The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as well as the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Veterans Affairs (VA), released a joint statement on their actions to prevent evictions as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium expired July 31, 2021.
The statement was issued in light of the Biden administration’s request the above government agencies extend their foreclosure-related eviction moratoria until Sept. 30, 2021, in order to protect renters at risk for eviction. President Joe Biden also asked them to “explore all available tools” to keep Americans housed. The FHFA, USDA, HUD, and VA offer almost 20 programs, financial incentives, tax credits, loans and guarantees to assist owners and operators of rental housing with significant support to provide housing to renters.
“As secretaries of Agriculture, HUD, VA, and Treasury, and acting director of the FHFA, we recognize that our agencies provide the financial resources and incentives for federally assisted and financed rental housing,” the agencies stated. “We want to make clear that the owners and operators of this housing should make every effort to access emergency rental assistance resources to avoid evicting a tenant for non-payment of rent.
“These resources are available in every state, and many counties and cities are also running local programs,” the group continued. “Owners and operators of federally assisted housing are stewards of important public resources and should access rental assistance both to prevent unnecessary human suffering and to protect the public investment in affordable housing.”
As in the past, the FHFA stated this moratorium will apply to Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s (the Enterprises) single-family real estate owned evictions, which includes properties that have been acquired by an Enterprise through foreclosure or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure transactions.
“The pandemic continues to have an outsized impact on the ability of Americans to meet their monthly rent or mortgage payments,” FHFA acting Director Sandra Thompson said in a release. “Today’s extension of the eviction moratorium protects particularly vulnerable Americans who otherwise would be at risk of losing a place to live.”
In addition to extending the eviction moratoria, the agencies are also working to support the Treasury as it implements the ERA program, which can be used by renters to cover rent and make landlords whole. HUD is providing technical assistance to HUD grantees and working with public housing authorities, private landlords, and tribal communities. The USDA is committed to sharing program information in rural communities, including sending letters to the 65,000 tenants within the USDA multi-family portfolio not receiving rental assistance to encourage them to apply. The VA is providing a one-stop website to inform veterans facing housing instability of their options as well.
After the above agencies issued their statements extending their respective moratoria, the CDC issued a new eviction moratorium order temporarily halting evictions in counties with heightened levels of community transmission in a response to the new developments involving the COVID-19 pandemic, stating eviction of tenants for failure to make rent or housing payments could be detrimental to public health control measures. The new order will expire Oct. 3, 2021.