Lawyers ready to help tenants with evictions
Just a few weeks ago, Jessie Reedwasworried about being evicted from her Omaha, Nebraska, apartment with her three young children. Her landlord had already tried to force her out in May when she stopped paying rent after quitting her job at an Omaha Steaks warehouse. One of her children has severe asthma, and Reedwasworried shewould catch the corona virus at work and transmit it.
But in June, a legal aid lawyer convinced a local judge Reed was protected by a federal moratorium on evictions under theCARESAct, which Congress passed inMarch to cushion the economic fallout of the pandemic. The ruling has bought Reed, 32, time to settle her financial affairs.
“I wanted a lawyer as a backup because the landlord was trying to intimidate me,” she said.
For tenants, especially those with limited means, having a lawyer can be the difference between being evicted or being able to stay onin a rentedhome. Yet legal representation for tenants is relatively rare in housing courts. Surveys from several big cities over the years have shown that in housing court, landlords are represented by lawyers at least 80% of the time, while tenants tend to have lawyers in fewer than 10% of cases.
This unlevel playing field is about to come into sharper focus in the months ahead, now that the four- month pause on evictions provided by the CARES Act, followed by a 30- day notice period that endsonMonday, is coming to an end. The moratorium had provided protection to about 12 million tenants living in qualifying properties. Additionally, local moratoriums in some states had protected renters in homes not covered by the federal law.
“Tenants are notequipped to represent themselves, and eviction court places them on an uneven playing field that allows landlords to run roughshod over their rights,” said Ellie Pepper of the National Housing Resource Center, which focuses on housing policy.
InNewYork, which in 2017 became the first American city to guarantee the right to a lawyer in housing court, the effect is clear. Since the law went into effect, 84% of tenants who had a lawyer managed to remain in their homes after a housing dispute, according to the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, an advocacy group.
Demand for legal assistance with housing issues is on the rise in states where local moratoriums for rentals not coveredby theCARES
Act have already ended. In the Atlanta area, legal aid lawyers say calls seeking help in dealing with private landlords are running 25% higher than they were two months ago. In particular, lawyers said, calls are coming in from Clayton County, one of the poorest areas that Atlanta Legal Aid serves.
“Our caseloads haven’t yet exploded, because the courts just started hearing cases that were pending before the pandemic struck,” said Lindsey Siegel, a lawyerwith Atlanta Legal Aid. “But it’s coming.” The nonprofit is bringing on additional lawyers and setting up housing clinics in local courts to advise renters, Siegel added.
Landlords have struggled, too, taking in 29% less inrent checks in the first 10 days of August than in the same period in March, according to a report fromRentec Direct, a property managementinformationandtenant screening firm.
DavidSchwartz, chiefexecutive officer of Waterton, a Chicago real estate firm that owns or manages 22,000 rental apartments in nearly two dozen states, said he and other large landlords didn’t favor another blanket moratorium to prevent evictions. But he does favor an extension of so- called enhanced unemployment payments for those out of work and rental assistance to help keep people in their apartments if they are willing toarrangepaymentplans with landlords.
“The problem with the moratorium is that there are households who aren’t paying rent because they feel there are no repercussions,” said Schwartz, who is also chairman of theNational Multifamily Housing Council, a landlord association.