Evictions Are Coming. Democrats “Failed to Meet This Moment,” Say Democrats.

Congressional efforts to extend the eviction moratorium failed on Friday.

Tom Williams/Congressional Quarterly via ZUMA Press

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The federal eviction moratorium ends today, and housing rights advocates and tenants around the country worry that anywhere between hundreds of thousands and millions of people will be thrown onto the streets in the coming days and weeks. Congressional Democrats on Friday night attempted to pass an extension of the moratorium. Not only couldn’t they get any Republicans to sign on, but they couldn’t even persuade enough of their own members to hammer out a deal done before adjourning for a six-week summer recess.

“Some Democrats, privately, have tried to kill this bill because of special interests of realtors and other groups,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told MSNBC late Friday. “It’s unconscionable that we don’t have a vote on the House floor, that we’re protecting some members to kill this behind closed doors, and that we aren’t being transparent. It’s just wrong.”

Khanna said that top Democrats, in fealty to those special interests, didn’t allow a full vote on a bill put forward by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) that would have extended the moratorium through October 18. The path House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leaders chose Friday was through a procedure known as “unanimous consent.” This allowed for any one vote to block the measure—which a Republican member did—but also meant that Democrats who did not support the moratorium extension would be spared from saying so publicly. Prior to the television interview, Khanna tweeted that Pelosi wasn’t planning on a full vote “because some Democrats are opposed to it.” Those Democrats, he said “should have the guts to say so publicly instead of behind closed doors.”

Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) similarly blasted Democrats who blocked action. “It’s unacceptable that millions of Americans will be at risk of eviction because a handful of members refused to do the right thing and extend this moratorium,” she tweeted late Friday.

Pelosi—along with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.)—blamed Republicans after the failed effort, and also pointed to the billions of dollars in undistributed aid to state and local officials for rent relief, calling on “governors and local officials to take whatever steps are necessary to distribute the rental assistance that Congress already allocated.” Democrats, Pelosi among them, also blame the Biden administration’s lack of urgency in getting a plan in place, the Washington Post reported Friday.  On Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said the White House had “absolutely not” done enough to prevent this scenario and called its handling of the moratorium “quite shameful.”

President Biden would have supported another extension of the moratorium via the CDC, which had imposed the earlier extensions dating back to September 2020, said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. But a recent Supreme Court ruling made that path “no longer available,” and therefore it was up to Congress to pass legislation and also on the states to distribute the aid that had already been allocated.

Pelosi’s decision came after Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) wrote a letter to her colleagues urging them to “do everything possible to protect the nearly 6.2 million households at risk” of eviction. Bush, who herself has formerly been unhoused, told her colleagues that she’d been evicted three times and knows “what it’s like to be forced to live in my care with my two children. Now that I am a member of Congress, I refuse to stand by while millions of people are vulnerable to experiencing the same trauma that I did.” After the effort fell through, Bush tweeted that “many” of her fellow Democrats “failed to meet this moment,” and invited them to sleep on the steps of the US Capitol to rally support for an extension.

Only a few fellow Democrats slept on the steps with her—including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ayanna Presley (D-Mass.)—but Bush isn’t done.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate