Thread by @doctorow

Bad news: Americans owe $21.3b in total rent debt.

Good news: Congress made $46.5b in rent assistance available in the relief bills.

Bad news: Just $3.25b of that money has been handed out, with 94% unspent.

1/

FUCKING TERRIBLE NEWS: The eviction moratorium just expired.

prospect.org/infrastructure…

2/

As @ddayen writes in @TheProspect, the eviction tragicomedy was blamed on unforced errors - CDC promises not to extend the moratorium, Kavanaugh's judicial cruelty, Biden's month of inaction, Congress's failure to act - but none of that would matter if relief got to renters.

3/

Now, as the CDC moves to partially restore the eviction moratorium, we should focus on preventing evictions once it expires (again): let's get the $43.25b that Congress says renters are eligible for into their hands.

4/

To do that, we need to understand the backlog. The first problem is that the money was given to the states and cities to disburse to renters, and the states don't have renter relief agencies sitting around waiting to spring into action once Congress writes a check.

5/

Quite the contrary: the states have been starved for decades, thanks to Republicans' and Democrats' race to show who is more "fiscally responsible" by performatively cutting "bureaucracy," without stopping to ask what all that administrative capacity and buffers are FOR.

6/

All that is exacerbated by Congress's insistence on larding the relief with onerous conditions in order to demonstrate eligibility, and a condition that the money be given to renters before being passed onto landlords or utility companies.

7/

The goal is to prevent fraud, which is laudable, but adding administrative burdens to overburdened local administrations was obviously going to result in stalls. The states are REALLY bad at fighting fraud, as evidenced by the billions scammed in UI:

propublica.org/article/how-un…

8/

Dayen points out that federalizing the program might actually get money into renters' hands before they end up homeless - and it would do an end-run around Republican-dominated southern states that LOVE evictions.

wsj.com/articles/evict…

9/

Dayen: "We have a serious problem with government functioning, punctuated by an obsession with means testing and state experimentation that turned everyone needing relief into an unpaid government bureaucrat, having their free time taxed with paperwork and endless hassles."

10/

Image:
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eof/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/08/04/eig…