For Immediate Release: January 21, 2021

Contact: Louie Tan Vital, 425-330-5787, louie@megaphonestrategies.com; Cabot Petoia, 828-899-9239, cabot@megaphonestrategies.com 

Racial Justice Group Responds to President Biden Executive Order on Evictions

“Tens of millions of tenants need to know they will be safe and housed for the long term, not a few months at a time.” 

Nationwide In response to news that President Joe Biden is signing an executive order to extend the current Center for Disease Control’s eviction moratorium (instituted in September of 2020)  through March 31, 2021, the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE) released the following statement: 

“We have known for months that the Center for Disease Control’s eviction moratorium isn’t enough to keep people safe and housed. Since September, people have been churning through eviction courts or harassed out of their homes by merciless  landlords because the CDC’s order does not stop all evictions,” said Sofia Lopez, Senior Research Analyst for ACRE. “For months, tenants have been caught in limbo, wondering what will happen to them when the clock runs out and how they will pay thousands in back-owed rent or mortgage payments. Tens of millions of tenants need to know they will be safe and housed for the long term, not a few months at a time, and that they won’t have impossible debts to pay in a few months.”

“Democrats campaigned, and won, on the promise to deliver relief to tens of millions of households who are behind on their rent or mortgage. This continuation of the status quo is an insult to these households, and in particular the Black and Brown communities who are losing their jobs, their homes, and their lives. These voters braved untenable conditions and turned out in record numbers, in order to elect leaders that told them change was coming.”

“What President Biden is signing today isn’t relief, this is guaranteeing more evictions and foreclosures now and in the future, and continuing to give the real estate industry and banks total power over the lives of tenants and homeowners. Instead we need a complete eviction and foreclosure moratorium through the end of the year, we need rent and mortgage cancellation, and we need a massive investment in permanently affordable, accessible social housing, we need a Homes Guarantee.”

###

The Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE) is a campaign hub for organizations working at the intersection of racial justice and corporate accountability.