Which States Continue To Ban Evictions After Supreme Court Moratorium Ruling?

The U.S. Supreme Court brought an end to President Joe Biden’s eviction moratorium extension last week, putting millions of renters at risk of being homeless.

It was recently estimated by investment bank Goldman Sachs that 750,000 American renters could be evicted by the end of the year if no help is given. But any action on a national scale to either extend the eviction moratorium or provide aid to the millions of renters must come from Congress after the Supreme Court ruling.

As part of stimulus spending aimed at resuscitating the economy, Congress allocated $45 billion in rental assistance, but a large portion of this money remains unspent.

However, four states and the District of Columbia are continuing their own eviction moratoriums while another five are holding off on evictions if tenants have pending rental assistance applications in the system.

The largest state to maintain its ban on evictions is California, the most populous state in the nation. On June 28, California Governor Gavin Newsom passed a new bill that extended the state’s eviction moratorium and announced a program that would use federally allocated funds to pay off delinquent rent.

New Jersey and Washington D.C. are maintaining their eviction bans at least through January 2022. In New Jersey, renters who accrued debt through the pandemic can not be evicted. The District of Columbia prevents new lawsuits against tenants from landlords from being filed until October, while encouraging its residents to apply for rental assistance. New Mexico has not announced an end date to its own eviction moratorium that began in March 2020 after a state Supreme Court order.

Other states that ended their own eviction bans maintain ways for renters to stay in their homes after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling. New York state ended its eviction ban on Tuesday, but state lawmakers are urging the legislature to extend it until at least the end of October. Without that extension in place, New York allows some renters to remain immune to eviction if they have a pending application for rental aid with the state.

Like New York, other states have similar policies. They include Washington, Oregon, Minnesota and Nevada.

However, with the exception of New Mexico, all of the states that are maintaining their eviction bans are all steadily approaching their own deadlines. California’s eviction moratorium is set to end Sept. 30 and Illinois’ will end on Oct. 3 after the state’s governor extended it last Friday.

One lingering problem that is contributing to renters’ anxiety is the slow pace of states’ distribution of federal funds. In a report by U.S. News and World Report from Aug. 25, it was shown that a majority of the nation’s 50 states spent less than a fifth of the rental assistance provided to them by Congress. In the case of New York state, less than 1% of allocated aid has yet to be distributed to renters.