The US Supreme Court has declared the eviction moratorium illegal for tenants who have defaulted on rent payments.

Congress had not been able to agree on a change in the law, whereupon the CDC disease control agency extended the moratorium under pressure from the White House.

The majority of the judges decided that the Epidemic Protection Agency had exceeded its competence.

Three left-wing liberal judges voted against it.

Winand von Petersdorff-Campen

Business correspondent in Washington.

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How many tenants are now threatened with evictions is unclear.

While there used to be talk of up to eleven million Americans, experts now speak of a few hundred thousand.

According to a survey by the statistical office in mid-August, almost 1.3 million tenants consider eviction to be likely and about the same number of tenants at least possible.

However, Congress has approved around $ 46 billion in rental subsidies.

At the end of July, only around five billion had been called up.

The state and local authorities are held responsible for the low volume of disbursements.

However, the August survey also shows that nearly five million Americans have failed to apply for grants despite defaulting on rent.

Homeowners had argued against the moratorium that they would come under financial pressure to service their mortgage loans.

Debt is growing on both sides.

The rent debt is growing, while property owners have to take out new loans to finance old ones.

A lost history

The history of the eviction moratorium is politically unreliable: Last year, shortly after the start of the pandemic, Congress imposed an eviction freeze that expired in July 2020.

Then the epidemic protection authority intervened and justified its responsibility with a law from 1944 that regulated pest control.

She argued that during times of the pandemic, street tenants could infect the rest of the population.

In earlier proceedings, the Supreme Court ruled that the eviction moratorium was illegal without a legal regulation, but granted a transition period until the end of July.

Congress missed the deadline while left-wing congressmen worked the government to extend the moratorium.

After some initial hesitation, President Joe Biden forced himself through, although he still had doubts that a new ordinance from the Epidemiological Protection Agency would be legally valid.

However, he saw an advantage in gaining time through the judicial process, as he made clear in a speech.

The White House is now reviewing legal strategies at the local level with the aim of averting evictions in states with weak tenant protection rules.