CARES Act Eviction Protections: Legal Analysis

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law on March 27, 2020 (Public Law 116-136), established a federal eviction moratorium that reshaped the legal relationship between landlords and tenants in federally connected housing for a defined period. This page covers the statute's scope, operational mechanics, and classification boundaries — including which properties and tenants fell within its reach and which did not. Understanding the CARES Act framework is essential context for any analysis of eviction moratoriums and their legal history or the broader structure of federal vs. state eviction laws.

Definition and Scope

The CARES Act, codified in part at 15 U.S.C. § 9058, imposed a 120-day eviction moratorium on covered residential dwellings. The moratorium ran from March 27, 2020, through July 24, 2020 (Congressional Research Service, "The CARES Act Eviction Moratorium," R46578). Unlike state-level emergency orders, the federal provision applied a uniform national floor of protection without variation by jurisdiction.

Coverage Criteria — the "Covered Dwelling" Classification

The statute's protections applied only to properties meeting one of the following federally connected criteria:

1. Properties participating in a federal housing assistance program (including HUD-assisted or insured properties, USDA Rural Housing programs, or Low-Income Housing Tax Credit [LIHTC] properties).
2. Properties with federally backed mortgages — defined as loans purchased, securitized, owned, insured, or guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, FHA, VA, or USDA.

Properties carrying no federal mortgage nexus and receiving no federal rental assistance were outside the Act's coverage, regardless of the tenant's financial circumstances. This boundary is the statute's most consequential classification limit and was the source of widespread renter confusion during enforcement.

The Act also prohibited landlords from charging fees, penalties, or additional interest for nonpayment of rent during the moratorium period, as specified in § 4024(b)(2) of the statute.

How It Works

The CARES Act moratorium operated in two discrete, sequential phases:

1. Filing Prohibition Phase (Days 1–120): Covered landlords could not initiate eviction proceedings for nonpayment of rent or other fees for the 120-day period. Filing an unlawful detainer action against a covered tenant during this window constituted a violation of federal law.

2. Notice Requirement Phase (Post-Moratorium): After the moratorium expired, landlords subject to the Act were required to provide at least 30 days' notice before initiating eviction proceedings. This notice period was additive — it did not begin until July 25, 2020, meaning the earliest lawful filing date for covered properties was August 24, 2020.

The notice obligation was distinct from general notice to quit legal requirements under state law, which in many jurisdictions required only 3 to 7 days for nonpayment cases. The CARES Act's 30-day floor superseded shorter state-law notice periods for covered properties, creating a federal minimum that preempted conflicting state rules under the Supremacy Clause.

Enforcement of the moratorium was not self-executing through a federal agency. Tenants who believed their landlord was violating the Act's provisions had to raise it as an eviction defense in state court proceedings, typically through an affirmative claim citing § 4024 of the statute.

Common Scenarios

Scenario 1: Tenant in a Fannie Mae–Backed Property
A tenant unable to pay rent during the moratorium period in a building with a Fannie Mae–backed mortgage was categorically protected from eviction filing. The landlord's only compliant path was to wait out the moratorium, then issue a 30-day notice. Fannie Mae published its own loan lookup tool, and Freddie Mac did likewise, enabling tenants to check coverage status (Fannie Mae COVID-19 Resources).

Scenario 2: Tenant in a Conventionally Financed, Unassisted Property
A tenant in a building financed entirely through private lenders, with no federal insurance or guarantee, received no CARES Act protection. Eviction proceedings in such properties were governed solely by applicable state law, which varied considerably — some states had independent moratoriums; others did not.

Scenario 3: LIHTC Property Tenant
Low-Income Housing Tax Credit properties are federally connected through IRS allocation, placing them within covered-dwelling status under the Act. Tenants in LIHTC units could invoke CARES Act protections irrespective of whether a federally backed mortgage also applied.

Scenario 4: Holdover Tenants Post-Lease
The Act's moratorium language focused on nonpayment of rent and did not, by its text, prohibit eviction of holdover tenants whose lease had expired through natural termination. The treatment of holdover tenant legal status under the CARES Act was a contested interpretive question in state courts during the 2020 enforcement period.

Decision Boundaries

The critical analytical distinction under the CARES Act is property eligibility, not tenant eligibility. A tenant's income level, immigration status, or reason for nonpayment was irrelevant to CARES Act coverage. The controlling question was always whether the dwelling itself met the covered-property definition.

A secondary boundary involves temporal scope. The moratorium's 120-day window and subsequent 30-day notice period were fixed by statute. Later federal eviction moratoriums — particularly those issued by the CDC under 42 U.S.C. § 264 between August 2020 and August 2021 — operated under entirely different legal authority, covered a different (broader) scope of renters, and were eventually struck down in Alabama Association of Realtors v. HHS, 594 U.S. ___ (2021) (Supreme Court of the United States, slip opinion). The CARES Act moratorium, by contrast, was never litigated to the Supreme Court and expired by its own terms.

Comparing the two regimes:

For practitioners analyzing specific eviction proceedings under either framework, the eviction process step-by-step timeline must account for which federal layer, if any, applied at the moment of the original filing.

References

• Public Law 116-136, CARES Act (Congress.gov)
• Congressional Research Service, "The CARES Act Eviction Moratorium," R46578
• HUD — COVID-19 Resources for Renters and Homeowners
• Fannie Mae — COVID-19 Renter and Homeowner Help
• Freddie Mac — Rental Housing and COVID-19
• Supreme Court of the United States — Alabama Association of Realtors v. HHS, No. 21A23 (2021)
• 15 U.S.C. § 9058 via eCFR / U.S. Code (Office of the Law Revision Counsel)