Big drop in suits to evict renters
Bans, aid have helped cut Bexar’s total more than half in pandemic
When the coronavirus halted Texas eviction proceedings in March 2020, no one expected that a patchwork of federal, state and local government protections would disrupt evictions well into 2021.
But it’s now clear that the moratoriums and millions of dollars in government aid for tenants and landlords worked as intended: From April 2020 through March 2021, landlords in Bexar County filed less than half as many eviction lawsuits as in the same period a year earlier, according to court data.
“As long as we have this assistance ... I think everything’s going to be fine,” said Judge Roberto Vazquez, who oversees the justice of the peace court on the Northwest Side. Eviction lawsuits are filed in the JP courts.
“But as you reopen, people are going to go back to some of the jobs that they had — then you have to also wonder about the jobs that they had before: Are they really enough to sustain them?” he continued. “That’s a completely different issue.”
Landlords here filed roughly 20,000 eviction lawsuits each year before the pandemic, a figure that soared over the last decade as housing prices skyrocketed and wages for the working class stagnated.
But between April 2020 and the end of March,
landlords filed about 8,500 eviction lawsuits, according to state court data. The ever-changing landscape of pandemic-induced rule changes and rent relief — which also brought confusion for judges, attorneys, landlords and tenants — staved off the usual demand.
One of the most beneficial programs, according to tenants and landlords, stemmed from the city’s decision early in the pandemic to launch one of the first — and most robust — housing assistance efforts in the country. It has since paid out more than $87 million to nearly 33,000 families struggling to pay bills.
“In the beginning part of the pandemic, the big talk was there’s gonna be mass evictions, and then rent is not going to be paid, and there are going to be foreclosures, and we’re all going to fall off this proverbial cliff,” said Kyle Hendricks, the president of the San Antonio chapter of the National Association of Residential Property Managers. “It just really became apparent pretty early on that that just wasn’t happening.”
Landlords who mainly serve middle- and higher-income renters, for the most part, have seen just a slight uptick in missed payments when compared with before the pandemic, according to several interviewed by the San Antonio Express-news.
But that hasn’t been true for some landlords renting out some of San Antonio’s cheapest rental homes.
Mike Rust runs Highland Commercial Properties, which has about 1,600 rental units in San Antonio that rent for an average $784 per month, lower than the city’s typical rent. In March 2020, only 1.4 percent of tenants were late on rent, Rust said, compared with 10 percent now.
“Our customers in workforce housing, a lot of them were devastated by not being able to work,” Rust said. “When all the forced shutdowns happened, they couldn’t go to work anymore — whereas if you’re in a $2,500 rental home, you probably were in a position where you were able to work from home.”
San Antonio is one of the poorest big cities in the U.S., and half of all renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, according to census estimates.
The economic gaps are widest along racial lines. The poverty rate among Black and Latino residents is roughly double the rate of those who are white. In ZIP codes that are mostly white, about 18 percent of people have medical debt in collection, compared with 35 percent in neighborhoods that are home mostly to people of color, according to the city.
The pandemic is bound to make that worse.
“All the inequities that have been laid bare, we knew they were there,” said Verónica Soto, who oversees the city’s housing programs. “Now, they’re raw and open, and are something that we have to continue to address.”
‘Landscape changing’
As the virus spread across Texas last March, state and local leaders stalled most eviction proceedings so families wouldn’t end up on the street. Congress followed by doling out the first stimulus payments and temporarily barring evictions in federally backed rentals — which covered at least half of San Antonio’s rental stock.
After a three-month pause, Bexar County courts opened briefly in June to hear cases that weren’t protected by the federal rule, only to retreat again as the virus threatened to overwhelm hospitals.
Then, by the time judges were preparing to reopen courtrooms at the end of the summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came out with its own moratorium on evictions if tenants lost income and couldn’t afford rent. Evictions that weren’t related to financial issues, such as those involving lease violations or criminal issues, could still move forward.
The moratorium has been extended twice since then, but last month, the Texas Supreme Court let its own order that told judges to enforce it expire. The state’s training center for judges went on to say that landlords — not judges — were responsible for following the order, effectively giving the green light to resume court as normal.
