[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
OVERSIGHT OF PANDEMIC EVICTIONS:
ASSESSING ABUSES BY CORPORATE
LANDLORDS AND FEDERAL EFFORTS
TO KEEP AMERICANS IN THEIR HOMES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 27, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-37
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available at: govinfo.gov,
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
45-372 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking
Columbia Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Ro Khanna, California Michael Cloud, Texas
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Katie Porter, California Pete Sessions, Texas
Cori Bush, Missouri Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Andy Biggs, Arizona
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Peter Welch, Vermont Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr., Scott Franklin, Florida
Georgia Jake LaTurner, Kansas
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Pat Fallon, Texas
Jackie Speier, California Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois Byron Donalds, Florida
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Mike Quigley, Illinois
Jennifer Gaspar, Select Subcommittee Deputy Staff Director
Molly Claflin, Chief Counsel
Senam Okpattah, Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
Select Subcommittee On The Coronavirus Crisis
James E. Clyburn, South Carolina, Chairman
Maxine Waters, California Steve Scalise, Louisiana, Ranking
Carolyn B. Maloney, New York Minority Member
Nydia M. Velazquez, New York Jim Jordan, Ohio
Bill Foster, Illinois Mark E. Green, Tennessee
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Nicole Malliotakis, New York
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on July 27, 2021.................................... 1
Witnesses
Jim Baker, Executive Director, Private Equity Stakeholder Project
Oral Statement................................................... 6
Katrina Chism, Affected Renter, Georgia
Oral Statement................................................... 8
Diane Yentel, President & CEO, National Low Income Housing
Coalition (NLIHC)
Oral Statement................................................... 10
Rene Solis, Chief Program Officer, BakerRipley, Houston, TX
Oral Statement................................................... 11
Joel Griffith, Research Fellow, the Heritage Foundation
Oral Statement................................................... 13
Written opening statements and the written statements of the
witnesses are available on the U.S. House of Representatives
Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
* Letter from the National Association of Realtors; submitted
by Rep. Miller Meeks.
* Letter and supporting documents from Pretium; submitted by
Rep. Miller Meeks.
Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.
OVERSIGHT OF PANDEMIC EVICTIONS:
ASSESSING ABUSES BY CORPORATE
LANDLORDS AND FEDERAL EFFORTS
TO KEEP AMERICANS IN THEIR HOMES
----------
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Reform
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis
Washington, D.C.
The select subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:40
a.m., in room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. James
Clyburn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Clyburn, Waters, Velazquez,
Foster, Krishnamoorthi, Scalise, Jordan, Green, and Miller-
Meeks.
Mr. Clyburn. [Presiding] Good morning. The House Committee
will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any time.
I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
We are here today to discuss an issue of utmost importance:
ensuring that the coronavirus pandemic, which has already
resulted in a loss of life for more than 600,000 Americans,
does not result in the loss of stable homes for millions more.
As the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the Nation, millions of
Americans lost their jobs and faced significant challenges
making ends meet. For these Americans, one of the most pressing
challenges has been ensuring that the loss of a job does not
also mean the loss of a roof over their families' heads. Even
as the American economy continues to recover, millions of
American families still live in fear of falling behind on their
rent and being forced from their homes. Adding to this fear are
the aggressive and unjustified eviction practices by some
landlords. I am deeply troubled by reports that many large
corporate landlords have been aggressively and unfairly
attempting to remove thousands of Americans from their homes
during this pandemic.
Court records show that multiple large corporate landlords,
some of whom control tens of thousands of rental units, have
moved to evict large numbers of their tenants over the course
of the pandemic, despite the CDC eviction moratorium and the
availability of rental assistance funds. One large landlord,
for example, has filed to evict over 2,000 tenants during the
pandemic, totaling over a quarter of that company's tenants.
Evictions by corporate landlords have been particularly
widespread in minority communities.
In view of this information, the select subcommittee has
initiated an investigation into some of the large corporate
landlords alleged to be engaged in these practices. This
investigation will seek to find out whether these large
landlords are refusing to cooperate with rental assistance
programs and attempting to force families out of their homes
unfairly and needlessly. Let me be clear. The aggressive
actions of these large corporate landlords are unacceptable.
They must stop immediately.
These evictions are especially unacceptable because they
are unnecessary. Congress has taken action to ensure that
renters experiencing hardship can receive financial help to
stay in their homes. Of course, the ultimate recipient of these
funds are the landlords to whom rent is paid. To date, Congress
has appropriated over $46 billion in emergency rental
assistance, including $21.5 billion from the American Rescue
Act so that families affected by the pandemic can pay their
rent and stay in their homes. These funds are being distributed
through state and local governments who know their communities
and housing challenges best.
The Biden-Harris Administration has acted aggressively to
protect renters from eviction. Taking a whole-of-government
approach to preventing an eviction crisis, the Administration
has worked to speed up the distribution of rental assistance
funds by states and localities, warned large landlords of their
duty to inform tenants of their rights under the CDC
moratorium, and urged state courts to divert eviction cases to
rental assistance programs to keep people in their homes. The
Biden-Harris Administration has also pushed state and local
governments to distribute funds effectively, efficiently, and
equitably.
While some are still having challenges, several states and
localities have done an excellent job in distributing rental
relief funds. In Texas, the city of Houston and Harris County
have distributed over $137 million in rental relief funds to
over 36,000 families. Virginia has distributed over $220
million in assistance funds, aiding nearly 33,000 households.
And in Kentucky, the Louisville-Jefferson County Rental
Assistance Program has disbursed over $22 million to aid 4,300
households. All states and localities should follow these
successful examples and adopt best practices for distributing
aid, and landlords must work with tenants and rental assistance
programs to avoid needless evictions. The distribution of
assistance nationwide is rapidly increasing. Rental assistance
funds helped 85,000 households from January to March, 100,000
in April, 160,000 in May, and 290,000 in June. The distribution
of funds in June was greater than all previous months combined,
and I am confident that this progress is continuing.
When the House returns to session following the August
district work period, we plan to invite Treasury Secretary
Janet Yellen to testify on the implementation of this and all
the essential relief programs established by Congress through
the American Rescue Plan and previous coronavirus response
legislation that are being administered by her Department. I
look forward to that hearing and am hopeful the Secretary's
schedule will allow her to appear before us. And I know from
his recent public statements that the ranking member does as
well.
It is equally important that the select subcommittee hear
from today's witnesses, who bring a wealth of knowledge and
important perspectives on this issue. I look forward to hearing
from each of them about the challenges we face. As Americans
continue to get vaccinated and our economy continues to
improve, we must work together to prevent the pandemic from
precipitating an eviction crisis. Congress has already taken
action to ensure that American families are not evicted from
their homes. We must ensure that the law is followed and the
rental assistance funds that Congress provided are accessible
to all who need them.
I now yield to the ranking member for his opening
statement.
Mr. Scalise. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate you
holding this hearing. I look forward to hearing from our
witnesses.
The biggest economic challenge we face right now continues
to be President Biden's inflation crisis. The cost of housing,
the cost of gasoline, groceries, cars, basic necessities of
life have skyrocketed. Rather than addressing the problem and
proposing solutions, the Biden Administration's answer is,
don't worry, just keep burning more money and hope that
inflation will just magically disappear. Mr. Chairman, these
huge price spikes are not going to magically disappear,
especially when liberals and socialists continue reckless tax
and spend policies. The American people know that the massive
increase in government spending we have seen in these last few
months is responsible for the rising cost of prices that we pay
for everyday household items. This, by the way, is a tax on
hardworking families. And what is President Biden's answer? He
is pushing for an additional $4 trillion in new taxes and
spending, exactly the opposite of what America needs right now.
What America needs at this critical moment is to stay on
the path toward fully reopening. We cannot slide backward.
Schools must reopen for in-person learning. The costs our
children have already paid is too high. Businesses need to
continue bringing back employees, and the Federal Government
needs to stop paying people more to stay home than to go back
to work. The Federal Government needs to stop undermining the
relationship between landlord and tenant and let that market
function properly.
What has allowed us to get back to some normalcy has not
been government spending. It certainly has not been government-
imposed lockdowns. That is the opposite of normalcy. What has
gotten us back on the path to opening is getting control of
this invisible enemy, and America did that by creating,
producing, and distributing safe and effective vaccines. As
every member of this subcommittee knows, I as ranking member,
as well as many of us here, have been advocating for and
encouraging vaccines for over a year, and we have also
highlighted the success of Operation Warp Speed at bringing
multiple vaccines to families in record time. In fact, I called
out those who talked down the vaccine during last year when you
saw a number of people from President Biden and now Vice
President Harris on down who were actually promoting vaccine
hesitancy. They ought to come back out and admit they shouldn't
have done it, admit that they were wrong in promoting that. In
fact, when President Biden took office and created a goal of
$100,000 million shots in a day, which, by the way, we were
already on track to administer the day he took office, many of
us said that the President should be more ambitious. He should
increase the goal to 200,000 million shots a day. Ultimately,
President Biden embraced that goal.
Mr. Chairman, you and I worked together on the vaccine
hesitancy hearing. We jointly invited witnesses. Our views have
been clear and consistent. If you want to get vaccinated, it is
safe, effective, free, and available. But I have also been
clear that if the goal is to get more people vaccinated,
shaming people and mandating those vaccinations won't work.
Censoring the truth won't work either. It only breeds more
distrust. Let's all work together to get the facts out to
people, particularly populations that continue to display
hesitancy. Let's present the evidence but also reassure
individuals that the decision is theirs. If someone has a
concern or a question, now is the time to have that
conversation with their doctor. I believe that strategy will
ultimately maximize the number of Americans who choose to take
the vaccine because, after all, this is a medical decision, not
a political decision.
According to the Mayo Clinic, 87 percent of Americans over
the age of 75 have already received at least one dose of
vaccine. More than 90 percent of individuals aged 65 to 74 have
received at least one dose. Since vaccinations began, emergency
room visits related to the virus have declined 77 percent among
older adults, and of course, we remember at the outbreak of the
pandemic, that was the population that experienced the largest
percentage of deaths. Just seniors in nursing homes alone were,
at one point, responsible for over 40 percent of deaths when
they represented less than one percent of the population. While
we are seeing some breakthrough infections--that is, infections
that occurred after vaccination--those illnesses tend to be
milder than infections among unvaccinated people. We know no
vaccine is 100 percent effective, but a very small percentage
of vaccinated individuals we know will get sick. We have seen
the anecdotal evidence, but that is not evidence that the
vaccine does not work.
