Democrats who control the House of Representatives cannot blame Republicans for an impending eviction crisis, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said after a federal moratorium expired Saturday night.
The expiry of pandemic protection has put approximately 11 million Americans at risk of losing their homes in the coming weeks, and the prominent progressive is angry that her party has run out of time to extend the measure.
“The House of Representatives and the leadership of the House of Representatives had an opportunity to vote for an extension of the moratorium, and there were, frankly, a handful of Conservative Democrats in the House who threatened to get on planes instead of holding that vote,” the New said York representative told Union CNN, citing the beginning of the summer recess in Congress.
“And we have to call a spade a spade. We cannot in good faith blame the Republican Party when the Democrats have a majority in the House of Representatives. “
Ocasio-Cortez was among the leading progressives to take part in a sit-in on Saturday night outside the Capitol.
The Biden government made no attempt to extend the moratorium, which was designed to protect tenants who have suffered economic contraction under Covid, after the Supreme Court announced that it would oppose any attempted extension.
Congress then failed to find a way to extend it through law on Friday as the Democratic leadership insisted that a White House request was late.
“We only found out about it yesterday,” Nancy Pelosi, spokeswoman for the House of Representatives, told reporters on Friday evening. “There was not enough time to socialize it within our group and to build the necessary consensus.”
On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez was unforgiving.
“There is evidence that this court order was passed on the White House a month ago and that the White House waited until the day before the House was adjourned to issue a statement calling on Congress to extend the moratorium “, she said.
“The house was brought into an unnecessarily difficult situation. And that’s not just me saying. The chairwoman of the financial services sector, Maxine Waters, made this very clear. “
The Congresswoman also complained that federal funding had not reached those in need.
“In some states, governors and state administrations could slowly go through this process to get it out, in other states” [it’s] the administrative burden for the establishment. These state governments have to bring it together. We cannot throw people out of their homes if our bargain has not been fulfilled. Of the $ 46 billion allocated, only $ 3 billion was spent helping tenants and small homeowners.
Ocasio-Cortez noted that while Congress was adjourned for a seven-week summer break, members were announced that they would be called back to vote on an infrastructure deal.
“It’s worth coming back when 11 million Americans, one in six renters, are at risk of being kicked out of their homes [for] and triggering that 24 hour notification, ”she said. “We can’t leave town without doing our job.”
Some state moratoriums remain in place, but those falling under the federal measure were newly vulnerable on Sunday.
Those at risk include Tara Simmons, a 44-year-old housekeeper who lives in Newport News, Virginia with her two children and two grandchildren. A month behind the rent, she says she was taken out of service by her landlord the moment the moratorium expired at midnight on Saturday.
“I’ve been in my house for four years now. And two months before my lease expires, I get an email stating that my lease will not be renewed, ”she said.
“That’s it. No explanation why or something. Since I’ve had this, I’ve been looking for a move. Because of the economic situation, I still haven’t found a way to move. This pandemic is tough.”
Simmons spoke to attorneys who told her she could not be evicted without a court order, which earned her a temporary pardon.
However, housing attorneys have warned that the court system will be inundated with landlords applying for eviction notices and have called for a new approach to keeping tenants financially affected by the pandemic inside their homes.
“This is an opportunity not to return to normal because so many renters across the country have broken normal,” said Matthew Desmond, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on evictions and chief investigator of the evacuation laboratory, a conference in the whites House on the subject.
“This is an opportunity to reinvent the way we assess and address the eviction crisis so that tenants and owners can operate better than the status quo, in a way that clearly invests in homes and families and communities , realizing that without a stable shelter, everything else will fall apart. “