Evictions

“Everybody keeps saying: Well, you know, we’re going to have an eviction crisis, this is going to happen. It’s already happening. People are being moved out.” — Erin Kemple, Connecticut Fair Housing Center

us that is trying to do the best that we can while we get some resources from the federal government,” Mosquera-Bruno said. “It’s an issue that we all have to work together as a state and federal government. The state alone can not be able to cover all the difficult situations for the families.”

Since March 10, when Gov. Lamont declared a state of emergency, there have been more than 2,500 new eviction cases filed in Connecticut and roughly 600 executions, which allow marshals to remove tenants from dwellings.

Erin Kemple, executive director of the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, said the state has averaged roughly 20,000 evictions a year for the last half-decade. In 2020, however, there have been only about 6,000 evictions filed so far — a lower than usual number due in part to Lamont’s April 10th moratorium, which stated that residential landlords couldn’t evict tenants before July 1 except in cases of serious nuisance.

In June, Lamont announced more than $33 million designed to help homeowners, renters and residential landlords, plus $10 million for mortgage assistance for homeowners having difficulty making the payments. Lamont renewed the moratorium at the beginning of September, extending landlords’ powers to remove tenants living in units they wanted to occupy themselves and those who owed rent prior to March 1.

After the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its own moratorium to halt the spread of the coronavirus in September, Lamont said Connecticut landlords could initiate eviction proceedings, but would have to back off if the tenant took advantage of the CDC moratorium.

Since the beginning of September, Kemple said evictions are accelerating and Connecticut is seeing roughly 100 eviction filings per week. Across the 6,000 cases filed so far in 2020, only 24 tenants have filed a CDCdeclaration seeking to stop eviction proceedings.

“Everybody keeps saying: Well, you know, we’re going to have an eviction crisis, this is going to happen,” said Kemple. “It’s already happening. People are being moved out.”

Connecticut’s landlords range from mom-and-pop owners, who rely on rental income to survive, to large corporations with big portfolios and public housing authorities.

Kemple said there’s been a noticeable uptick in phone calls to the Connecticut Fair Housing Center from tenants complaining about their landlords.

“At the beginning it was, ‘I can’t pay the rent and I’ve never been in this situation before,’ ” Kemple said. “And now it’s ‘I’m getting harassed by my landlord, or

I got a notice to quit or the landlord said he’s going to move me out.’ ”

Kemple recognizes that landlords are hurting along with tenants. “They are unable to do repairs or do other work that they need to do, pay the mortgage, that kind of thing,” she said. “But at the same time, they are not the ones who are going to be out of their homes and spreading the virus are being exposed to it.”

John Souza, President of the CT Coalition of Property Owners and a full-time landlord, said he’s currently working with tenants of his own who are in the state’s rental assistance program but are still a few months behind on rent.

Souza said he doesn’t believe a tidal wave of evictions is coming because “the system doesn’t move that fast.”

Landlords and tenants typically resolve rent disputes through the court system, Souza said, which prevents unscrupulous actors from beating the system. But the eviction moratorium took away that channel, and an extension of it would do further damage to property owners.

“I’ve got tenants that are struggling,” Souza said. “They’ve been my tenants for years, and I wouldn’t put them out even if I knew they were honestly really struggling. I know a lot of people got cut in hours. If they pay me half, then I wouldn’t throw them out. It’s just those people that do nothing and won’t cooperate, won’t do anything. I need the court system as some kind of leverage against it. There’s no other way to put it.”

To date, the state of Connecticut has paid over $11 million to landlords since the start of the rental assistance program, Mosquera-Bruno said. Connecticut has also launched an eviction prevention program, which will provide further assistance to families.

Mosquera-Bruno also pleaded with both landlords and tenants to make the best of an unprecedented situation. “Everybody has to do their part with the moratorium, making sure that residents don’t take advantage of it,” Mosquera-Bruno said.

“It’s not to stop paying the rent, it’s to be able to have a little bit of wiggle room so that they can pay where they can. To the landlords, it’s to make sure that we don’t have families that are in difficult situations because of the pandemic or they lost their jobs,’’ she said. “If somebody has not been responsible and have not been able to do their job and paying rent even when they could, then we’re not going to be able to help those individuals. Everybody has to do their part, and that’s the only way that we’re going to be able to be successful through this pandemic.”