The Delta variant is spreading at an alarming rate. I am
especially now concerned about the new Lambda variant that we
are seeing coming from South and Central America. The Biden
Administration must address their self-created border crisis.
Dr. Fauci actually told this subcommittee that the Biden
Administration was violating their own CDC guidance at the
border by failing to test for COVID, and for allowing too many
people to be crammed into cages, many with COVID, at detention
facilities on the border, only to then be shipped around the
country and increase the spread of the virus. Many of us talked
about this that have gone down and seen the crisis at the
border. Border Patrol agents will tell you that many coming
across, No. 1, are not being tested for COVID, but, ultimately,
as they go into these detention facilities packed together,
some have COVID, and then they spread it to everybody else. If
an American citizen today went to Mexico for summer vacation,
they are not allowed to get on airplane and fly back into
America without first having a negative COVID test. Yet someone
can have COVID, be positive, come across our border illegally,
and be welcomed into the country, and then given a ticket to
get on a plane or a bus and sent throughout America, which, by
the way, the Biden Administration won't even tell us where they
are going, so communities can't even prepare for this outbreak.
We are running out of time to stop the Lambda variant. In
fact, the dangerous Lambda variant is spreading widely in
countries like Peru, and now with President Biden's open border
crisis, we are seeing many illegals starting to spread COVID's
dangerous Lambda variant into America. We just saw a few more
cases pop up in Texas, right along the border where people are
showing up with the Lambda variant. As we worry about the Delta
variant, which is dangerous, we should also be worried about
this new Lambda variant that is coming in. And, again, as Dr.
Fauci testified in the past, that when President Trump said we
are going to stop flights from coming in from China at the
beginning of this virus, it saved American lives. Dr. Fauci
also said President Trump's decision to stop flights from
Europe as Europe was getting an outbreak, that saved American
lives, too. I would call on President Biden to look at the
numbers of the Lambda variant that are coming in from South
America, and he should get control of the southern border to
stop the spread of the Lambda variant into America.
We should not be backsliding on reopening. We should not be
flooding the economy with trillions more in government
spending. We should be scaling back the emergency Federal
programs. The eviction moratorium, I do realize that that is
the subject of today's hearing, but this eviction moratorium is
an actual good example. On September 1, of 2020, the CDC took
the unprecedented step of issuing a temporary national
moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent under the guise
of limiting the spread of COVID-19 and protecting low-income
families who were struggling. But, of course, in the December
omnibus, Congress appropriated $25 billion for emergency rental
assistance to eliminate that debt. Congress also added an
additional $21 billion in a second emergency rental program via
the American Rescue Plan for a total of $46 billion in
emergency rental assistance funds to be distributed by the
Biden Administration. Yet, as of the end of June, the Biden
Administration pathetically distributed less than 10 percent of
this money to renters who are in need of assistance. The Biden
Administration has mismanaged this program, and unfortunately,
our request to bring in Secretary Yellen today was denied. I am
glad to hear she will finally be coming weeks later, but we
need those answers today about why that program is being so
mismanaged.
The impact of the eviction moratorium has been most heavily
felt by mom-and-pop landlords who depend on rental income for
their livelihood. The extension of the eviction moratorium at
the same time that, by the way, the government is paying people
more money not to work than to work, has forced many mom-and-
pop renters to sell their rental property or to actually have
to move into their own rental property as they are selling
other properties just to pay their bills. The moratorium is an
example of why we need to stay focused on reopening America.
Setting aside for a moment that a series of Federal judges
have found this moratorium to be unconstitutional, the fact is
the Administration's response to renters in need has not worked
and has hurt as many people as it has helped. The Federal
Government has failed miserably at managing the landlord-tenant
relationship. Let's focus on getting the facts out to people.
It is safe to reopen. We have done very well with vaccinating
vulnerable populations. COVID deaths have decreased
dramatically, but with these new variants, now is a good time
for all those who have been hesitant to take a renewed look at
getting vaccinated.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Mr. Scalise. I am pleased
to welcome today's witnesses.
I would first like to introduce Ms. Katrina Chism, who is
appearing with us virtually. After Ms. Chism lost her job, her
landlord, a company owned by a large private equity firm, twice
tried to force her and her son out of their home. These
attempted evictions came even though Ms. Chism filed for
protection under the CDC eviction moratorium and secured offers
of rental assistance funds. Ms. Chism's difficult experience
highlights the abusive tactics that some corporate landlords
used against tenants and makes clear the disruptive impact that
aggressive evictions have on working families. I would also
like to welcome Mr. Jim Baker of the Private Equity Stakeholder
Project, who has done significant research and monitored
eviction trends by large corporate landlords over the course of
the pandemic. Next, I welcome Ms. Diane Yentel of the National
Low Income Housing Coalition, whose organization has studied
the impact of the pandemic on housing stability and struggling
Americans. I would also like to welcome Rene Solis, who is
appearing virtually, of BakerRipley to discuss best practices
for providing local rental assistance. Ms. Solis has helped to
administer the city of Houston and Harris County's successful
rental assistance program. Finally, I want to welcome Mr. Joel
Griffith, a research fellow for the Institute for Economic
Freedom and Opportunity at the Heritage Foundation. Thank you
all for taking the time to testify about this critical issue. I
look forward to hearing from all of you on how we can continue
to prevent a pandemic eviction crisis.
Will the witnesses please rise and raise your right hands?
Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give is
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help
you God?
[A chorus of ayes.]
Mr. Clyburn. You may be seated. Let the record show that
the witnesses answered in the affirmative.
Without objection, your written statements will be made
part of the record.
We will hear first from Mr. Baker. Mr. Baker, you are
recognized for five minutes for your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF JIM BAKER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PRIVATE EQUITY
STAKEHOLDER PROJECT
Mr. Baker. Chairman Clyburn, Ranking Member Scalise,
members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
speak today. My name is Jim Baker with the Private Equity
Stakeholder Project. We are a nonprofit focused on tracking the
impacts of private equity firms and similar Wall Street firms
on ordinary people, including residents of apartments, rental
homes, and mobile homes.
Since early in the pandemic, we have tracked eviction
filings by private equity firms and other large landlords
across dozens of counties and several states, representing
about 10 percent of the U.S. population, focusing on corporate
landlords with 1,000 units of housing or more. In the counties
we have tracked, corporate landlords have filed to evict at
least 75,000 residents since the Trump Administration put a
moratorium in place to halt evictions last September, and we
know this just scratches the surface. These filings have hit
renters of color especially hard. For example, corporate
landlords avowedly filed 16,000 eviction actions in majority-
black DeKalb and Clayton Counties in Georgia since September.
In 2021, Progress Residential and Front Yard Residential owned
by private equity firms, Pretium Partners and Ares Management,
have filed to evict residents in DeKalb and Clayton counties at
more than seven times the rate they have residents in majority
white counties in Florida. In many of the counties we tracked,
corporate landlords have consistently accounted for the
majority of all filings.
In May, corporate landlords accounted for 74 percent of
eviction filings in DeKalb County, Georgia, 62 percent in
Maricopa County, Arizona, 53 percent of filings in Hillsborough
County, Florida and Harris County, Texas. Since last September,
some of the world's largest asset managers that manage
trillions of dollars have filed to evict residents, including
Morgan Stanley/Eaton Vance, Greystar Real Estate Partners, Ares
Management, the Carlyle Group, Starwood Capital, PGIM, Nuveen/
TIAA-CREF, and CBRE.
While many renters have faced dramatic hardships during the
pandemic, many corporate landlords have done extremely well and
are growing and buying more housing. Private equity firm
Pretium Partners, which owns rental home companies Progress
Residential and Front Yard Residential, together they have
filed at least 1,700 eviction actions since last September.
Pretium is run by Don Mullen, a former Goldman Sachs banker,
who made a fortune during the 2008 global financial crisis
betting against the mortgage market, getting rich as millions
of homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure. In April 2021,
as this company was filing evictions, Mr. Mullen purchased a
$25 million mansion in Miami Beach.
Publicly traded investment trust, Invitation Homes, the
largest donor of rental homes in the U.S., has filed more than
880 eviction actions since last September, and has sought to
challenge the CDC hardship declarations of several residents.
Its stock price has increased by more than 44 percent over the
last year. Canadian-owned apartment company, Ventron
Management, has filed to evict almost 30 percent of its
residents since April 2020. Some large landlords continue to
file, in advance, eviction cases against residents rather than
working with them to access the almost $50 billion in rental
assistance that Congress made available to prevent evictions
and enable residents to pay back rent and stay in their homes.
Front Yard Residential, for example, filed to evict 133
residents in the first eight days of January, just days after
Congress made rental assistance available. Reuters reported how
Invitation Homes refused to accept $4,000 in county program
funds from Marvia Robertson, a bus driver in Florida, who the
company evicted in March. Invitation Homes told Robinson that
it was not participating in the program due to landlord
restrictions. Some large landlords have taken a different path.
We noticed just nine eviction filings by publicly traded
single-family rental landlord, American Homes, for rent between
September 2020 and March 2021. Private equity firm, Oaktree
Capital, substantially reduced its eviction filings in Nevada
and Arizona earlier this year.
Eviction is not a foregone conclusion, but a decision that
landlords, even large corporate landlords, make. We applaud the
subcommittee for initiating investigations into multiple
corporate landlords that have each filed hundreds of eviction
actions, especially since these actions may displace thousands
of residents and will remain on residents' records for years
and could impact their access to housing into the future. An
organization violating the CDC eviction moratorium may be
subject to a fine of up to $200,000 per violation. The
subcommittee should recommend action by the U.S. Department of
Justice to seek penalties from landlords that have violated the
eviction moratorium. In addition, the subcommittee should
specifically assess whether any landlords violated residents'
civil rights by disproportionally filing to evict black renters
or other renters of color.
As we enter a critical new phase of the crisis facing
renters, it is important that we remain vigilant about
corporate landlords' evictions of residents and the growing
role of these companies in U.S. housing. Thank you.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you, Mr. Baker. We will now hear from
Ms. Chism. Ms. Chism, you are now recognized for your five-
minute statement.
