Eviction moratorium extended for those with federal loans; estimates show how many renters are behind in your county

Estimated percentage of renting households in arrears, June 23 to July 5, 2021. Based on Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey Wave. Surgo Ventures map; click the image to enlarge, or click here for an interactive version.

Though the federal government's eviction moratorium expired on Friday, President Biden has asked the Agriculture Department and other agencies to extend it until Sept. 30 for those who have real-estate loans through federal agencies, Ximena Bustillo reports for Politico's Weekly Agriculture.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked Biden to extend the whole program, saying that the administration must take action, but Biden insisted that only Congress has that power, citing a Supreme Court ruling in June that said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overstepped its authority in creating the policy. "The moratorium, put in place during the pandemic, was credited with keeping more than 2 million renters in their homes. Two days before it ended – and just one day before the House adjourned – the White House made its first public appeal for Congress to take action to extend the policy," Joey Garrison reports for USA Today. "The Democratic-controlled House adjourned for recess last week without taking action on a bill that would have renewed it."

Meanwhile, renters and landlords nationwide are struggling. An NBC investigation revealed last week that many states had, for a variety of reasons, distributed only a fraction of the aid meant to keep tenants from being evicted and unpaid landlords able to cover their own costs. A laid-off Phoenix woman, for example, told The Arizona Republic that the state said it was processing her application in early April, but despite numerous calls hasn't been able to get an update, a human voice on the phone, or a check. And in Georgia, only about 6% of the $710 million the state received has been paid out as of July 20, while 160,000 to 344,000 Georgians are likely to be evicted, according to Census Bureau estimates. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the culprits are "slow rollouts, cumbersome paperwork for both renters and landlords, and landlords who decline to accept payments have left government programs sitting on piles of unspent aid just as renters need it the most."

About 6.2 million American households are behind on rent, according to a new report by humanitarian data science outfit Surgo Ventures, an initiative of the Surgo Foundation. Households in arrears represent 14.7% of all renting households and owe an average of $3,700, or $23 billion nationwide.

A county-level map from the report shows that Southern renters are especially likely to owe money, with 16% of all households in arrears and owing $8.4 billion as of July. It's important to note that county-level figures are estimates based on Surgo's extrapolation of state-level data from the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey and cross-referenced with the 2019 American Community Survey; however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers Surgo's work careful enough to use its Covid-19 Community Vulnerability Index as a resource. Read more about its methodology here.