Instead of the eviction “tsunami” tenants feared in August when an extension of the eviction moratorium was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, a more gradual eviction crisis is emerging across the country.
Eviction Crisis Could “Take Weeks and Months to Play Out”
A “gradual” eviction crisis is unfolding across the country, particularly where the distribution of federal rental assistance relief has been slow and where tenants have few protections.
In Gainesville FL, landlords are filing evictions at a rapid pace. In St. Louis MO, where rents are rising and landlords want new tenants with new and higher leases, both court-ordered and landlord-ordered evictions are coming fast and furious.
In Indianapolis during late October, landlords have been piling on new evictions to a backlog of thousands of older ones from during the pandemic’s onslaught that are just now being executed. One at-risk-of-eviction- tenant said, “The hallways (were) full, the outside (was) full…the foyer (was) full…You look around and everybody’s knees are shaking like, ‘What’s going to happen?’” This at-risk tenant added, “I’m in limbo. I’m about to get evicted. I’m 61 years old, and I don’t have anywhere to go.”
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Limited Renter Protections & Limits in Relief Distribution Spurring Increase in Evictions
During the first two weeks of September, just after the moratorium ended, eviction filings rose by +10%. In the first two weeks of October, evictions rose by nearly +14%, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.
Peter Hepburn, a researcher at the Eviction Lab, said, “In places that don’t have protections, these number are increasing pretty quickly. And we don’t know where the ceiling is,” despite more than 2M payments made from the $46.5B in federal rental assistance set aside by Congress.
Some landlords have blamed the red tape of the rental assistance program for all the problems. One landlord who owns 38 properties within the Milwaukee area, William Tran, said, “It’s just a really cumbersome process and it can be really overwhelming for a lot of people.
Data Showing Landlords Collecting Rent as Regularly as in Pre-Pandemic Times
The National Multifamily Housing Council, a landlord industry group, indicated that landlords have been collecting rental payments from their tenants as regularly during the pandemic as pre-pandemic times.
True Eviction Statistics Hard to Come By
Because there is no national database for evictions, accurate statistics are difficult to compile. There is also a patchwork of local policies and record-keeping methods in courts around the country. In reality, according to the think tank New America, one-third of all US counties have no available court eviction data at all.
Making it even more difficult to determine eviction data is the reality that most tenants are forced to leave their rental units because they’ either been illegally locked out of their unit or their utilities have been shut off. Additionally, many tenants leave their rental unit on their own in order to avoid having a formal court-ordered eviction on their record.
According to the Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey in 2017, there were 5.5 “informal” evictions for every one formal eviction. Likewise, a recent survey done in Washington State found that one in five tenants were confronted with an informal eviction during the pandemic compared with one in eight tenants pre-pandemic.
Eviction One Piece of Larger Problem
According to Lee Camp, an attorney who represents tenants facing eviction in St. Louis, “Eviction is just one piece of a much larger problem. It is this access to available housing. It is the debt that has piled up on top of these families have fallen behind over these months. It is a culmination of different factors that is just affecting housing stability overall.”
Thanks to The New York Times