“That’s really where that confusion comes from: Despite justice of the peaces still being given the discretion to do as they please, they’re being recommended to allow eviction cases to proceed, completely undermining the CDC order,” said Lizbeth Parra, an attorney with Texas Riogrande Legal Aid.
It was yet another whiplash for judges, landlords and attorneys. San Antonio tenants, however, got lucky: Judges in Bexar County disagreed with the state, issuing a recent statement that said they would continue upholding the federal rule.
Unlike the constant changes in courts, what has been consistent is the city’s push to ensure that families make ends meet. Over the last year, the city has poured nearly $134 million in federal and local funds into emergency housing assistance, of which more than $87 million has been spent. It marks an astronomical increase from before the pandemic, when the city used about $1 million each year to help residents with rent or mortgage payments.
The city will continue to receive federal dollars through 2024. But even after the coronavirus fades, Soto hopes that some of the pandemic-era policies will be here to stay — including increased funding to support families who might lose their homes because of sudden drops in income, hefty medical bills or emergency expenses such as car repairs.
Then there’s the city staff who are now working during eviction court to link tenants and landlords to assistance. Prior to the pandemic, the hundreds of tenants that flooded eviction courts each week were left on their own to navigate scarce funding sources.
“I do see our landscape changing when it comes to housing policy,” Soto said. “The question will be for the policymakers ... because everything comes at a price.”
‘Afraid of being evicted’
Last September, Victoria Guajardo had just signed a new lease and moved into an apartment that demanded more of her income. That same month, she got furloughed.
She loved working at Hulu’s call center in San Antonio, but soon her sadness about losing her job turned into fear that she wouldn’t be able to make rent with unemployment payments alone. She applied for city housing assistance, which covered her rent for two months.
By the start of 2021, Hulu still hadn’t brought her back to work, so she applied for help from a new $1 billion fund the state launched in February called the Texas Rent Relief Program. But months later, she still doesn’t know if she’ll be approved for help. In the meantime, she’s racked up late fees when she’s struggled to pay on time — about $25 per day after she’s more than five days late.
“I am afraid of being evicted,” she said.
In Texas, landlords can start the eviction process as soon as a tenant pays rent late, and there’s no requirement that they must accept the payment if a tenant comes up with the money later. Guajardo is among tenants who are afraid their landlords will lose patience: As of Thursday, 93,000 tenants had submitted applications to the state for financial assistance, but only 1,600 had been paid out, according to the state.
But some housing attorneys and advocates fear that even once the program irons out its initial kinks, millions of dollars in rental assistance still won’t be enough to keep renters in their homes long term as housing costs soar. Over the last decade, the typical monthly rent payment in Bexar County jumped 33 percent, outpacing a 23 percent rise in household income, according to census estimates.
“Rental assistance is a stopgap solution — it’s like a temporary Band-aid,” said Matthew Garcia, an attorney with Texas Riogrande Legal Aid. “I think that the larger issue is economic inequality.”
For some landlords, missing out on months of rent has made them want to lower their own financial risk by renting to people with higher incomes.
Robert Chavez Jr. owns about five rental homes in San Antonio and recently started managing almost 40 properties for his father, who is in his 90s. His father slipped and fell in the bathtub on New Year’s Day, and when he arrived at the hospital, doctors discovered he also had COVID-19.
Chavez, who works as a music professor in Los Angeles, flew back San Antonio to help his father recover and run his rental business. Chavez’s own tenants never paid late over the last year, but he found out that about 10 of his father’s tenants were behind — including one family who owed $10,000.
Some of them have cooperated in trying to find rental assistance, but others haven’t, he said. It’s made him rethink who he’ll rent to in the future, and now he’s planning to renovate the houses to attract families who earn more money.
“I’m afraid it might be like in California, where you pay the first month’s rent, deposit and last month’s rent,” Chavez said. “That’s gonna be tough for a lot of people unless you have a good job, and it’s going to force a lot of people into cheaper housing — probably on the poor side of town.”