The Unassuming Economist

From a post by Conversable Economist:

“Part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the CARES Act) signed into law by President Trump on March 27, 2020, was a national moratorium on evictions. However, the moratorium was scheduled to end on July 24, 2020–although it effectively required an additional 30 days beyond that date before landlords could file notices to vacate. Congress did not vote to extend the moratorium. However, the Centers for Disease Control then announced a national eviction moratorium to start on September 4, 2020. The US Supreme Court held in August 2021 that the CDC lacked the power to make this policy decision without the passage of a law through Congress and signed by the president. Of course, the Supreme Court decision was not about whether the eviction moratoriums were good policy or had beneficial effects. Here, I set aside the legal questions and focus on what we know about the outcomes.

It’s worth saying at the start that data on rental evictions is not nationally centralized, and is not up-to-the-minute. Every study has its own sample. However, certain patterns do seem to emerge across studies. Jasmine Rangel, Jacob Haas, Emily Lemmerman, Joe Fish, and Peter Hepburn at The Eviction Lab at Princeton University provide evidence on overall eviction patterns in “Preliminary Analysis: 11 months of the CDC Moratorium” (August 21, 2021). Their project collects data from 31 cities and six full states, representing about one-fourth of all the renters in the country. Here’s their estimate based on the sites they trask of how the total number of evictions would have evolved starting in January 2020, compared to what actually happened. Evictions fall by about half starting in March 2020 , and the gap between expected and actual evictions continues to expand after the CDC moratorium is enacted in September 2020.”

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