STATEMENT OF KATRINA CHISM, AFFECTED RENTER, GEORGIA
Ms. Chism. Good morning, Chairman Clyburn and members of
the subcommittee. My name is Katrina Chism, and I am speaking
today about my experiences renting from a company called
HavenBrook Homes when I applied for rental assistance to avoid
eviction.
I moved into the home in DeKalb County, Georgia in the
spring of 2018. It was eventually purchased by HavenBrook
Homes. The rent crept up each year I lived there, making my
budget tighter and tighter. The home was not in the greatest
condition, but it was livable. HavenBrook Homes was always slow
to fix things in the home, but quick to collect the rent.
Although I occasionally had to pay rent late when money was
tight, I never had an eviction filing until the pandemic. In
August 2020, I lost my customer service job to due to the
pandemic. I was hired by the Urban League of Greater Atlanta in
September, but the month in between jobs led me to fall behind
in my rent. I filled out and gave my landlord a copy of the CDC
declaration, knowing it was set to expire in December 2020. I
found a local nonprofit agency willing to assist me with my
rent, but my landlord was uncooperative and I lost the rental
assistance. In January, HavenBrook Homes served me with my
first eviction. Ironically, once that happened and the CDC
order was extended, I was finally able to speak with my leasing
agent. I got into a payment arrangement, caught up on the rent,
and HavenBrook dismissed the eviction against me.
In March 2021, my job with the Urban League was eliminated.
I applied for unemployment benefits right away, and I was
actively job hunting. I was eventually approved for
unemployment, but I didn't get the money for 2-and-a-half
months. While waiting, I fell behind on all of my bills. I even
got a gas disconnection notice at one point. On March the 4th,
when I was just one month behind on my rent, HavenBrook Homes
filed a second eviction against me. I applied for rental
assistance on February 12, 2021, the very day the Tenant-
Landlord Assistance Coalition in DeKalb County began accepting
applications. I was approved, and Atlanta Legal Aid began
trying to negotiate a resolution with my landlord using the
rental assistance. Under DeKalb County's rental assistance
guidelines, I could get half of my balance covered. Around mid-
April, I learned my landlord had rejected the proposal
outright. HavenBrook didn't even come back with a counteroffer
to tell me how I could save my home. At the same time, my
landlord gave me a notice that they would not be renewing my
lease when it expired in mid-May. I didn't understand why.
Before the pandemic, I had always paid or caught up on my rent.
My family and I had lived there several years with no issue.
HavenBrook then made me an offer. If I moved out
immediately, even before my lease was up and before the CDC
order expired, they would forgive my rent balance. I felt
pressured because my leasing agent told me I could be
immediately evicted after my lease expired, that the CDC order
would not apply to me. If I had to leave anyway, I wanted to
walk away without the debt, but I couldn't find a place to move
my family that quickly. HavenBrook made it clear they wanted me
out instead of accepting the rental assistance.
The fear of homelessness became a reality for me. I was
very concerned that my son and I would have nowhere to go but
to a shelter. I was concerned about our health, and I was
concerned about my son's school. I have always made sure my
children feel safe and secure in their home. I never had to
face this type of stress before, and I had no idea what I was
going to be able to do with little to no income and no home. In
May, I moved to another county further outside of Atlanta where
I felt forced into a much, much more expensive lease. I used
all I had to pay for moving expenses. I was eventually approved
through DeKalb County for two months of rental assistance at my
new home, but that assistance has not come yet.
I felt voiceless up against such a large corporation like
HavenBrook. I felt expendable, and they showed me that I was. I
was not given any consideration as a long-term tenant with no
evictions on my record. I felt as if I had broken the law
somehow while we were in the middle of a pandemic. There was no
concern for my life or my son's life as they focused on their
profit margin. I now have to get a second job and my 16-year-
old son has to start working to contribute to the vast increase
in my monthly expenses. My son had to switch schools and now
has to start over. Hopefully he can thrive, but I worry about
the long-term impact this will have on him.
Thank you for hearing my story, and I am happy to answer
any questions that you have.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Ms. Chism. We will now
hear from Ms. Yentel. Ms. Yentel, you are now recognized for
five minutes.
STATEMENT OF DIANE YENTEL, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL LOW
INCOME HOUSING COALITION (NLIHC)
Ms. Yentel. Thank you. Chairman Clyburn, Ranking Member
Scalise, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify today.
The Federal eviction moratorium, an essential lifeline that
has kept millions of renters housed during the pandemic, is set
to expire this weekend. When it does, the six-and-a-half
million renter households who remain behind on rent will be at
heightened risk of losing their homes. An estimated 80 percent
of those families live in communities where the Delta variant
of COVID-19 is surging, and emergency rental assistance
available to pay rent arrears and keep tenants stably housed
has yet to reach the vast majority of renters in need. Having
millions of families lose their homes would be tragic and
consequential at any time. It would be especially so as COVID
surges and with abundant resources to pay the rent that may not
reach them in time. This urgent situation demands immediate
action by policymakers and stakeholders at all levels.
When Congress and the Administration extended the CDC
eviction moratorium and Congress provided $46-and-a-half
billion for emergency rental assistance, state and local
governments got to work to create new programs and distribute
aid to renters and landlords, a significant and time-consuming
undertaking during a global pandemic. But for a variety of
reasons laid out in my written testimony, the funds are getting
out much too slowly in states and cities, especially as the
expiration of the moratorium nears. Nearly half of all states
and more than 100 cities have spent less than five percent of
their total ERA allocations. Fifteen states had spent less than
two percent of their funds through June. Some states and cities
are successfully ramping up their programs and getting the
money quickly to those who need it, but many more need to
dramatically improve and expedite their efforts. At this time,
even if they do, they can't reach all the six-and-a-half
million families in need before the moratorium expires this
week.
States and cities, renters, families need more time. The
Biden Administration or Congress must extend a Federal eviction
moratorium. If Federal court cases make a broad extension
impossible, they should consider and implement all possible
alternatives. The newly surging Delta variant, low vaccination
rates in communities with high eviction filings, and the slow
rate of distributing ERA make the necessity of an extension
abundantly clear. In turn, states and cities must improve and
expedite getting assistance to the tenants who need it to stay
housed. Our research shows that successful ERA programs are
visible, accessible, and preventive of evictions and housing
instability.
All program administrators should do robust and equitable
outreach to marginalized and impacted communities, have simple
applications, use self-attestation for eligibility wherever
possible, provide direct-to-tenant assistance when landlords
refuse to participate, and be willing to learn and improve as
programs and needs evolve. And the Biden Administration should
continue as they have been to aggressively urge, empower, and
push states and cities to do more and better. For the longer
term, Congress must repair the gaping holes in our social
safety net that brought us again and again to the brink of an
eviction tsunami during a global health emergency.
Congress should advance Chairwoman Waters' critical
legislation in an infrastructure spending bill. This
legislation would, one, expand rental assistance to make it
universally available to all eligible households in need.
Having rental assistance fully funded and available would help
the country to avoid these eviction crises in the future. And
two, to increase the supply of homes for the lowest income
people by preserving public housing and expanding the National
Housing Trust Fund. In addition, Congress should create a
permanent emergency rental assistance program to keep families
stabilized during a crisis and lessen ongoing evictions and
their long-term harm with robust renter actions, like right to
counsel, expunging eviction records, protections against
source-of-income discrimination, and more. With six-and-a-half
families at risk of losing their homes during an ongoing
pandemic, policymakers and stakeholders at all levels must do
more to improve programs, extend and increase renter
protections, and invest in long-term solutions to make homes
affordable to the lowest-income people.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Ms. Yentel. We will now
hear from Mr. Solis. You are now recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF RENE SOLIS, CHIEF PROGRAM OFFICER, BAKERRIPLEY,
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Mr. Solis. Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to speak
with you and with the committee today. My name is Rene Solis,
and I am the chief program officer at BakerRipley. BakerRipley
is one of the largest community development nonprofits in the
state of Texas. We are proud to serve the city of Houston,
Harris County, and other regions across the great state of
Texas. We serve over half a million of our neighbors every
year, and this morning I would like to share with you our
experience as an administrator of the COVID-19 rental
assistance funds. But first, let me start by thanking you and
all of our congressional leaders for providing the much-needed
rental assistance funding to our fellow Americans.
Now I would like to share our initial leadership story. In
early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had been spreading throughout
our region, impacting our economy and impacting the livelihood
of our neighbors. Amid that uncertainty, leaders from across
our region sprang into action to identify ways to ease the
profound financial burdens placed on our communities. It was
soon thereafter that city of Houston mayor, Sylvester Turner,
and Harris County judge, Lina Hidalgo, established the Housing
Stability Task Force, led and overseen by Texas state
representative, Armando Walle, and retired Shell Oil president
and CEO, Marvin Odum. The task force included regional leaders
with a broad base of experience and expertise, housing
advocates, community-based organizations, landlords, the
Houston Apartment Association, legal aid agencies, and
representatives from both the city and the county.
It was through this collective effort that it was decided
that the best way forward to effectively serve tenants and
landlords, we needed to create one program for the entire
region with a single point of enrollment for both landlords and
tenants. That decision, in my opinion, was the catalyst that
paved the way for the ultimate success of the Houston-Harris
County Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
Next, let me say a little bit about capacity. BakerRipley
assumed the initial responsibility of administering the program
for both the city of Houston and Harris County, but by the end
of 2020, despite our best efforts, it was clear that the
economic impact was continuing and that the need for rental
assistance was ongoing and growing. We knew that any additional
resources would need to be distributed quickly and effectively.
And that is when Catholic Charities of Houston-Galveston joined
our efforts and became the second administrator of the program,
and helped expand our region's capacity to process
eligibilities, and applications, and payments. Together, we
wasted no time in applying the lessons learned from 2020 in
quickly initiating our 2021 program.
Next, I would like to mention our outreach efforts because
it, too, have been critical to our program. We have added nine
local organizations which serve as navigating agencies. These
organizations focus on outreach, provide technical assistance
to tenants and landlords, help identify and address gaps in the
system, and offer other resources to tenants. This has, again,
expanded our regional capacity and allowed BakerRipley and
Catholic Charities to focus on tenant and landlord eligibility
and payments. Also, in an effort to add capacity and to focus
some resources on eviction diversion, our partners at the
Alliance of Houston helped to establish an Eviction Diversion
Program. This program provides partner advocates and rental
assistance to tenants who are already in eviction proceedings.
