Justice Department Appeals Court Ruling Vacating the Eviction Moratorium
On Wednesday, Judge Dabney Friedrich from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a ruling that held that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not have the authority to issue the federal eviction moratorium. In her ruling, she stated that although there was no doubt Congress intended to empower the CDC to combat COVID-19 through a range of measures such as quarantines, a moratorium on residential evictions was not among them. Following the ruling, the U.S. Department of Justice quickly filed a notice of appeal of the decision. The Justice Department sought an emergency order to put the decision on hold, arguing that “evictions exacerbate the spread of COVID-19, which has already killed more than half a million Americans, and the harm to the public that would result from unchecked evictions cannot be undone.”
In response, Judge Friedrich agreed to put a temporary hold on her ruling. She also gave the landlord groups that challenged the eviction moratorium until May 12th, 2021 to file a legal challenge opposing the delay. Judge Friedrich also emphasized she had not ruled on the merits of the government’s request. It is also still unclear if the court’s decision ultimately applies beyond the plaintiffs in the case. For now, the federal eviction moratorium remains in effect until June 30, 2021.
To view Judge Friedrich’s ruling on the eviction moratorium, click here.
House Subcommittee Hearing on Housing and Climate Change
On Tuesday, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development and Insurance held a virtual hearing entitled, Built to Last: Examining Housing Resilience in the Face of Climate Change. The hearing focused on the vulnerabilities of America’s housing infrastructure and on the growing costs of housing and climate and weather disasters. Witnesses provided testimony regarding homes in disaster-stricken areas that are lost due to a lack of resilient design and poor structural siting, measures currently underway to address areas vulnerable to climate change, and the various associated costs that arise from increased maintenance and repair, and rapidly rising flood insurance costs. Members of the subcommittee also requested updates on the status of three key housing and climate related pieces of legislation, including:
- The Reforming Disaster Recovery Act involving the permanent authorization and reformation of the CDBG-Disaster Recovery Program.
- The National Flood Program Reauthorization Act of 2021 to reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) for five years, enacting a number of reforms to place the NFIP on sound financial footing and make the program more resilient, institute a cap on premium increases of 9% per year, and forgive more than $20 billion in NFIP debt.
- The Green Neighborhoods Act, legislation to encourage energy-efficiency, conservation, and the development of renewable energy sources for housing, and to create sustainable communities.
To view the full subcommittee hearing on Housing Resilience in the Face of Climate Change, click here.
House Task Force Hearing on Artificial Intelligence Examines Racism in Housing and Finance
The House Financial Services Committee Task Force on Artificial Intelligence held a virtual hearing on Friday entitled, Equitable Algorithms: How Human-Centered AI Can Address Systemic Racism and Racial Justice in Housing and Financial Services. The hearing focused on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (MI) lending models and their potential to expand opportunities, reduce discrimination, and how companies using AI and ML algorithms and datasets increasingly have to consider and test for underlying historical bias. Regulators have recently struggled to adapt their oversight processes, especially since many of these laws did not contemplate the use of these emerging technologies when they were enacted. The task force examined how the algorithms can produce the unintended consequence of exacerbating systemic racism due to the use of automated activities in the financial and housing sectors. During the hearing, several members voiced their concerns that the technologies are not perfect due to the inherent nature of the technology created by humans and that overregulation would have a negative effect on the deployment of these technologies in the future. The task force also mapped out the current regulatory solutions, including providing examples of best practices for AI and ML lending models, that would help protect against bias while fostering responsible innovation in the housing and finance sectors.
To view the full hearing on Artificial Intelligence and Racism in Housing and Finance, click here.