Mass evictions haven’t hit renters — yet

Eviction filings are up 8.7 percent after the federal moratorium was struck down in August; the Czech government is in limbo after last weekend's election. 

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

Mass eviction wave has yet to hit most renters

Caitlin O'Hara/Washington Post via Getty Images

• Six weeks after the end of the federal eviction moratorium brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, the country has thus far largely avoided the eviction crisis many advocates feared, based on data from 30 localities tracked by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.
• A modest upsurge in eviction court filings — they were up 8.7 percent in September after the moratorium ended— indicates that the situation hasn’t yet reached crisis level. Some cities and states have their own eviction moratoriums and renters’ assistance programs, which have kept many tenants in their homes. [WSJ / Will Parker]
• In late August, the Supreme Court ruled that the Centers for Disease Control had overstepped its bounds in issuing the eviction moratorium. In its decision, the court wrote that Congress would need to pass legislation to halt evictions, rather than having such orders passed down by a federal agency. [NPR / Krishnadev Calamur and Chris Arnold]
• That ruling sparked widespread fear of a sudden and significant housing crisis; investment firm Goldman Sachs predicted 750,000 households could lose their homes by the end of 2021. [Al Jazeera / Cinnamon Janzer]
• While experts haven’t fully fleshed out the reasons why the flood of evictions hasn’t yet happened, one reason is that federal rental assistance is getting out more rapidly after months of delays. Local measures are also helping protect tenants in some areas. [Washington Post / Rachel Siegel and Jonathan O’Connell]
• In addition to local measures, the Department of Housing and Urban Development rolled out a new rule last week aimed at protecting renters in subsidized, low-income housing from eviction. [The Hill / Mychael Schnell]
• But according to Zach Neumann, an attorney and founder of the Colorado Covid-19 Eviction Defense Project, legal actions related to eviction tell only part of the story, and doesn’t mean that evictions aren’t coming. “Eviction filings are a trailing indicator of rental debt and housing insecurity and as such are not the most reliable data source for who is in debt or not in debt to their landlord and, as such, at risk of eviction.” [Denver Post / Aldo Svaldi]

A Czech coalition is ready to form a new government — but can it?

• Populist Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis could be out of a job after his party’s narrow defeat by the country’s center-right Together party. [Reuters / Jan Lopatka and Jason Hovet]
• Opposition parties, including Together, formed a coalition with several ideologically diverse parties to defeat Babis’s centrist ANO party, which they accuse of eroding democratic norms. [NYT / Andrew Higgins]
• Babis, a billionaire, sought to convince the Czech people that the country still needed him to run it like a business. But his financial prosperity turned out to be an Achilles heel; some of his financial transactions were detailed in the Pandora Papers, including his purchase of a $22 million French chateau in 2009, allegedly using shell companies. [Washington Post / Rick Noack and Ladka Bauerova]
• The opposition coalition has declared its intention to form a government by November 8; however, Babis announced that Czech President Milos Zeman had given him the go-ahead to form a new government, despite the strength of the opposition coalition. Shortly after Zeman spoke with Babis, though, he was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, with leadership still undecided. [Guardian / Robert Tait]
• However, Zeman has agreed to meet with the leader of the coalition and candidate for prime minister, Petr Fiala, although no date has been set for that meeting. [Bloomberg / Michael Winfrey]

Six are dead after gun battles broke out in the streets of Beirut. Supporters of Hezbollah and another Shia political group, Amal, clashed with a Christian group after protests against the judge conducting an inquiry into last year’s deadly explosion in the port of Beirut. [NYT]

• A second Ebola case has been confirmed in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo — DRC — barely a year after the end of a major outbreak that killed more than 2,200. [Reuters / Fiston Mahamba]
• The FDA released new guidance Wednesday, urging food companies to limit salt use in order to curb Americans’ sodium by about 12 percent over the next two and a half years. [NPR / Allison Aubrey]
• In 2022, Social Security payments will get the largest cost-of-living boost in decades — a 5.9 percent increase — to keep up with inflation. [AP / Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Christopher Rugaber]

“The select committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas, so we must move forward with proceedings to refer Mr. Bannon for criminal contempt.”

[Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chair of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attacks at the US Capitol, on Stephen K. Bannon’s refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena.]

Have you ever noticed those multicolored, rectangular panels popping up on buildings? It's not just for looks. This innovative design protects buildings everywhere — from local libraries to your own apartment. [YouTube]

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