Also worth mentioning is stakeholder buy-in. In our initial
strategies, we recognized that both the landlords and the
tenants play a valuable role in the distribution of rental
assistance funds. The program has to work for both parties if
it is going to meet its objective of keeping families in their
homes. To accomplish this, we had separate outreach
communication and enrollment plans for the landlords and for
the tenants, and it all came together because of a great system
development partner. We partnered with Connective, a non-profit
system solutions vendor who we had worked with over the years
through disaster recovery efforts for Harvey and other natural
disasters that hit our region. Connective helped us build a
user-friendly intake platform, application processes, and
technology-enabled coordinated tools, and provided streamlined
data analysis. And on that note, I would like to point out that
data is critical. We have a real-time dashboard that shows
where funds are being distributed throughout the region. We
knew that for the region to truly prosper, it was imperative
for everyone to have equitable access to essential resources
and opportunities.
In conclusion, we continue to see impressive results. For
2021, we have distributed over $137 million and helped more
than 30,000 households stay in their homes, and we are not done
yet. We are now processing applications for an additional $53
million of ERA II funding.
Thank you for inviting us to share our experience with you
this morning, Mr. Chairman. I am happy to answer any questions
that you or committee members may have.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Mr. Solis. We will now
hear from Mr. Griffith. Mr. Griffith, you are now recognized
for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF JOEL GRIFFITH, RESEARCH FELLOW, THE HERITAGE
FOUNDATION ROE INSTITUTE
Mr. Griffith. Thank you, Chairman Clyburn, Ranking Member
Scalise, and other members of the committee for the opportunity
to testify today. My name is Joel Griffith. I am a research
fellow at the Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this
testimony are my own.
Last year, for the first time in our Nation's history,
state and local governments intentionally suppressed and
criminalized entire swaths of economic activity. In the midst
of the turmoil, the CDC banned property owners from commencing
the eviction process in the courts until the end of 2020, and
the CDC subsequently renewed and extended that ban three times.
Regardless of the intended beneficiaries, eviction moratoria
allowed many who are not even impacted financially to live rent
free. And their complete eradication of evictions coincided
with just a slight rise in delinquent rent payments of about
2.2 percentage points in July 2020 versus July 2019. The
moratorium clearly allowed many who were neither impacted by
COVID-19 nor experiencing financial hardship to live rent free.
Now, to the extent that the eviction moratoria did operate as
an economic aid measure to those who are jobless, thanks to the
COVID shutdowns, this enabled these local politicians to shirk
responsibility for shuttering businesses and ruining
livelihoods, placing the cost squarely on the shoulders of
property owners.
These eviction moratoria have produced harmful ripple
effects. Landlords are going to need to increase rents to
mitigate the heightened risk of future moratoria and to recoup
losses from the past. Prospective renters may find themselves
subject to increased security deposits and tighter credit
checks. Ultimately, fewer affordable housing units may be
constructed. Quality of life for other tenants is impacted as
well as landlords are unable to evict people for disorderly
conduct, illegal drug use, and criminal activity. Moratoria
also invoke serious constitutional and legal concerns. They may
violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth and the Fourteen
Amendments, along with the Contracts Clause. But without a
doubt, the CDC's ban on eviction proceedings was unlawful
because it exceeded its congressional mandate.
The executive order last year and in this year was
predicated on the Public Health Services Act, which authorizes
regulations that are necessary to prevent the introduction,
transmission, or spread of communicable diseases. Examples of
congressionally authorized actions for the CDC are listed in
the Public Health Services Act, and they come nowhere close to
including eviction moratoria. As legal scholars at the Heritage
Foundation have explained, ``A basic canon of statutory
construction is that when a broad, vague term follows a list of
specifics, that term can only refer to the sorts of things
listed before it. Nationwide eviction bands are nothing like
the localized limited congressionally approved actions of
inspecting, fumigating, or disinfecting specific buildings.''
Even the language of the CDC order shows that the ban was
meant as economic relief, not as a tool to protect the public
from the spread of disease. And truly, if preventing the spread
of communicable disease were the goal, the CDC would have
hardly focused on only the small fraction of total annual
relocations that stem from evictions. Evictions account for
less than one-tenth the number of total annual relocations. In
short, both the CDC action itself, the eviction moratorium, and
the intent to counter the economic impact of COVID violated the
express will of Congress. But most importantly, even if
Congress had authorized the CDC to enact this moratorium, such
authorization itself would have been unconstitutional. Congress
can only delegate to the executive branch the powers granted to
it by the Constitution. The Commerce Clause certainly does not
authorize this. Also, anything the Congress authorizes must be
necessary and proper for carrying into execution the Congress'
will. Banning access to state courts, forbidding a state court
from exercising constitutional jurisdiction would be an abuse
of Federal power, not a proper use. In fact, it violates the
First Amendment of the Constitution.
In conclusion, the CDC moratorium exceeded powers delegated
to it by Congress. It created economic policy through executive
fiat. It infringed upon the fundamental constitutional right to
petition state courts. It eroded private property rights,
diminished the enforceability of contracts, and infringed upon
the sovereignty of states by interfering with the jurisdiction
of their courts. We must be vigilant against attempts to use
this COVID crisis as an excuse to further erode the rule of
law, federalism, and fundamental constitutional rights.
Defending one's property rights is neither aggressive nor
unfair. What is aggressive and unfair, and unconstitutional and
lawful is the CDC criminalizing access to the courts and
forcing property owners to relinquish their rights. Thank you.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you, Mr. Griffith. Now, each member will
have five minutes for questions. The chair recognizes himself
for five minutes.
The first question goes to Mr. Solis. I am particularly
interested in the outreach part of your testimony, and I
suspect from your projection as to where you plan to go in the
future. Based upon your past experiences, will you share with
us some of the hard-to-reach people that you have experienced,
and maybe what you are planning to do going forward? Hopefully
it would be helpful to the rest of us as to what we need to
plan for.
Mr. Solis. Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So
first, I would like to mention that our outreach efforts have
been very critical to the success of our program. One of the
things we did was we recognized, one, that the need is great,
but two, that there is sometimes some distrust, or
accessibility issues, or other barriers for vulnerable
populations. So, in an effort to address those concerns, we
have added to the Houston-Harris County Emergency Rental
Assistance Program nine local organizations who partner with us
as service navigators. These organizations do focus on
outreach. They provide technical assistance to tenants and
landlords. They help identify and address gaps in the system,
and they offer other resources to tenants. For us, this has
been very helpful because it has expanded our regional capacity
and allowed BakerRipley and Catholic Charities to stay focused
on tenant and landlord eligibility and payments.
Our approach from the initial steps, and which continue to
date, has been a holistic approach. We seek to help our
neighbors get the help they need through our relationships and
with the navigating agencies. To date, over 4,000 additional
tenants have signed up for our Rental Assistance Program, who
received assistance from these navigating agencies. These are
vulnerable populations with barriers to access to these
resources. These navigating agencies were chosen for their
diversity and ability to connect with these diverse
communities, and their ability to remove such barriers such as
technology, language, trust, or any other accessibility to
these programs. So, we are very grateful and thankful to these
agencies, and we look forward to their continued work in the
program.
Another piece of our strategy around outreach and ensuring
that funding and resources are available to everyone is part of
our work that we did early on in 2020 as we developed our
equity dashboards. We partnered with a long-time partner here,
Moksha Data, who helped us develop these dashboards that looked
at the census tract level, and we built a formula that takes
into consideration the Social Vulnerability Index of each
census tract that looks at how many rental units are within
each census tract and looks at the paid data that we generate
for payments to landlords. In that sense, what we did, and we
have a slide that we could share with you at some point, what
we did was create a map of our region of where resources were
going and where there were gaps in resources going out to
certain communities. As we identified those gaps, then the
navigating agencies would go out, talk to landlords, talk to
tenants, build a trust with the community, and get individuals
signed up for the program.
Mr. Clyburn. Now, I only have about 45 seconds left. Can
you tell me how did you target those areas? Did you have
information as to where the people were or where the housing
was needed?
Mr. Solis. Yes. Again, it was that equity dashboard that we
built early on. We looked at the Social Vulnerability Index for
each census tract, which looks at different vulnerability
elements, such as poverty, education, housing, transportation,
et cetera, and we mapped that all out for our region. And then
we crossed over where there were rental units within each
census tract, and that was the data we used to it effectively
reach these vulnerable populations. Again, what we ended up
looking at was where was the funding going and is it going
specifically to those vulnerable neighborhoods.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you.
Mr. Solis. And if it is not, then address the reasons why
it is not.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you. My time has expired. I will now
recognize the ranking member for five minutes.
Mr. Scalise. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I have some
questions I am going to ask. Obviously when we were having the
opening statements, I was talking about the number of people we
are seeing coming across the border illegally. But also, we
have had a hearing on this where Dr. Fauci, among others,
testified that the CDC is violating their own guidance at the
border in terms of trying to stop the spread. I wanted to see
if we could run, there here is a video, Mr. Chairman, that we
have given to your staff, if we could run that video right now.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Scalise. So, Mr. Chairman, as we can see, Dr. Fauci
testified back a few months that what we are seeing at the
border by the Biden Administration is violating their own CDC
guidance about how to properly protect people from spreading
COVID. Since that hearing, Mr. Chairman, at least another
400,000 people have come across our border illegally, and those
are just the ones that were apprehended. Many of them, as our
Border Patrol agents tell us, are COVID positive now with the
Lambda variant. Do we need to keep saying this before we
finally have a hearing to confront this? But the Lambda variant
could potentially be more dangerous than the Delta variant. It
is widespread in Peru. It is coming across our border right now
through South and Central America into the United States. At
what point we are going to have a hearing to confront how to
stop this? At what point is President Biden going to get
control of the southern border so we don't see the Lambda
variant take over in our country like we are seeing the Delta
variant?
But to the issue at hand, I do want to ask Mr. Griffith,
regarding the vaccines, do you think they are safe and
effective?
Mr. Griffith. From what we know, these vaccines are
incredibly safe, very effective, and it is in large part why
much of the country has been able to return to normal.
Mr. Scalise. And it was clearly Operation Warp Speed
efforts that brought these to the market so quickly. Are these
vaccines available to everybody who wants to take them?
Mr. Griffith. Thankfully in this country, these vaccines
are widely available. Every person who wants a vaccine can get
one. They are available at no cost, and across the entirety of
the country you can get a vaccine with almost no wait, same
day. Show up, you can get the vaccine.
