Landlords are taking on no-eviction orders
Millions of families again could face losing their homes
Landlords, apartment owners and housing industry groups have unleashed a barrage of legal challenges against the Trump administration’s order protecting renters from eviction, leaving millions of families again facing the risk of homelessness in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
Over the past month, an array of lawyers and lobbyists have inundated federal, state and local courts. They have sought to stop renters from invoking the federal ban. And in some cases, they’ve tried to quash the policy altogether, arguing that the government did not have the authority to issue it in the first place.
One federal lawsuit brought by a Virginia landlord, for example, argues that the administration wrongly halted evictions based on a “flimsy premise” that doing so might prevent displaced Americans from contracting the coronavirus. The case is supported by an anti-regulatory conservative group with documented past financial ties to a foundation backed by Charles Koch, a Republican megadonor. The lawsuit has also picked up key legal help from a major lobbying organization representing apartment owners.
“There’s a reason eviction is a remedy in the law,” said Caleb Kruckenberg, a lawyer at the Koch-funded New Civil Liberties Alliance who stressed that landlords are experiencing significant financial disruption, too.
The flurry of lawsuits has created a wave of legal uncertainty, exposing millions of Americans
again to the sort of hardships the administration initially sought to prevent. Federal officials tried to clarify some of the ambiguity in policy guidance issued late Friday. But the update instead appeared to give landlords a clearer green light to start eviction proceedings against some cashstrapped renters, even though a moratorium remains in place until the end of the year.
The administration’s latest move perplexed Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, who said she remains fearful about a wave of evictions on the horizon.
“To understand, ask yourself the question: Why would a landlord want to start eviction proceedings in October for an eviction that can’t happen until Janu
ary? The answer: to pressure, scare and intimidate renters into leaving sooner,” she said.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the administration “has actively engaged with stakeholders across the country to ensure both renters and landlords have the necessary resources to make timely rent and debt payments.”
The legal plight facing millions of cash-strapped renters highlights the nature of the nation’s unequal recovery, as Americans who struggled most at the outset of the pandemic continue to face severe hardship — even as the economy begins to improve.
About 1 in 3 adults say it is somewhat or very likely that they could face the threat of eviction or foreclosure over the next two months,
survey data released last week by the Census Bureau shows, underscoring how sustained unemployment and dwindling federal aid may be creating the conditions for a housing crisis.
Last month, the administration sought to address the issue through an order that tapped the nation’s public health laws to prevent people who are behind on their rent from being pushed out of their homes. Federal officials predicted the protections could help up to 40 million Americans, far more than in a 120-day eviction moratorium approved by Congress in March.
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued the updated policy, limited its order in critical ways: It included no new money to help people catch up on their bills, and it didn’t authorize new aid to make landlords financially whole. Instead, it directed renters to existing sources of state and federal help, and it guaranteed that property managers could assess fees and other penalties on families who fall behind on their payments.
The absence of an immediate, fresh injection of federal dollars has exacerbated the cash crunch for tenants, who are amassing bills they cannot repay, as well as for landlords, who cannot evict or collect past-due amounts. The National Council of State Housing Agencies late last month estimated that the financial hole is vast and growing fast, with potentially 14 million renter households, totaling about 34 million Americans, projected to owe as much as $34 billion by the time the CDC moratorium expires at the end of 2020.
In many states, renters don’t know about the government’s eviction protections, and those who do have struggled to find and fill out the forms, housing experts have found. Some have faced evictions anyway, as the administration has allowed landlords significant leeway to remove renters from their apartments for other reasons — including seemingly minor violations of their leases.
Peggy Bailey, vice president for housing policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, acknowledged that the administration’s actions to halt evictions had made a difference for some renters. But she cautioned that “the CDC moratorium has some holes in it. … Landlords can still move for an eviction if they come up with a reason other than loss of income due to the pandemic, and it’s on the resident to prove the landlord wrong.”