White House pushes back after Newsom dismisses Trump’s eviction action as a ‘study’
The White House is pushing back after California Gov. Gavin Newsom called on the Trump administration to do more to stop a potential flood of evictions and foreclosures now that a federal moratorium protecting renters and homeowners during the coronavirus pandemic has expired.
A senior White House official said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump did all he could within his legal boundaries to stop a surge of evictions stemming from the pandemic crisis.
Newsom, at a press conference on Monday, said that an executive order signed by Trump over the weekend essentially ordered the federal government to “study” solutions.
“I appreciate there was some extension of consideration to this by the president, but it was more along the lines of studying this issue, providing some capacity at HUD and elsewhere to move on this, but we need something much more specific, much more directed, and we, again, are working overtime to advance just that,” Newsom said, referring to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The White House pushed back against the Democratic governor, stating to McClatchy that Trump’s action directed HUD to “prioritize federal funds that can be used to provide financial assistance to struggling renters and homeowners” affected by the coronavirus crisis.
“President Trump is directing his administration to take all lawful measures to prevent residential evictions and foreclosures resulting from financial hardships caused by COVID-19,” the senior White House official said. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “will consider measures to temporarily prohibit residential evictions of any tenants for failure to pay rent due to COVID-19 hardships to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.”
Additionally, the official said, “HUD will also work with its grantees to ensure that renters and homeowners are not forced out of their homes during the COVID pandemic.”
The executive order calls on federal agencies to “consider,” “identify,” “promote” and “review” new actions, but does not explicitly extend the federal eviction moratorium put in place by the CARES Act that expired on July 24.
That provision was designed to protect renters and homeowners financially impacted by the pandemic from losing their homes.
In a press briefing with reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said that the executive order he signed over the weekend would “extend the freeze on home evictions.”
“We want to extend the freeze so people aren’t evicted,” Trump said. “It’s not their fault that the virus came from China. It’s China’s fault.”
But nonprofit advocates for low-income renters and homeowners are warning that the executive order does not go far enough.
A survey by the Apartment List published last week found that 32% of Americans have missed rent or mortgage payments since the crisis began.
“The president alluded to ‘stopping evictions,’ but the executive order fails to provide any meaningful relief to the millions of renters who are at risk of losing their homes,” the National Low Income Housing Coalition said in a statement, arguing that Trump has within his existing authority the power to extend the federal moratorium on his own.
“Instead, the executive order merely directs federal agencies to ‘review all existing authorities and resources’ and ‘make a determination’ about whether halting evictions would prevent the spread of coronavirus,” the statement continued. “The president does not direct any federal or other agency to take any action to actually prevent evictions.”
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 9:20 AM.