Mr. Scalise. And so, you know, you are seeing some
employers that are encouraging their employees to get
vaccinated as we try to push to get people back to work. How
many job openings are there in the country?
Mr. Griffith. We have over 9 million job openings right
now. In fact, we have never had this many job openings. There
are more job openings now than there were prior to the
pandemic. There are more job openings now than there are the
total number of people unemployed in this country.
Mr. Scalise. And see, that is something that we have been
talking about. Do you think it is good policy to be borrowing
money from our children to pay people not to work at a time
where there maybe be more job openings than we have ever seen
before?
Mr. Griffith. No, we are mortgaging our children's future,
our grandchildren's future. We are beginning to feel the
impacts of that right now over this past year. As you noted,
our cost of living is actually increasing at a greater clip
than our actual income levels, and we know for a fact that
borrowing money from the future to pay people not to work has
actually resulted in many people choosing to not go back to
work. We know this anecdotally from talking to people, but the
numbers are showing up in the data as well because you can
compare and contrast those states that have cutoff Federal
unemployment bonuses with those states that haven't, and the
data are clear. The states that have cutoff those bonuses have
recovered at a much greater clip.
Mr. Scalise. And then we are seeing our economy pick up or
seeing people able to get back to their lives, not having
problems with rent because they are working again. You are
hearing talk around this place by people that just want to
spend and spend and spend as if it is money just growing off
trees. Do you think a multi-trillion-dollar spending package on
top of the trillions that have already been spent would do
anything to add to the inflation we are already seeing?
Mr. Griffith. It could quite possibly. In fact, don't just
take my word for it. Lawrence Summers, who was one of President
Obama's top advisors, has actually warned about this
possibility as well. The fact is every new dollar that is
appropriated by Congress is a dollar that we actually aren't
taking in from taxes. We are borrowing this, or we are having
our central banks print the money, buy the debt, and inject it
into the economy, and there will be negative consequences for
that in terms of the standard of living for the typical family
being lower than it would otherwise have been because their
cost of living will increase as a result of possible
inflationary pressures.
Mr. Scalise. Well, I appreciate your testimony, and, Mr.
Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Clyburn. I thank the ranking member for yielding back.
The chair now yields to Ms. Waters for five minutes.
Ms. Waters. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I really
do appreciate your calling this hearing. It is very important.
However, I must spend a few minutes dealing with Mr. Scalise
and his attack on the Administration. Mr. Scalise talked about
what was happening with COVID-19, and I am looking at this
article in his local newspaper that says, ``After months of
waiting and as cases spiked, GOP lawmaker gets first COVID
shot. 'The vaccine works.' '' And it was on Sunday that Mr.
Scalise received his first Pfizer vaccination at a clinic in
Jefferson Parish. I don't think he has even received his second
Pfizer vaccination. And so, this business about him now
becoming, you know, concerned and having gotten religion about
vaccinations is very interesting. I appreciate that he has come
around----
Mr. Scalise. Would the gentlelady yield?
Ms. Waters. No, not right now. I appreciate that he has
come around because while cases of the virus and
hospitalizations are on the rise, vaccinations have become a
dividing line in the U.S. with many conservative-leaning
Americans choosing not to get vaccinated, despite the
scientific consensus that the COVID vaccine is extremely safe
and extremely effective. Again, this is coming from an article
that was written about Mr. Scalise and his hesitancy with
getting vaccinated, and when asked time and time again, he
would just say, ``soon.'' Some political scientists have
attributed the polarization to former President Donald Trump's
public downplaying of the virus, even as he was sickened and
hospitalized with COVID-19 and has since gotten the vaccine
himself.
And so, I just wanted to insert, you know, that information
into the record because of the attack that Mr. Scalise made on
this Administration.
Ms. Waters. And now let me get to rental assistance. This
is very important to me because it was the No. 1 priority for
me in dealing with the American Relief Plan that we were able
to increase the total amount of rental assistance to about $47
billion, and this is so very important. And I want you to know
that I am pleased that Ms. Yentel is here today. Because of
her, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing
Coalition, that we have been able to get all of this money. She
not only organized and worked with the other housing advocacy
groups, she was responsible for the kind of insistence on
making sure that we had an adequate amount to deal with rental
assistance.
And she worked with the Administration. The Biden
Administration adopted many of NLIHCA's recommendations,
including extending the eviction moratorium and releasing an
updated FAQ 50 and Fact Sheet 51, June 24, to accelerate and
broaden the distribution of ERA. The White House encouraged
state courts to adopt anti-eviction diversion practices,
activated a whole-of-government effort to raise awareness of
ERA, and Treasury issued new guidance to accelerate and broaden
state and local distribution of funds. Treasury's revised FAQ
strongly encourages grantees to partner with courts to actively
prevent evictions and develop eviction diversion programs,
increase access to ERA for people experiencing homelessness by
establishing a commitment letter process, directs grantees to
remove cultural and linguistic barriers to accessing aid,
encourages grantee coordination to reduce burdens and delays,
and streamlines payments for utility providers and land boards.
I, too, worry about these evictions. The moratorium is
going to be over at the end of this month, and I think it is
absolutely necessary for us to pay attention, to do everything
that we can to make sure that we just simply aren't having
evictions that are going to put people out on the street and
increase homelessness. That is why I am so appreciative for
this hearing today, Mr. Chairman.
And so, with that, I want you to know that I was always
worried about distribution. This is huge. This is not easy to
do. And now we have put the money in the hands of state
governments, and I want the governors and the elected officials
in the states to come up with programs that will do what we
intend them to do. Some have been more successful than others,
like we are hearing about in Harris County. Others are slower,
and so we have got to get them all up to speed because this is
absolutely necessary to deal with protection for our families.
And I am also concerned about small landlords, not the big
boys--they can take care of themselves--but the small landlords
who depend on this for their mortgage payments, who depend on
rental assistance for their retirement income. I am concerned
about them, too, so I wish that we could challenge the courts.
I know what the court decisions have been, and I know what they
are saying to us, but we need to go ahead and go back to the
courts and ask them to please allow this Administration to
extend the moratorium on evictions. So, I want you to know, Mr.
Chairman, that it just happened that I met with Secretary
Yellen this morning, and she and her staff are working very
hard to do everything that they can to assist the governors and
the states in getting this money out.
I thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Clyburn. The gentlelady's time has expired.
Mr. Scalise. Mr. Chairman, I believe under the rules, I
have an opportunity to respond since----
Mr. Clyburn. The chair recognizes the ranking member.
Mr. Scalise. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If you go back well
over months ago, I have been promoting the vaccine, and I
obviously had a lot of conversations with my doctors for a
number of reasons. I needed to make sure that it was the right
time for me, but I was promoting the vaccine all along the way
and calling people out who did promote vaccine hesitancy,
which, by the way, if you start with President Biden himself.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Scalise. You want to talk about vaccine hesitancy? That
is vaccine hesitancy.
Ms. Waters. No, it is not.
Mr. Scalise. President Biden needs to come out and admit he
was wrong when he was trying to discourage people from taking
the vaccine late last year. It is safe. It is effective. And
anybody who was trying to give concern about the vaccine or the
FDA owes an apology because that is just not accurate. So
anyway, I am going to continue to promote the vaccine and the
safety and effectiveness of it, and I would encourage others to
take it. I yield back.
Ms. Waters. [Speaking foreign language.]
Mr. Clyburn. I want to thank you for yielding back.
However, Mr. Scalise, I think you are aware that those comments
were made before the vaccine was approved.
Mr. Scalise. But it was made during the process of the FDA
going through Operation Warp Speed----
Mr. Clyburn. Well, during the process is one thing----
Mr. Scalise [continuing]. which produced three vaccines.
Mr. Clyburn. During the process is one thing, but they were
made before the vaccines.
Mr. Scalise. But people listened to that and said why take
it if Joe Biden said it at the time that he was not President.
If he said the process was rushed or the FDA shouldn't be
trusted, do you really think there weren't people listening to
that?
Mr. Clyburn. OK. I just want the record to be clear that
the vaccines were not approved when those statements were made.
And with that, the chair now recognizes Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Those statements were
made in a political context in the heat of a campaign. We all
know what that was about. It was all about politics, which is
so much at what drives this place from the majority's
perspective. Mr. Griffith. Mr. Griffith. Last week at a half-
filled auditorium, President Biden said, if you increase
spending, it will bring inflation down. Do you agree with that
statement?
Mr. Griffith. I would love to know under what world that
would actually work. We know that right now, with all the money
that the Federal Government is spending, all the new funds that
are appropriated that comes from borrowing money, and,
oftentimes, that borrowed money actually comes thanks to the
central banks printing more money to purchase those bonds,
which then are injected into the economy.
Mr. Jordan. So, you disagree with that.
Mr. Griffith. I disagree wholeheartedly.
Mr. Jordan. Yes, me, too. I not only disagree. I think it
is stupid. Anyone who's got a brain understands that that isn't
going to work. I mean, it is like they have spent money like
crazy. Are you surprised that we now have inflation, that the
price of every single good and service is, almost every single
thing, I can't think of one that is not up, that almost every
single good and service is up? Are you surprised about that?
Mr. Griffith. No, I am not surprised. We have the economy
reopening, but on top of that, we have trillions of dollars
more of Federal dollars that have been injected into the
economy. And besides that, we see housing prices aren't even
factored into that inflation rate. We have that housing bubble
that is really becoming a burden now on middle-class families.
Mr. Jordan. So, the Democrats' economic plan seems to be a
four-part plan. Step one, continue to lock down the economy. We
have Democrat governors, Democrat mayors going back to lockdown
measures. So, the Democrats' economic plan, lock down the
economy. Spend like crazy, No. 2. Pay people not to work,
right? You talked about the unemployment situation in our
economy today. So, continue to lock down the economy, spend
like crazy, pay people not to work, and step four they are
getting ready to do, which is for the people who are working,
we are going to raise your taxes. Now, again, that may be the
four most stupid economic policies you can imagine, but that
seems to be their economic plan. Do you agree?
Mr. Griffith. No, that is absolutely the plan, and we know
that the longer-term objective here is to centralize more power
here in Washington, DC. and to fundamentally transform the
economy. They are not even hiding it. But then the
infrastructure package that you are considering now, that
Congress is considering now, we know that 95 percent of that is
not even going to infrastructure, but it would actually try to
revolutionize our energy industry, which by ``revolutionize,''
I mean, causing a typical family $8,000 more per year to live
by artificially driving up the cost of everything in their life
that uses energy. And that is in the infrastructure plan.
