Why The CDC Eviction Ban Isn’t Really A Ban: ‘I Have Nowhere To Go’

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Housing activists protesting evictions in Massachusetts, which recently allowed its sweeping statewide eviction ban to expire. That leaves residents with only a much weaker eviction protection order from the Centers for Disease Control and prevention.

Michael Dwyer/AP

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Michael Dwyer/AP

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Tiffany Robinson at the hotel where she is staying in Bridge City, Texas with her three kids as she searches for work and another place to live.

Tiffany Robinson

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Tiffany Robinson

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But on November 5, Robinson’s landlord told her she and her family had 24 hours to gather their belongings and get out of the apartment. Either that, or the Sheriff’s department would evict them.

Because she had filled out the CDC form, Robinson thought it might be a bluff. But she was worried enough to file a complaint and plea for help on the state Attorney General’s website.

«I have nowhere to go. I meet all the criteria for protection, she wrote. «I have three kids who will be homeless tomorrow morning if I can’t stop this. This is wrong.

But at 9am, two men and a woman showed up at her door. They were neighbors from the same apartment complex who she assumes were hired by her landlord.

Robinson said they took sheets and blankets off the beds, spread them out on the floor, and piled them with electronics, lamps, clothes, kids paintings.

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Robinson says the landlord hired a crew of her own neighbors from her apartment complex who piled the families belongings onto blankets and bed sheets and then threw some of them off the 2nd floor balcony.

Tiffany Robinson

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Tiffany Robinson

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That’s why the CDC issued the order, but it is set to expire at the end of the year.

The compromise COVID relief bill in Congress is expected to have $25 billion dollars for emergency rental assistance, and could extend the CDC Order through January.

Housing advocates say that’s a good thing. Yentel says the rental assistance is desperately needed and the CDC order is protecting many people. But she says the order itself also needs to be beefed-up because there are many other cases where it’s not working.

«One of the flaws is that it’s not automatic and so renters need to know that the protection exists and they need to know what actions to take in order to receive that protection, Yentel says.

The order is also being treated differently by judges around the country so the outcomes vary wildly depending on where people live or what court they end up in.

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Robinson in Texas is now well aware of that. She says her son is still shaken up since the eviction.

«He has not wanted to leave my side, she says. «Like, not even to go to the bathroom leave my side like he stands outside the door.

Her landlord said in an email to NPR that the eviction, «was completed entirely through the court system.

It’s unclear exactly what happened in Robinson’s case. Legal-aid attorneys say the CDC order has murky legal grey areas — and many judges often just side with the landlord.

John Pollock is an attorney who heads up the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, which advocates for renters to be provided access to a lawyer before an eviction can happen. He says the vast majority of renters don’t have a lawyer. «It’s basically in every case, you’re going to have a massive imbalance of power.

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He says because of that, the CDC should order a simple blanket ban on evictions during the pandemic, just like some states had done earlier this year.

He says if there was a federal moratorium like that, «the tenant would not have to do something affirmatively to be protected. And he says, «the courts wouldn’t have to get into, ‘well, does this cover this situation or that situation?'

Pollock says he’s also hearing about thousands of complaints to law enforcement and legal aid offices around the country from people who feel their landlord is evicting them improperly.

In her case, Tiffany Robinson is convinced she was treated unfairly. She’s filed complaints with various law enforcement offices. She says she even called the FBI to ask for help.

«I put it on speaker-phone so that the kids could hear it. She says she wants them to know, «that I didn’t just give up, because I had done everything I knew to do and I thought that was going to protect us.