorium while confirmed cases of the Delta variant are significant across the country,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
“As a result of this ruling, families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to COVID-19.”
As WolfStreet’s Wolf Richter writes below, the Court said in the unsigned opinion that the ban exceeded the CDC’s authority to combat communicable diseases and that it forced landlords to bear the costs of the pandemic.
The decision was expected (and went 6-3, along ideological lines).
Even President Biden had acknowledged that the CDC’s latest extension of the eviction ban was legally iffy but the litigation would give the government time to distribute $47 billion to make landlords whole and get tenants off the hook.
“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,” the Court wrote.
“It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.”
The most important aspect of the national eviction moratorium is that it came of top of the extra $600 a week in federal unemployment benefits last year and an extra $300 a week this year, on top of the regular unemployment benefits. These extra unemployment benefits, on top of the regular state unemployment benefits, were specifically designed to give people enough money – in many cases more money than they had before – to pay rent and health insurance and other stuff.
The federal unemployment benefits also covered gig workers and workers that didn’t qualify for any other programs. Plus, there were the stimulus payments. There was money everywhere and anywhere. The whole thing was designed to allow people to spend money even if they lost their jobs.
Many people made more money under these programs than before, and it triggered a historic spike in retail sales. But with the eviction moratorium in place, people didn’t have to pay rent anymore, and could just spend on other stuff all this money they got to pay for rent.
And they did.
But wait… There’s another layer of money now.
The federal government has provided $47 billion in taxpayer money to states and local governments to make landlords whole and get tenants off the hook, now that they spent on cars, electronics, furniture, and other things all the money they got from the extra unemployment benefits designed precisely to allow them to pay their rent.
Governments have been slow to dole out this federal taxpayer money, $47 billion being quite a pile to give away willy-nilly. Rules have been eased to speed up the process. Landlords can now apply for a whole bunch of tenants at once. Etc.
The Court said in the case, brought by the Alabama Association of Realtors, that the CDC exceeded its authority with the eviction ban, but that Congress might have the power to impose it.
“The moratorium has put the applicants [the Alabama Association of Realtors], along with millions of landlords across the country, at risk of irreparable harm by depriving them of rent payments with no guarantee of eventual recovery,” the court said.
It pointed out that “many landlords have modest means. And preventing them from evicting tenants who breach their leases intrudes on one of the most fundamental elements of property ownership – the right to exclude.”
“This decision is the correct one, from both a legal standpoint and a matter of fairness,” NAR spokesperson Patrick Newton told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday.
“It brings to an end an unlawful policy that places financial hardship solely on the shoulders of mom-and-pop housing providers, who provide nearly half of all rental housing in America, and it restores property rights in America.”
However, the mainstream narrative makes it easier to feel sorry for the plight of the tenants.
But those tenants already got paid the extra unemployment benefits from the federal government, on top of the state unemployment benefits, on top of the stimmies, so that they could pay their rents.
But the eviction bans allowed those tenants to buy other stuff with this money instead of paying their rents. And now the taxpayer is paying $47 billion to landlords to make them whole and to get the tenants off the hook, in an economy where no one has to pay for anything anymore.
But this is not the end of the eviction bans. They live on in several states, including New York and California, and in many municipalities.
The whole idea of the eviction bans was that consumers don’t have to pay their debts and other obligations, such as rents, with the money that they received from the government precisely to pay those debts and other obligations, and that they could use that money to buy other stuff. And now the government is paying a second time for the same thing, this time to make landlords whole, in an economy that has gone nuts.
* * *
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Used to know a guy from the bar room days that didn’t have a home. Saw him every year when spring rolled around. But you dare not call him homeless.
“I’m not a homeless bum” he would say. “I’m a hobo. Those guys are giving me a bad name. Lets have a shot of Johnny Walker Red on me.”
He couch surfed for a few months and then he was gone…ridin’ a boxcar back down south.
RIP Hobo Mac
How are eviction bans, which rob the landlords of their income, not considered a taking under the law that requires compensation?
It’s no different than declaring someone’s property to be public property and demanding free public access even if the ownership remains with the original owner instead of being transferred to the government. There have been a number of legal decisions about this sort of thing.