Mr. Jordan. Now, the program we are talking about today,
this eviction issue and everything, isn't it true that people
who make up to $99,000 a year can be eligible for this program
and not pay their rent? Well, isn't that true?
Mr. Griffith. Yes, states have much leeway to put in those
parameters, but in many instances, yes, people at that income
level can qualify.
Mr. Jordan. Ninety-nine thousand dollars. Every employer I
talked to in our district can't find people to work, and we
have a program in our district. Ninety-nine thousand. Jeepers,
you are probably in the top 3 or 4 percent of income earners.
If you make almost $100 grand a year, you are at the income
scale in Champaign County, Ohio, Shelby County, Ohio. But they
can self-attest, right? All they have to do attest to a
statement. Now, one really checks it and say, you know, I make
$98,999.99, and I am eligible to not pay my rent.
Mr. Griffith. Well, not only can you self-attest to that,
you can also self-attest to whether or not you were impacted by
COVID.
Mr. Jordan. Yes. Yes. Yes, that is the program, right? Do
you think that is contributing to the fact that not a single
employer out there that I have talked to can find people
willing to work? You got signs everywhere, ``help wanted,''
``please help,'' ``we'll hire,'' ``come in,'' ``we will give
you a bonus if you come to work.'' Do you think that is
contributing to that situation today?
Mr. Griffith. Oh yes, without a doubt. And anecdotally, we
know that happens. I mean, I have been all over the South over
the last few months and you see the signs. I have talked to
business owners, but we see that as far as the data as well. We
know that this is impacting the desire for people to actually
want to go to work.
Mr. Jordan. If you pay people not to work, you shouldn't be
surprised when you can't find workers, right?
Mr. Griffith. Right.
Mr. Jordan. I mean, the folks I represent, that is just
common sense. They get it, right? This is the craziest. I mean,
I have never seen a more crazy economic plan than what the
Democrats keep putting forward. Lock down your economy, spend
like crazy, which they say doesn't cause inflation, but
everyone with the brain knows it does. Then they say, oh, we
are going to pay people not to work, and, oh, for the people
who have been working their tail off for the last year-and-a-
half or whatever, we are going to raise your taxes. Wow. Such a
deal. That is the Democrats' economic plan, and yet we have a
hearing on this. ``We need to continue this program.'' ``We
need to continue to let people self-attest that when they make
$98,999.999 and can go without paying their rent.'' Holy cow. I
just don't get it.
And when this committee could be, as the only select
committee in the Congress on coronavirus, could actually be
asking the same question that The Washington Post and The Wall
Street Journal want us to ask, which is why would were we
funding this research in Wuhan, China? What was really the
origin of this virus? We should be dealing with that issue.
Even The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal say that,
but, no, we are going to talk about this. I yield back.
Mr. Clyburn. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. The
chair now recognizes Ms. Velazquez.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Yentel, a New
York Times article found that New York City landlords are
filing evictions 3.6 times faster in zip codes hardest hit by
COVID, and roughly 68 percent of these residents are people of
color. How are the pandemic eviction findings impacting
communities of color and vulnerable populations? And by the
way, do you have any data that shows how many of those making
$99,000 in income have not paid or have filed for evictions?
Ms. Yentel. Thank you, Congresswoman Velazquez. If I could
take a moment just to clarify that both the Congressman and the
witness are wrong that rent is not due under the Federal
eviction moratorium. What the Federal eviction moratorium does
is prevent evictions, and, in doing so, prevent the spread of
and deaths from COVID-19.
Mr. Jordan.
[Inaudible.]
Ms. Velazquez. Mr. Chairman, could the gentleman respect
the witness? This is my time.
Mr. Jordan.
[Inaudible.]
Ms. Velazquez. It is my time.
Mr. Clyburn. Mr. Jordan, we are not going to tolerate that.
Ms. Yentel. The rent is still due, and low-income renters
have done all they could during the pandemic to pay it. They
have taken out loans. They have used credit cards. They have
put off buying store-bought food or paying for internet that
their children need for virtual school. They have made
tradeoffs to pay the rent when they can, and when they can't,
they fell behind, which is why the emergency rental assistance
is so essential to pay the arrears that have accrued during the
pandemic.
To your question, yes, the pandemic has certainly
exacerbated preexisting inequities for people of color. Pre-
pandemic, due to decades of systemic racism in multiple
systems, people of color are disproportionately likely to be
renters, to be extremely low income, to be behind on rent, to
experience homelessness, and COVID-19 compounded these
inequities. So black and Native-American people were
disproportionately likely to contract and die from COVID-19,
black and Latino workers were disproportionately likely to lose
jobs, and people of color disproportionately fell behind on
rent. So today, about 25 percent of all black renters are
behind on rent compared to 10 percent of white, and of those
six-and-a-half million renters behind on rent, those six-and-a-
half million households behind on rent, the majority of them
are people of color.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you. Mr. Baker, your organization
found that the corporate landlord, Pretium Partners, has moved
to evict tenants in majority black areas at a much higher rate
than tenants in majority white areas. Can you explain how some
corporate landlords are moving to evict tenants in a racially
disparate manner?
Mr. Baker. Thank you, Representative Velazquez. That is
correct. Pretium Partners is a private equity firm. Along with
Ares Management, another large private equity firm, they have
been, you know, buying more homes, and earlier this year, you
know, purchased a company called Front Yard Residential. They
own lots of single-family rental homes. We noticed that, you
know, they were filing to evict hundreds of residents in DeKalb
and Clayton Counties, two majority-black counties in Georgia,
and it was, frankly, striking just the large volume, like I
said, you know, 113 filings in just the first eight days of the
year. And so, frankly, we were struck, and so we took a closer
look at some of their filings and, you know, compared it to
other counties where they owned homes, Polk and Seminole
Counties in Florida, two majority-white counties in Florida,
and found that they had been filing to evict renters in DeKalb
and Clayton Counties, the majority-black counties in Georgia,
at this point, seven times higher rates, so much, much higher
rates.
Ms. Velazquez. Can you tell us what share of evictions in
the areas that you have tracked had been filed by corporate
landlords, and if this is a trend nationwide?
Mr. Baker. As we looked at a number of the areas that we
have tracked, so counties like Maricopa County which is
Phoenix, Harris County which is Houston, DeKalb County which is
Atlanta, and some of the suburbs, right, Hillsborough County
which is Tampa, we found that the majority of the eviction
filings were by these large corporate landlords, landlords with
1,000 units or more. So not mom-and-pop landlords, but really,
it was the larger corporate landlords that have been driving
the evictions. We have looked at this few different times over
the last several months. It was true back in December. It was
true in September just after CDC eviction moratorium was put in
place in the first place.
Ms. Velazquez. My time has expired.
Mr. Clyburn. The gentlelady's time has expired. Mr. Green,
you are recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. Today's
hearing comes a few days before the CDC's moratorium will
allegedly end, and I say ``allegedly'' because the CDC has
already extended the ban multiple times. Let me be clear. The
CDC's moratorium is one of the most blatant power grabs that we
have seen in the course of the pandemic. The CDC has assumed
that it had the authority to do essentially whatever it wanted,
no matter what the law said and no matter how tenuous the
connection to public health. The CDC moratorium is an offense
to two fundamental cornerstones of our republic: federalism and
states' rights. Congress never passed a law allowing the CDC to
ban evictions, but there is more than just that. Congress could
not delegate this power to the Federal Government even if it
wanted to. Even a generous reading of the Commerce Clause did
not give Congress the power to do this. That is our
constitutional system of government. And how can we claim
private property rights if the Federal Government can just come
in and tell you that you cannot enforce the terms of a basic
contract? This is one of the most shameless cases of
bureaucracy gone rogue that I have ever seen.
And I am not sure how an eviction moratorium prevents the
spread of COVID-19. The eviction moratorium is almost identical
to what government has done to healthcare. Let me explain. As
more renters are subsidized with government dollars, landlords,
especially mom-and-pop, small business landlords who have maybe
one or two or three properties, they have to cost shift to
other people. They cost shift to other renters, and that drives
up the price of overall rent. And you add to that the inflation
caused by the increased dollars in the economy and the current
Administration's economic policies, rapidly increasing rates,
rapidly increasing inflation, you basically get a horrible
spiral that is occurring right now in our economy. And a
tertiary effect is also there and real. These small rental
companies can't generate the revenue to cover the losses. So,
what do they do? They get out of business. All the small
companies get out of business. All you are left with are large,
huge rental companies because they can absorb the losses. Let
there be no doubt: this is destroying everyday Americans who
put their savings into owning a rental property. It is driving
the price of rent up. It is driving up inflation, and it is
harming low-income Americans just like healthcare, just like
government intrusion into healthcare.
And here is another example of something that is
contributing to at least an increase in prices in my state, in
the state of Tennessee. People are leaving California,
Illinois, and New York because of Democrat liberal policies
just like this. You know what they are doing? They are buying
houses off the market in Tennessee, sight unseen off the
internet, driving the price of properties in my state through
the roof. Why? Because of failed liberal policies in places
like California, New York, and Illinois. Great examples of just
this kind of stupidity. It is another example of well-meaning
politicians who wind up destroying the very thing they want to
save.
We see it in healthcare. I ran a healthcare company. I am a
physician. What do they do? They intrude on the doctor-patient
relationship, and now they are intruding on the renter-rentee
relationship, the landlord-lendee relationship. We are seeing
it everywhere, these small companies going out of business.
They put their life savings into buying two or three rental
properties, get a little bit ahead, and now they can't cover
their losses.
Mr. Griffith, I probably have only time for one question
here. I am concerned that the eviction moratorium is
detrimentally impacting small landlords, that the debt they are
being saddled with could seriously impact them not just in the
short term, but in the long term. Would improvements to the
distribution of emergency rental assistance funds help small
property owners recover from the pandemic?
Mr. Griffith. It could immensely help. If you look at the
difference in city by city in the distribution efforts, you
have places like Chicago and L.A. that barely distributed a
dollar. New York City has distributed, what, $100,000 in aid.
Meanwhile, you have Des Moines that has distributed almost 70
percent of the aid that was allocated to them. And just take a
look at some of the distribution sites to see the ease-of-use.
