PESP Joins with The National Housing Law Project and The National Low Income Housing Coalition to Urge Enforcement of the CDC Moratorium by the Federal Housing Finance Agency

The National Housing Law Project, The National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project delivered a letter earlier this month to Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Mark Calabria, urging him to take action against landlords with federally backed mortgages who violate the CDC moratorium. 

Read the letter here.

In six cities, at least 57,000 evictions have been filed since the start of the federal eviction moratorium. These evictions are driven by a small number of corporate landlords and their affiliates – including S2 Capital, Ventron Management, Pretium Partners, Western Wealth Capital, Invitation Homes, Bridge Investment Group, Mid America Apartment Communities, and others. In many communities, these large, corporate landlords and affiliates account for the majority of evictions that have been filed. 

Single-family rental company Invitation Homes, for example, which has filed several hundred eviction actions since the CDC eviction moratorium went into effect last year, in 2017 received almost $1 billion in financing from Fannie Mae.  Reuters recently profiled the story of Marvia Robinson, a bus driver and Invitation Homes resident who the company evicted in March, even after Robinson filed a handwritten declaration attesting that she qualified for relief under the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national moratorium on evictions.

Many other large landlords that have filed to evict residents despite the CDC eviction moratorium have received billions of dollars in loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, lenders that are owned by the US Government and regulated by the FHFA.

FHFA Director Calabria previously stated that the FHFA would consider taking action against landlords with federally backed mortgages that violate the CDC moratorium, including, but not limited to finding them in technical default on their loans and barring them from receiving future federally backed loans. 

Enforcing the CDC eviction moratorium is critical to ensuring that the lowest-income and most marginalized renters living in federally backed properties are safely and stably housed during and after the coronavirus pandemic.