After a year-long investigation, a Congressional subcommittee says four corporate landlords were quick to push out renters during the pandemic, and filed nearly three times as many eviction actions as previously reported — almost 15,000 in all. The findings add data and detail to a growing body of reporting — and mounting complaints — about investor landlords, including concerns that they are fueling skyrocketing rents amid a historic shortage of affordable housing.

Since the pandemic began, housing experts (including one of the authors of this article) have been predicting that the pandemic’s economic fallout would produce an eviction “tsunami” that could put as many as 40 million people out of their homes.

The experts are still waiting.

Soon after losing his trucking job amid the pandemic, Freddie Davis got another blow: His landlord in Miami was almost doubling the rent on his Miami apartment.

Davis girded for what he feared would come next. In September he was evicted — just over a month after a federal eviction moratorium ended. He’s now languishing in a hotel, aided by a nonprofit that helps homeless people.

The 51-year-old desperately wants to find a new apartment. But it’s proving impossible on his $1,000-a-month disability check.

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.

Just before the pandemic, Nitin Bajaj and his wife, Nimisha Lotia, rented an apartment they own in Los Angeles to two young women.

"They were really nice to talk to," Lotia says.

But as soon as the pandemic hit, the new renters, both in their late 20s, stopped paying the rent. Lotia says the young women sent them an email saying that COVID-19 had created a financial hardship and that the city had just imposed an eviction ban — so the renters couldn't be evicted.

Chandra Dobbs was stunned when the constable showed up on her doorstep with a fat packet of eviction papers. She thought she had more time.

“I didn’t think I was going to be evicted because I applied for rental assistance money,” Dobbs said a few days later. “But they didn’t want to wait the four to six weeks. So now we’re homeless - me, my 16-year-old son, my daughter and my grandchild, a toddler.”

Some states have botched rental aid so badly they may never catch up.

On August 26, the Supreme Court struck down the federal eviction moratorium. That policy, enacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nearly a year prior, protected renters around the country from the threat of losing their homes in the midst of the pandemic. At least 1.55 million fewer eviction cases than normal were filed while the moratorium was in place, despite economic turmoil that has left more renters than ever behind on payments.

House progressives are now eyeing legislation to reinstate the federal eviction moratorium after the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration's ban.

Representative Cori Bush, who slept outside on the U.S. Capitol for several nights in order to push officials to extend the moratorium past its July 30 expiration, said Thursday that lawmakers must take action to protect tenants.

The US Supreme Court on Thursday night struck down a federal eviction moratorium that was recently extended by President Biden’s administration without congressional support.

The decision to end the pandemic-related eviction freeze came as a result of a legal challenge to the policy brought by a coalition of landlords and real estate trade groups.

On Aug. 3, the moratorium was extended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite a lack of congressional approval.

The White House said it regretted the Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday to end the Biden administration’s pandemic-related federal moratorium on evictions, and urged states, cities, landlords and others to do what they could to help.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the eviction moratoriums issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had saved lives by preventing the spread of the COVID-19 virus throughout the pandemic.