South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Renters could soon be
For hundreds of South Florida families behind on their rent, New Years Day looms not as a signal of fresh beginning and hope, but as the day their legal right to stay in their home will expire.
That’s the day the federal government’s current nationwide moratorium on evictions, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sept. 4, is scheduled to end. Unless it is extended as part of the long-negotiated COVID-19 relief bill still in negotiation in Congress, thousands of evictions cases piling up in South Florida courts will be allowed to proceed to their final step— removal of tenants.
Many South Florida tenants who lost income during the pandemic have already felt the sting of eviction.
Forced to vacate his Holly wood home in October because he didn’t knowabout the CDC moratorium, Luis Zuniga now lives in a small room a this sister’ s house and must spend timewith his sons, who live with their mom, outside at public parks.
“It’s been rough,” he said. “I’ve always tried to pay my bills. Now I’ve got an eviction inmy name.”
Landlord sin South Florida have packed the courts with evictions cases since a statewide eviction ban expired on Sept. 30, ananalysis of court data by the South Florida Sun Sentinel shows. Between Oct.
1 and Dec. 15, the data shows that
2,834 cases were filed in Broward County and 1,534 cases in Palm Beach County.
Those totals were lower than during the same period in 2019, when jobless rates were near record lows and the rental market was churning normally. Then, landlords filed 3,230 eviction suits in Broward County and 1,585 in Palm Beach County. What’s not known is how many evictions cases would have been filed this year against renters who asserted that they were protected by moratoriums issued by the CDC or federal homeloan guarantors.
Comparable data for MiamiDade County was not available, but more than 7,000 cases have been filed in that county sinceMarch
12, according to Alan a Greer, director and co-founder of the Miamibased Community Justice Project, a legal services foundation for low-income residents.
The looming eviction problem, of course, is not limited to South Florida. About a third of U.S. households say they’re behind on rent or mortgage payments and likely to face eviction or foreclosure in the next two months, according to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.
“This has the potential of being the biggest housing crisis of our lifetime,” said David Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference, a nonprofit dedicated toaffordable housing for all Americans.
Therelief bill negotiated in early December included two forms of short-term help: $25 billion in direct assistance for landlordsand tenants, anda further extension of the eviction moratorium through the end of January. The most recent version of the bill includes an additional round of stimulus checks and more money for enhanced unemployment benefits.
For the first seven months of the pandemic, evictions were prevented by layers of protections fromvarious levels ofgovernment. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed executive orders forbidding evictions. A federal relief bill enacted inMarch bannedevictions for tenants living in housing financed by federally backed loans or receive federal housing assistance. The state court system barred courts from processing final orders to vacate, knownas writs of possession. And sheriffs declared that they would not serve writs of possession even if courts processed them.
Onebyone, most of those protection shave been allowed to expire. Currently only two pandemic-related moratoriums remain in place — the CDC’s moratorium and another by federal housing agencies that applies to property with mortgage loans owned by loan guarantors FannieMae and Freddie Mac or the Federal Housing Administration. In Miami-Dade County, the sheriff’s moratorium on serving final orders to vacate remainsin place for evictions cases filed afterMarch 13.
On Dec. 2, the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that its eviction moratorium, estimated to cover about 28% of 43.8 million rental units in the U.S., would be extended to Jan. 31. Tenants can look up their addresses at the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s website to see if the moratorium applies to them. Go to nlihc.org/federal-moratoriums and go to theCARESAct database at the bottom of the page.
Many renters failed to protect themselves
Rentersadvocates in Florida say the CDC moratorium hasn’t been as effective as they would have liked. Unlike previous protections, it required renters to take action. They had to create or download and sign a form attesting that they were unable to pay their full rent because of substantial COVID-19related income loss and that they used best efforts to obtain all available government assistance for rent or housing. Then they had to present theformto their landlords.
Without the form, landlords were free as of Oct. 1 to initiate or resume eviction proceedings against past-due tenants.
When landlords file eviction actions for non-payment of rent, they must serve tenants with a three- day notice to pay what’s owed or vacate the home. Florida law gives tenants five days to dispute the amount owed by filing a Motion to Determine Rent. Some Florida judges have accepted CDC declarations filed with those motions and put the eviction cases on hold, said Ida Eskamani, spokeswoman for the Florida Housing Justice Alliance, an advocacy organization.
But many judges won’t accept the declaration after five days, she said. “A lot of folks don’t realize that,” she added.
In fact, many tenants didn’t knowabout the CDC moratorium or the required form unless they read about it in the media orwere informed by housing assistance organizations.
Edwin Cordova, supervising attorney for housing rights at Legal Aid Service of Broward County, said the office receives 200 calls aweek from residents facing eviction. In many cases, callers were uninformed about the CDC protection, Cordova said.
Luis Zuniga didn’t know about it after he was served a notice to leave the Hollywood home he rented and lived in with his two 11-year- old sons. His eviction noticewas served inAugust while the state’ s eviction ban remained in effect. The CDC’ s moratorium took effect on Sept. 4— nearly a month before DeSantis allowed the state moratorium to expire.
Zuniga, who said his work in construction dried up after the pandemic hit, could have submitted the form anytime between Sept. 4 and Sept. 30 if he had knownabout it.
After receiving the eviction notice, Zuniga said he was able to put together $2,000 of the $5,000 he owed and submitted it to the court along with a handwritten letter pleading for more time to findfull-timework. “I likewhere I live andmy kids are happy where we live,” the letter said. “I have always worked but today living is rough with the COVID-19. Please give me some time to pay off the money I owe.”
But his landlord was ready to move on, and without a CDC declaration from Zuniga, had no legal reason not to proceed with the eviction. Zuni ga rented a storage unit and st owed the contents of thehouseso his sons wouldn’t have to see sheriff’ s deputies change the locks and “have their stuff thrown to the side of the street.”
Now staying with his sister while his ex-wifekeeps the boys at her home, Zuniga says he harbors no ill will toward his landlord. “I can’t blame the guy. He’s got bills the sameway I’ve got bills. He just got frustrated.”
Hundreds of eviction cases ‘disposed’
Despite the moratoriums, 1,210 of the 2,834 cases in Broward County have already been “disposed,” according to the clerk of court’swebsite. Thatmeansone of several outcomes have already taken place: The landlord agreed to a repayment plan with the tenant and withdrewthe case; the tenant repaid the amount owed in full; the tenant left voluntarily and the landlord didn’t need to send sheriff’s deputies to serve an order to vacate; or the order to vacate was served because the tenant did not assert that they were protected under one of the eviction moratoriums.
Landlords that own large numbers of rental units are aware of the remaining protections and take care to tell the court that they donot apply in cases they file. Thirty-two eviction cases filed since Oct. 1 against tenants in properties managed by Miami-based United Property Management include statements affirming that the properties are not covered by federally backed loans and that the tenants did not submit aCDCdeclaration.