I have done that for New York City and Des Moines.
Mr. Green. Why do you think they are holding on to the
dollars and not distributing them?
Mr. Griffith. You know, a lot of them are putting the
strings attached. If you look at the New York requirements, if
you are New York landlord and you take the aid to make up for
your losses, you have to agree that you will not evict the
person for future non-payment for the next year. You have to
agree that you won't increase rent prices for the next year.
You put so many strings attached to the aid that a lot of
landlords, they can't make the decision to accept it because
they know it will inhibit their ability to turn a profit for
years to come.
Mr. Clyburn. I assume the gentleman yields back. As I go to
the next gentleman, Mr. Foster, I just want to mention for the
record that the CDC eviction moratorium was placed by the
previous Administration, not this one. I just want that to be
clear. With that, I yield to Mr. Foster.
Mr. Foster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to our witnesses.
I am very concerned about the public health consequences of
fighting this pandemic if we experience a surge in evictions.
You know, the CDC, when it established the moratorium, you
know, published a very detailed justification that I think I
would urge everyone to reread because, you know, at the time
there was a lot we did not know about the contagious aspects of
this virus, but we know a lot more now. And we are ultimately
going to get this answered because we are seeing a big range in
eviction policies in different states and jurisdictions, and
what we are going to see is a spike in coronavirus in the
affected populations. I think when I look at where people who
become homeless end up, they end up in places where it is
really hard to maintain social distancing, and so it wasn't for
no reason that the CDC under President Trump established this.
And this is starting to be looked at by academics. There
are studies by professors at Duke University and UCLA that have
suggested that preventing evictions really also reduces
transmission of the coronavirus.
Excuse me. Is there microphone trouble here? Am I audible?
OK. Thank you.
So, the CDC says that people experiencing homelessness are
at greater risk of contracting and transmitting the virus. So,
Ms. Yentel, can you explain how an increase in evictions might
contribute to increasing transmission of the coronavirus?
Ms. Yentel. Yes, thank you for the opportunity. Research
has proven that increased evictions lead to increased spread of
and deaths from COVID-19. There is a recently peer-reviewed
published paper by epidemiologists, and sociologists, and
others that found that state and local eviction moratoriums did
result in 400,000 additional cases of COVID-19 and over 10,000
preventable deaths. That is because, as you say, when very low-
or extremely low-income people lose their homes, they have very
few options available to them, so they most often double or
triple up into overcrowded housing, or they end up in
encampments or congregate shelters. Both options make it very
difficult, if not impossible, to socially distance, and lead to
spread of COVID-19 and spread among a population, especially in
congregate shelters that have a whole host of underlying health
conditions that make them especially vulnerable to severe
illness or death if they contract COVID-19.
Mr. Foster. Thank you. Any of the other witnesses have any
reason to believe this might not be the case, that it is more
complex than this? Yes?
Mr. Griffith. Thank you. Well, we have to ask whether or
not the CDC actually has the power to suspend the evictions,
and it is established that they don't have that power. And then
we have to ask does Congress have the power to give them the
power, and they don't. But third, when it comes to the eviction
process itself, this is a state matter. This is the first time
that we have criminalized access to state courts by property
owners.
Mr. Foster. No, I was interested in the scientific question
of whether more people will die if, for whatever reason, the
eviction moratoria are not preserved, and it seems to me the
answer is pretty clearly yes. Mr. Baker, I understand that your
organization has tracked eviction filings by large landlords
over the course of the pandemic in select counties in six
states, which appears to be a significant undertaking. It is
the kind of data we will need to get to the bottom of this and
other questions. Other organizations also track evictions, but
generally they also only collect data from certain state and
cities. So, Mr. Baker, what are the barriers to collecting
better data on eviction filings so we can really understand
questions like this?
Mr. Baker. Thank you, Representative Foster. It is wildly
different from county to county, from state to state. In some
states, you know, by locality, just the availability of data,
the, you know, kind of access, the availability of data on what
actually happens with eviction filings, et cetera. So, you
know, we have seen wildly different availability of data. And,
you know, like I said, I mean, I think that we have tracked and
noticed 75,000 eviction actions by corporate landlords, by
these large landlords, but, you know, that is just a small
subset of jurisdictions. There are clearly many, many more
that, you know, that we are not able to track, that we haven't
seen, and so it really just scratches the surface. Really,
these 75,000 filings are the tip of the iceberg, and, you know,
make us extremely concerned as we get closer to the expiration
of the CDC moratorium, you know, what we will see, right?
When we have looked at some of these companies--Pretium
Partners, Ms. Chism's landlord, or HavenBrook, et cetera, you
know, we see landlords that, you know, in many cases have, you
know, filed, like I said, hundreds or thousands of eviction
cases, but there are clearly more that we haven't seen. And
there are many where, you know, frankly, you know, as we get to
the end of the moratorium, we could see significant harm to
large numbers of renters.
Mr. Foster. Yes. Thank you, and I believe my time has
expired, so I will yield back.
Mr. Clyburn. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. The
chair now recognizes Mrs. Miller-Meeks for five minutes.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to
ask for unanimous consent to enter into the record a written
submission from the National Association of Realtors and also a
letter and supporting documents from Pretium.
Mr. Clyburn. Without objection.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you. So, I think this has been
very interesting testimony that we have heard today. So, we
have too much money chasing too few goods, which has led to
inflation, which even the Fed Secretary, Jerome Powell in his
testimony here, acknowledged that inflation was in excess of
what we have seen in several decades, although the
Administration is hoping that it is transitory. And we also
know that inflation is an insidious tax and a regressive tax
that disproportionately affects people of color, low-income
individuals, working families, and seniors on a fixed income.
So, Mr. Baker, do you think inflation would have any bearing on
the ability of someone to rent or pay their rent, whether there
is a pandemic or not?
Mr. Baker. I am not an economist, and so I cannot speak
to----
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. OK. Thank you very much. In March, I
introduced H.R.----
Mr. Baker. Wait. What I would say is, you know, clearly,
you know, a landlord substantially increasing somebody's rent,
you know, as Ms. Chism highlighted, clearly, like, has a
significant impact, and so that is exactly what we have seen.
You know, Pretium, I used as an example. We have seen other
companies. Invitation Homes is publicly traded. They reported
in their SEC filings there was a----
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. My question was whether inflation----
Mr. Baker [continuing]. when there was a switchover to a
new renter----
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. My question was whether or not inflation
would have a bearing on paying rental income. I have mom-and-
pop individuals, ordinary people, low to middle income who have
rented their houses in my neighborhood, which in Southeast Iowa
has the highest rate of unemployment and the lowest wages in
the state, who have had challenges and problems. And because we
are small communities, they know that they are getting stimulus
checks. They know that their renter is getting unemployment,
yet not paying rent. So, my question, I get that you are not an
economist and you can't answer.
In March, I introduced H.R. 1897, the REACT Act, which
would require the Department of Homeland Security to test all
migrants coming across our borders who are released into the
U.S. That was voted down. Given the increase in rates of COVID-
19 with Delta and Lambda variants, it seems fitting that this
committee should focus on ensuring testing for more than 1.1
million migrants encountered along the southwest border so far,
yet we don't require this, these individuals that come across
our border or are put on planes or buses, taken to communities,
and they are placed in facilities which are large facilities,
convention centers. And are any of the panelists aware if
COVID-19 testing is being required at the border, and if multi-
tenant housing owners should require testing before renting and
putting their other occupants at risk? Thank you. I would say
we should still be testing at the border.
Mr. Baker, in your testimony, you stated that you had
identified over 75,000 evictions during the CDC eviction
moratorium. As we have heard already today, we know the CDC's
eviction moratorium is not blanket in nature and does not bar
all residential evictions, and the moratorium only applies to
monetary defaults. Nonetheless, it is estimated there are 43
million units of rental housing in the U.S. Do you agree with
that figure?
Mr. Baker. Yes. I mean, I----
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Eviction notices being filed are
approximately 0.17 percent of all rental housing units. Is that
correct?
Mr. Baker. That is incorrect. As I mentioned in my
statement, we are tracking evictions across a subset, right?
And as I mentioned in response to Mr. Foster's question, the
data is extremely fragmented, right? And so, there is different
data across different cities, across different states, and so
we have sought to attract as many places as possible. But it is
absolutely incorrect to do a simple division as you just did.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. OK.
Mr. Baker. It is just not the right way to interpret the
figure.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. But would you say that the data on how
many eviction notices resulting in actual displacements is
small?
Mr. Baker. As I said, we need better data in terms of----
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. OK. So essentially, what I am hearing as
I am here is we are spending our time in a committee discussing
an issue that, while it is very important, is only affecting a
very small percentage of people and for which policies have
been put in place that maybe more constitutionally based. And
essentially, we don't have the data to tell us how many
displacements. Meanwhile, in a committee that is addressing the
Select Coronavirus Task Force, we still don't know the origins
of COVID-19, and we have representatives here suggesting that
the origins of COVID-19 investigation would be brought up in
another committee. And it is important for public health,
national security, and also for how our media treats
information and where it comes from, that we know the origins
of COVID-19, which we still don't have, and a CDC which is now
going to ask that people who are doubly vaccinated wear masks.
So, I think there are important questions that we need to
address and policies that should be put in place
constitutionally to assist people. Thank you. I yield back my
time.
Mr. Clyburn. The gentlelady's time has expired. The chair
now recognizes Mr. Krishnamoorthi for five minutes.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to ask a
question of Ms. Yentel first. Ms. Yentel, can you tell me how
many children have been in homes that have basically benefited
from this particular eviction moratorium?
Ms. Yentel. I don't have the specific number of children,
but I can say that the CDC eviction moratorium, generally
speaking, has kept tens of millions of renters, who otherwise
would have lost their homes, stably housed. And there was
research from the Eviction Lab that showed that there were at
least 1.5 million fewer evictions under the Federal eviction
moratorium than otherwise would have occurred.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And that was the eviction moratorium
that Donald Trump put in place, correct?
Ms. Yentel. President Donald Trump implemented the CDC
eviction moratorium. President Biden has extended it several
times. And in between, Congress, on a bipartisan basis,
extended the Federal eviction moratorium, given clear
congressional authority for it.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Mr. Griffith, I want to turn your
attention to an article that you wrote with a gentleman named
Stephen Moore. It is entitled, ``The Myth of the Idle Rich.''
