The U.S. Supreme Court pulled the plug on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction ban this past week, putting renters in Florida and elsewhere at a greater risk of losing their current residences.
“We know there are many families protected from eviction only by the CDC order, and I expect we will see many families evicted over the next few weeks,” Jeffrey Hearne, director of litigation for Legal Services of Greater Miami Inc., told the Florida Record. “My guess is that we will not see a dramatic increase in brand new eviction filings.”
The CDC’s moratorium was limited in its scope, since it only prohibited the physical removal of tenants who qualify for eviction protection, according to Hearne.
“So many landlords continued to file evictions even with the CDC order in place,” he said. “But, without the CDC order, those pending cases can now proceed, and those families can be evicted.”
A federal district court had found the moratorium was illegal, but it placed a hold on that ruling pending the federal government’s appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court then stepped in, ending the stay and effectively overturning the CDC ban on Aug. 26.
“The CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination,” the court said in a 6-3 decision. “It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.”
In addition, the high court found that the applicants in the case, including the Alabama Association of Realtors, were nearly certain of prevailing in their arguments contending the CDC had exceeded its authority under the Public Health Service Act. Other landlord groups around the nation have also sued to overturn the moratorium.
In Miami-Dade County, the number of pending residential evictions that were filed from October 2020 to the end of May numbered 3,005, according to a county report issued in July. Over the same time period, the number of residential writs of possession – the final step in which sheriff’s officials remove residents – were 2,314, the county report said.
More renters are facing renewed stresses in Florida due to the COVID-19 Delta variant, according to Hearne. Many Floridians are living paycheck to paycheck, and there is little in the way of affordable housing in the state, he said.
“It just takes one small setback to cause everything to fall apart,” Hearne said.