The crisis that didn’t happen: How Dems got it wrong about ending the COVID-19 eviction ban

The flood of evictions that politicians and housing advocates desperately warned of has yet to materialize three months after the Supreme Court revoked the Biden administration’s COVID-19 eviction ban.

Eviction filings remain below pre-pandemic levels despite dire predictions of mass homelessness when the Supreme Court struck down the eviction moratorium in August.

In the first three months since the moratorium ended, eviction filings increased by roughly 20% compared with the final three months that the ban was in place, according to data released last week by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

Yet the number of eviction cases remains roughly 40% below pre-pandemic levels, the Eviction Lab found.

“This was a manufactured crisis that allowed the administrative state to make up rules it wasn’t allowed to make up,” said John Vecchione, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which filed a class-action lawsuit to end the moratorium. “The idea that these landlords are itching to throw someone out is a lot of hooey.”