No matter how I look at this, the eviction bans and the eviction ban bans, good things are not going to come from it.
Biden is mentally unfit and the left knows it, IF we could ever get him examined by free unbiased controlled leftist doctors he would be removed from his current position. Unless these leftist scum are removed from all offices of power this country is DOOMED!
I think you should start looking for a new country to soil, I mean inhabit. Later!
Zero fucks given if biden having a bad week. 13 American service families are having a bad rest of their lives because the resident-in-chief thinks he’s a player. Then there are the Americans and their families that will have been left behind in Afghanistan because the Sniffer-in-chief couldnt run with a plan because it was developed under a man he hates because he will never be as capable. Those people are having a bad week-at least until the taliban catches up to them and brutalizes them on camera for Youtube. No, Joe wanted the job, so he can just suckitthefuckup. He cant undo the damage to our nations image, our international relationships and allies that he has done, so he can wear it. Put on your man-panties and screw the taxpayers over again to replace the $84 billion dollars in military equipment that our enemies are now sporting for news cameras from around the world, because the Scranton Kids plan fucking sucked. And people have died and will continue to die because his wife wanted to be First Lady.
I don’t understand why the evacuations hadn’t started much earlier than 1-2 wks before the red line, whether or not Trump’s deals were negotiable.
DS – My question too, The “DC establishment” knew the Amer.s we’re leaving sooner or later, why didn’t they start large scale evacuations earlier? Is it because of stupidity, or because of breathtaking incompetence, or they didn’t care, or a combination of those?
It includes these things, but I suspect the usual main reason – politics. The present prez. is doing poorly, so bad it can’t be hid. In the case of Afghanistan, I believe the Dem.s and the prez. were willing to gamble lives in an effort make JB out as the peacemaker, even though DT had a deal already worked out. JB created a fiasco, and blames it on the ex-prez and to make DT look bad, only the whole thing was so badly botched he couldn’t get his propaganda machine to pull it off. Furthermore, after the evacuation deadline there will still be thousands of Amer.s stranded there, so the issue isn’t going away. One may also phrase the same thing this way – the Dem.s know they are going to get stomped in the next election and have to find ways to deflect failure and blame.
The Pentagon is in charge of plans for Afghanistan. No matter what you may think of Biden he has no say in the everyday plans. He can approve what his advisors tell him, but he has little control of the everyday decisions on policy. If you couldn’t see that when Trump was in, you’ll never see it. Presidents are sock puppets no matter how much they bluster and complain when they twitter, they will read the words on the teleprompter when told to.
Those soldiers knew the danger and accepted the mission when told to…like all soldiers must do. What about all the Afghan civilians killed by the soldiers AFTER the suicide bomb? You won’t hear about that on western media but there are numerous accounts of people there that said most of the Afghani civilians weren’t killed by the bomb. They were killed by the US troops who opened fire on the crowd after the bomb. No bomb that killed that many could have been smuggled in as a vest bomb and it wasn’t a car bomb. The soldiers massacred the civilians.
Stop listening to FOX, OAN, NEWSMAX, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS. Try looking deeper than what the DC swamp releases as “credible” news. It’s only meant as misdirection (Look! A squirrel) while they continue to line their pockets.
Helloooo kindred spirit! Finally someone else on this forum with some brains. Good on ya!
Mr. Darwin
Any western news outlet, left or right, cries and cries about all the US equipment left behind…but they are lying. The military equipment was the property of Afghanistan and was abandoned by their military and police.
We all complain about the billions given in foreign aid to other countries. But most foreign aid is really a jobs program for the defense industry. When the “aid” is given, it is with specific details that the receiving country is required to buy such and such armaments from the US defense contractors. Afghanistan was the same. They “bought” the equipment with the aid from the US government. The US no longer owned it.
This is done with many countries. Research it and you will see that this is true. Not what the teevee tells you. Trillions were spent in Afghanistan for foreign contractor jobs building very expensive infrastructure because everyone took their “10%” for the big guy” over there before using the money for it’s intended use.
The US main exports are weapons of war and financial fraud. Afghanistan is a perfect example of both.