On March 26, a sheriff’s deputy walked over to a one-story brick house in a suburb of North Tulsa, Oklahoma, and told the woman inside that it was time to go.
She called Oklahoma Legal Aid Services in a panic. Eric Hallett, the lawyer on the phone, instructed her to pick up important documents and medicines. There was a chance that she was not allowed to return.
The woman and her partner – who lived at home with five children, aged 1 to 17 – thought they could stay.
They struggled to pay their bills during the pandemic, then applied for federal rental assistance through a local nonprofit organization. Three months before they were evicted, the owner, Gary Ramey, received $ 5,600 that would cover the delayed rent they owed. In return, he signed a document agreeing to withdraw from the eviction case, as required by the non-profit organization that granted the aid, according to a copy of the document shared by Hallett.
Instead, Ramey went ahead with the eviction, and a judge conceded. Now, the family of seven is living in a hotel for extended stays.
“It really shows the collapse,” said Hallett, housing defense coordinator for Oklahoma Legal Aid Services.
Ramey confirmed that he received the payment and signed the contract, but said he was unaware of the conditions involved and that “he would have to go check the paperwork”.
“I don’t remember that,” he said. “I thought they were just helping to get the rent back.
With millions of tenants facing evictions during the global health crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday extended their national ban on evictions until June 30. The order, which was set to expire on March 31, aims to protect families from being evicted from their homes.
But while tenant advocates praised Monday’s extension, they said the program’s implementation has not been the same in practice. Many tenants, such as the North Tulsa family, are still being displaced from their homes.
Interviews with tenants, legal aid lawyers, housing specialists and advocates of affordable housing at the state, local and national levels show a process that may be subject to the vagaries of local politics or geography. Depending on the courtroom, a judge who hears eviction cases may ignore the ban, questioning the federal government’s authority to implement it. Other judges questioned whether the order applies to tenants on monthly rentals.
Across the country, homeowners continue to find ways to remove tenants, in some cases refusing to renew the contract or claiming that tenants have breached the terms of the contract. Although federal policy prohibits evictions based solely on non-payment of rent, it allows evictions for other reasons, such as property damage or involvement in criminal activities. And tenants may not be aware of the measures they need to take to ensure that the eviction moratorium applies to them.
Since the start of the pandemic, 284,490 evictions have been recorded in the five states and 28 cities monitored by The Eviction Lab at Princeton University. More than 163,700 of them have been registered since the federal government ban came into effect on September 4.
“Many homeowners have disregarded the order and its protections,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “It is especially disappointing because the Biden administration knows very well what the shortcomings and shortcomings are and yet has not corrected any of them.”
The White House said in a statement that the federal government was “strengthening enforcement tools to ensure that the moratorium is implemented”.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission announced on March 29 that both agencies would monitor and investigate eviction practices.
The White House statement encouraged tenants to contact the CFPB and the Department of Housing and Urban Development “regarding any issues with debt collectors, evictions or discriminatory treatment”.
Just as the pandemic has disproportionately affected communities of color, racial disparities in the ability to pay for housing influence families’ vulnerability to evictions now. Black, Hispanic and Asian families were more likely to be behind on rent than white families, according to an analysis of data from the US Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey.
In Macon, Georgia, an owner tried to evict a tenant due to delays. After the judge refused because of the CDC order, the landlord filed a request a few days later, seeking to terminate the tenant’s lease for a different reason, according to Susan Reif, housing attorney and director of the Housing Prevention Project. Evictions from the Georgia Legal Services Program.
Reif said the group was able to successfully argue that the request was an attempt to circumvent the CDC’s order, because of the timing.
In Louisiana, legal aid lawyers fought eviction cases based on minor lease violations ranging from having a trampoline in the yard to not mowing the lawn.
Amanda Golob, a housing attorney at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, said that a landlord who tries to find a loophole to evict a tenant who is in need of rent can protest, “It’s really about the cat they have.”
In one lawsuit, she said, an owner tried to evict a tenant because of a damaged stove. A report from the fireman helped prove that the tenant was not to blame.
“We know it is about non-payment, but suddenly there is an eviction notice because of a broken stove,” said Golob.
Greg Brown, vice president of government affairs for the National Apartment Association, a group that represents rental owners, said evictions are often the last resort for homeowners, and judges make the final decision. Most housing providers, he argued, are trying to work with residents to keep them in their homes.
“Empty buildings do not benefit anyone,” he said.
The defense organization opposes the eviction moratorium, which Brown said has left residents and homeowners “on the edge of the precipice”, as unpaid rent, which tenants are still responsible for paying, increases.
‘Just increase the rent’
For families struggling to pay rent, the irregular application of the eviction ban is compounded by the slow implementation of more than $ 46 billion in federal rent relief.
At the end of March, only 28 states had launched rental assistance programs to disburse the first big wave of federal funds, $ 25 billion allocated by the Treasury Department in December, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Sharon Brown, an organizer for the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, likened the situation to an uneasy waiting game. Mississippi’s emergency rental assistance program began accepting applications on March 29. A Mississippi Home Corporation spokeswoman did not yet have numbers on how many applications were submitted or approved.
Impatient homeowners can press for an eviction, waiting for a receptive judge, rather than waiting for help to begin. And it is not clear whether the federal package is sufficient to cover billions of dollars in arrears.
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Even when tenants are not evicted, the accumulated debt may be enough to evict them from their homes. Brown told the story of a woman whose missed payments were piling up. With no guarantee of ransom, the tenant felt trapped. Brown helped her move to a property where her new landlord agreed to offer a reduced rental fee and Brown helped pay part of the cost upfront.
Some may find it more difficult to find balance. Housing advocates note that a history of renting late or missed payments can start a vicious cycle that can hurt tenants’ chances of finding decent housing in the future.
Brown said that tenants who were unemployed but who have since found a job or got better hours may be able to escape without financial loss if they manage to pay the outstanding balance or if they have access to federal aid.
But for others, when “30 days go by, it’s just the accumulated rent,” she said.
Rosa Jackson, 47, said she had a hard time after her fiance died of heart failure in July. He helped her pay for an apartment in Horn Lake, a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee, located in northern Mississippi.