In many parts of the nation, evictions rise after ban ends
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 Miami apartment.
Davis, 51, braced 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.
He 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 preventing the spread of the coronavirus.
But housing advocates say evictions are on the rise in many parts of the country — though numbers remain below pre-pandemic levels due to the infusion of federal rental assistance and other pandemic-related assistance.
Part of the increase is due to 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, evictions have been rising in most of the 31 cities and six states where it collects data.
Among the concerns is that some landlords who got federal assistance are still evicting 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, 72, who returned home from work in October to find her life spread out on the sidewalk.
Behind several thousand dollars 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 partner, Garry Betared, 61.
Cicely Murray, a HUD housing 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.
“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.”
But landlords, especially smaller ones who own a handful of apartments, have also struggled.
They believed the moratorium was illegal and saddled them with months of back rent they may never get back. Others were forced to lay off maintenance staff or sell units as they awaited federal rental assistance that was slow to be distributed.
Some localities have lagged behind in getting out their portion of the $46.5 billion in federal Emergency Rental Assistance.
According to a November report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, 28% of grantees — 32 states and 80 localities — spent less than 30% of their first allocation of money and risk losing those funds.