And in that particular article, which you penned in June 2015,
you said the following: ``Yes, the average poor family doesn't
work nearly as much as the rich families do, and that is a key
reason why these households are poor.'' You don't dispute that
you wrote that in this article, ``The Myth of the Idle Rich,''
correct?
Mr. Griffith. I did co-author that article.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Now, Ms. Yentel, is it your experience
that the reason why households are, on average, poor is because
they just don't work as hard as rich families do?
Ms. Yentel. No, certainly not. When we look at extremely
low-income renters, we find that the vast majority of them are
seniors. They are people with disabilities and they are
working, and they are often having to work multiple jobs in
order to make ends meet and still have difficulty paying the
rent. That is because the housing wage, the amount that
somebody needs to earn an hour just to be able to afford to
rent a modest one-bedroom apartment, is $20.40 nationally. It
is much higher in some communities. Clearly, this is almost
three times the amount that a low-wage worker earning the
Federal minimum wage earns, and it is also $2.00 an hour more
than what the average renter earns. So, renters are working,
and they are working hard, but housing remains out of reach for
them.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. For that type of family that some
people think just aren't working hard enough and remain poor,
how were they affected by the pandemic and the economic
recession that it induced?
Ms. Yentel. Well, what I would say is that many, many low-
wage workers throughout the pandemic were not able to stay at
home. As higher-wage workers were able to work virtually, low-
wage workers were keeping stores open. They were the ones who
were selling and sharing PPE and other essential services and
goods that people needed during the pandemic. And as a result,
many of them contracted COVID-19 and likely died from it as
well. So, people continued to work during the pandemic, and
many low-income renters were among those low-wage workers who
were first to lose their jobs or lose hours at work, lose wages
when the shutdown occurred, and, as a result, fell behind on
rent.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Let me jump in for a second. I think
that one question that is out there among folks with regard to
the eviction moratorium is that, let me just read you another
statement from an article that Mr. Griffith wrote in an article
entitled, ``Why COVID-19 Eviction Moratoriums are Unnecessary,
Unfair, and Economically Harmful,'' from July 2020. And in
there, he says, ``The plunge in evictions coinciding with only
a slight rise in delinquent rent payments strongly suggests the
current moratorium has allowed many, who remain spared from
COVID-19 financial stress, to live rent free.'' Now, Mr.
Griffith, you did write that in July 2020, correct?
Mr. Griffith. And, Congressman, I want to say thank you for
your earlier question regarding the idle rich----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Let me just ask this question with
regard to your quotation, which is this. Ms. Yentel, let's
clarify something. People are not allowed to live rent free
during the moratorium, correct?
Ms. Yentel. Correct.
Mr. Griffith. That is actually incorrect. People are----
Ms. Yentel. Rent is still due when people are under the
eviction moratorium, and, in fact, the declaratory statement
that tenants need to sign in order to get the benefit of the
Federal eviction moratorium makes clear that they need to still
do all that they can to pay the rent, and many renters have.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Thank you.
Mr. Clyburn. Now, before I go any further, in the absence
of the ranking member, I will yield for a closing statement to
Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the chairman for yielding. When this
virus initially came on the scene, Dr. Fauci initially told the
American people you don't need to wear a mask, then he later
said, no, we need to wear a mask. Then he said, no, you need to
wear two masks. Then after that he said, no, back to one mask.
Then, of course, we went to no mask, and now he is talking
about we need to wear a mask again. When it comes to the
question of the origin of the virus, Dr. Fauci has had just as
many positions. He initially said the United States taxpayer
money did not fund the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He later
changed that said, no, no, no, we did find it, but it was
through a subgrant that he subsequently said, no, no, we funded
it, but we did no gain-of-function research, and then just last
Sunday, he said, well, we funded it. There was no gain-of-
function research, but it was a sound scientific decision. And
then he said this: it would have been negligent to not fund the
lab in China. I mean, talk about being all over the board.
I will tell you what is negligent. Negligent is Dr. Fauci's
ever-changing statements to the American people regarding the
subject matter that this committee should be looking into. Let
me look at this email that we got through the FOIA that others
got that we were able to view through the FOIA request. This
goes clear back to January 31, 2020, a 10:32 p.m. email that
Dr. Fauci received from Dr. Christian Anderson. Dr. Christian
Anderson is one of the individuals who gets our tax dollars,
the folks I represent, their tax dollars. Dr. Anderson sent
this email to Dr. Fauci, and he said this: ``The unusual
features of the virus make up a really small part of the
genome, so one has to look really closely at all the sequences
to see that some of the features look engineered,'' and that
last clause is the key. ``Some of the features of this virus
look engineered.'' He went on to say, ``Further, I should
mention after discussions earlier today with Eddie, Bob, and
Mike''--these are other virologists, other doctors around the
world who receive our tax dollars via grants from Dr. Fauci--
``Eddie, Bob, and Mike, and myself all find the genome
inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.'' That
is a fancy way of saying it is not consistent with evolutionary
theory, so the virus looks engineered, not consistent with
evolutionary theory.
Less than 24 hours after this email, the very next day,
less than 24 hours later, Dr. Fauci organizes a conference call
with 11 virologists from around the world. He is the only
person from government on that call, and that is where they
talk about getting their story straight and what they are going
to tell the American people, even though one of the top
scientists in the world says this virus is engineered, this
virus is not consistent with evolutionary theory. Now, we don't
know what happened on that phone call because every single
email regarding that phone call, every single one has been
redacted. I hope the majority will actually join us in calling
for these emails to be unredacted and given to this committee.
Every single one is redacted.
We do know what happened three days later. Dr. Anderson
changed his story, and he went from this virus looks
engineered, this virus is not consistent with evolutionary
theory, to you are crazy if you think it came from the lab. I
find that interesting because one of the guys who testified
four weeks ago when Dr. Fauci wouldn't was Dr. Giroir, who has
testified in front of this committee a couple times, former
assistant secretary for health. Here is what Dr. Giroir said:
``I believe it is just too much of a coincidence that a
worldwide pandemic caused by a novel bat coronavirus that
cannot be found in nature, started just a few miles away from a
secretive laboratory doing potentially dangerous research on
coronaviruses.'' Well, shazam, that is pretty common sense. Dr.
Fauci, I think, was on notice of this very fact clear back on
January 31, 2020. We all now see as common sense what Dr. Fauci
continues to downplay, continues to say is not true.
And here is what is interesting. This Thursday, we just
found out, this Thursday, the majority has asked Dr. Fauci to
come back in front of this committee for a third time. Third
time. But guess what? It is not going to be public. It is going
to be private. Private briefing. After all these concerns have
been raised, you got what Dr. Giroir said, you got what
everyone one says, anyone with common sense now knows the most
likely origin of this virus was that lab in Wuhan, China, the
Democrats bringing Dr. Fauci back, but he won't be in public. A
private briefing. Why? Why don't you do it publicly? Dr. Fauci
has testified 18 times in front of Congress. He has been on
every news show you can imagine more than once. You can't go a
day without seeing him on TV. But now the Select Committee on
Coronavirus won't bring him in for a public hearing to address
these issues. Nope, it is going to be private.
As I said earlier, The Washington Post and The Wall Street
Journal think we should get to the bottom of this. Pretty much
everyone thinks we should get to the bottom of this, except the
Democrats on the Select Committee on Coronavirus. So, I hope at
least the majority will join the minority and say at least give
us the unredacted emails from this all-important meeting on
February 1, 2020, where these guys, I believe, got their story
straight and decided to mislead the American public for over a
year about the origins of this virus. I hope the majority will
at least join us for that. I yield back.
Mr. Clyburn. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. I
would like to say that, in view of his comments concerning the
briefing, the private briefing he is talking about, that has to
do with the members of this committee becoming better informed
as to the Delta variant. It is not any kind of a testimony.
That is a briefing.
Mr. Jordan. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman, but why not
make it public? The American would like to be informed as well.
Mr. Clyburn. Well, we can make a decision after we have
heard in private whether or not we should make it public, but
as of this moment, it will be a private briefing.
With that, I want to thank the witnesses for their
testimony today. The coronavirus pandemic and the housing
insecurity that it has caused has only served to illuminate
that safe and secure housing is essential to building
prosperous communities, and essential to a strong, sustainable,
and inclusive recovery. Today's hearing has made it clear that
while our Nation is still at risk of an eviction crisis, we
know what we must do to prevent it. The abusive eviction
practices of corporate landlords must stop. Rather than
evicting struggling renters from their homes, landlords must
work with tenants who are experiencing hardship to access
rental assistant funds.
I am often amused when I hear people talk about how much it
costs to get something done, and I very seldom, if ever, hear
them talk about what will be the costs if we don't do it.
Homelessness will result from these evictions. What is the cost
of homelessness both to the families involved and to the
communities? And we know from recent studies that if people are
evicted, kicked out of their homes and end up in shelters or on
the street, they are much more susceptible to the ravages that
come from COVID-19 than they would be if they were staying in
their homes.
It seems to me that all of us have some responsibility for
getting beyond this pandemic for the people who are in need of
homes, as well as those people who enormously benefit
financially from these homes because they aren't giving up
anything. We just appropriated $46 billion that goes to them.
It doesn't go to the people in the homes. It goes to these
landlords who own them, $46 billion. So, I think as state and
local authorities continue to improve their rental assistance
programs, they must adopt best practices, like directly aiding
tenants when their landlords refuse to cooperate with
assistance programs, and adopt other effective strategies from
successful programs, such as the Houston-Harris County program
we have heard about today, the kind of outreach, the kind of
mapping that is necessary to identify where the real needs are.
As my great friend and our former colleague, Elijah Cummings,
would say, this country is better than that.
Thanks to the efforts of the Biden Administration, access
to rental assistance is expanding widely. I think I gave the
numbers: in May, 290,000, as opposed to 160,000 in April. In
one month, nearly doubled. In one month. So, we are making
progress on this. The Federal Government must continue to do
all they can to ensure that all Americans have access to these
vital programs, and I would hope that this committee will
continue to do the work that is necessary to make sure, at the
threat of being too repetitive, to make sure that all of this
is done efficiently, effectively, and equitably.
Without objection, all members will have five legislative
days within which to submit additional written questions for
the witnesses to the chair, which will be forwarded to the
witnesses for their response.
Mr. Clyburn. With that, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:36, the select subcommittee was
adjourned.]
[all]