On the same day as the Los Angeles City Council enacted one of the strictest vaccine mandates in the country, the White House Coronavirus Response Team announced a major investment in at-home tests Wednesday, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a new rule that aims to prevent public housing evictions.
The video above shows clips from the council vote, as well as Wednesday’s coronavirus response team meeting.
The council voted 11-2 Wednesday afternoon to approve an ordinance that would require people to be fully vaccinated to enter indoor public spaces. These include shopping malls, restaurants, bars, gyms, sports arenas, museums, spas, nail salons, indoor city facilities and other locations. People with religious or medical exemptions would have to show proof of a negative test.
Council President Nury Martinez has said it is clear the vaccines work, but too many people remain unvaccinated despite widespread availability and door-to-door campaigns to vaccinate more people. Meanwhile, Councilman Joe Buscaino voted against the mandate.
“Making a teenager… serve as a bouncer to keep people in or out of a restaurant, and then fining the business for their failure is not the way to go about it,” he said.
As the mandate passed, the coronavirus response team announced the government is making a $1 billion investment in at-home tests.
“This means companies will be able to expand production of tests even further based on the United States government’s commitment to procure an additional 180 million rapid tests over the course of the next year, with tens of millions more tests coming to market over the course of the next 30 days,” White House COVID Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients said.
According to Zients, the investment puts the U.S. “on track to quadruple the amount of at-home rapid tests available for Americans by December.”
This announcement came hours after HUD said a new rule will make it more difficult for tenants of “HUD-subsidized public housing and certain properties with project-based rental assistance” to be evicted.
The temporary rule will be published in the Federal Registrar Thursday. According to the rule, the HUD Secretary can do the following:
- Expand the notice a covered landlord must give before such a tenant must vacate a unit from 14 days to 30 days
- Require landlords to provide information to the tenant regarding federal emergency rental relief along with the eviction notice
- Require landlords to provide notice to all tenants in public housing of the availability of emergency rental assistance.
“This rule is a significant step in raising tenant awareness about the availability of funds that can assist them with past due rent and allowing them additional time to access relief that may stave off eviction entirely,” HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge said in a press release. “HUD will continue to review additional actions to help protect individuals through the duration of the pandemic.”