ITHACA, NY Rent reform is a rightfully hot topic in Ithaca and around the country. As the COVID-19 pandemic fuels job loss and people struggle to make ends meet, keeping a roof overhead becomes a significant hurdle. This is particularly problematic in Ithaca, where over 70% of the community is composed of renters and the affordable housing crisis looms like a dark cloud.Â
Rent has been continually rising in Ithaca for the past decade, but the pandemic has brought the issue to the forefront. The creation of movements like the Ithaca Tenants Union (ITU) and the Solidarity Slate in 2020 and 2021 are just a few examples of how the increased push for rent reform has been forged in the fire of these intense circumstances.
The pace of disbursement of the new housing assistance has been slow. Four months after Congress approved its first tens of billions of dollars in emergency rental aid, only a small portion has reached landlords and tenants, and in many places it is impossible even to file an application.
Landlords and real estate agents downplayed concerns that lifting the moratorium will create an eviction crisis. “With rental assistance secured, the economy strengthening and unemployment rates falling, there is no need to continue a blanket, nationwide eviction ban,” a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors said in a statement.
Owners of residential apartment buildings have long argued that the moratorium is based on legally shaky ground, and questioned the constitutionality of tethering a major intervention in the nation’s housing market to a federal statute intended to stop the transmission of disease.
Christy Zahrt receiving the Pfizer vaccine at California State University, Northridge, in Los Angeles on Tuesday.Credit.Allison Zaucha for The New York Times
The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine is extraordinarily effective at protecting against severe disease caused by two dangerous variants, according to two studies published Wednesday.
The studies, which are based on the real-world use of the vaccine in Qatar and Israel, suggest that the vaccine can prevent the worst outcomes including severe pneumonia and death caused by B.1.1.7, the variant first identified in the U.K., and B.1.351, the variant first identified in South Africa.
“This is really good news,” said Dr. Annelies Wilder-Smith, an infectious disease researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “At this point in time, we can confidently say that we can use this vaccine, even in the presence of circulating variants of concern.”
US District Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled earlier Wednesday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had exceeded its authority by issuing a broad moratorium on evictions across all rental properties. Landlords groups welcomed the decision.
Friedrich’s ruling was a setback to efforts by President Joe Biden to help tenants and lessen the financial damage caused by the pandemic. The CDC moratorium, first enacted by President Donald Trump and later extended by Biden, was designed to prevent mass evictions in the face of a public health emergency that has seen millions of Americans lose their jobs and fall deep into debt.