Moratorium’s lull ending as eviction wave starts rolling
BOSTON — 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 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.
“We live in America, and the thing is, people like me, we got to go to the street if we don’t have no other place to go because we can’t afford rent,” said Davis, who lost a leg to diabetes, suffers congestive heart failure and is recovering from multiple wounds on his other leg and foot. “I really can’t do nothing.”
The federal ban, along with a mix of state and federal moratoriums, is credited with keeping Davis and millions of others in their homes during the pandemic and slowing the coronavirus.
There was a brief lull in eviction filings after the ban ended. But housing advocates say they’re now on the rise in many parts of the country, although numbers remain below pre-pandemic levels because of the infusion of federal rental assistance and other pandemic-related assistance such as expanded child tax credit payments that are also set to end.
Part of the increase is the result of courts catching up on the backlog of eviction cases. But advocates say the upsurge also shows the limits of federal emergency rental assistance in places where distribution remains slow and tenant protections are weak. Rising housing prices in many markets also are playing a role.
According to the latest data from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, eviction filings have been rising in most of the 31 cities and six states where it collects data.
They increased 10.4% from the first half of August to the first half of September. In the first half of October, numbers were 38% above August levels and 25% higher than in September. Filings fell around 7% from the first half of October to November and now remain about 48% below pre-pandemic levels.
Among places where eviction filings are returning to normal are Connecticut as well as Houston, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, according to the Eviction Lab.
Florida, too, has seen a significant rise, with filings in Tampa and Gainesville returning to near pre-pandemic levels.
“There was a batch of initial commentary coming out when the moratorium ended and the tone … was, well, there wasn’t a tsunami, so we don’t have an eviction crisis on our hands,” said Ben Martin, senior researcher at the nonprofit Texas Housers.
“That initial narrative was somewhat misleading. What we are seeing is a reflection of reality, which is that evictions take time to work their way into and through the court system.”
Among the concerns is that some landlords who got federal assistance are still evicting tenants. A survey of nearly 120 attorneys nationwide from the National Housing Law Project found 86% had seen cases like this. They also saw increasing instances of landlords lying in court to evict tenants and illegally locking out tenants.
“In many states, landlord tenant law is antiquated and designed to provide results for landlords,” said Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project.
“Instead of adjudicating the facts, courts function as conveyor belts, moving tenants toward eviction.”
Among those who contend they were illegally evicted is Faye Moore. The 72-year-old returned home from work in October to find her life spread out on the sidewalk.
Behind several thousand dollars in rent on her two-bedroom townhouse in an Atlanta suburb, Moore figured she would get the chance to present her case to a judge, including that management refused to take her rent money for months and that she was given no notice before she was evicted.
“I’m devastated. It was a house full of furniture. Everything,” said Moore, a retired mental health therapist who is now staying in a hotel with her 61-year-old partner, Garry Betared. “It was like a storm came in and devastated everything. I can’t find my important papers or anything.”
Cicely Murray, a Department of Housing and Urban Development counselor with the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America who is working with Moore, was most upset that the couple was evicted without a court hearing and forced to fend for themselves.
“I’m angry that anyone would put an elderly couple out without trying to figure out what resources are there,” Murray said. “We are still in a pandemic. … You are putting people in precarious situations who are some of the most fragile.”
As Christmas approaches, there are plenty of signs that eviction cases will keep rising.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, those saying they weren’t confident of paying next month’s rent increased from about 5 million at the end of September to 6.3 million in the latest data.