Evictions on the rise months after federal moratorium 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 girded 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.
The 51-year-old desperately 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.
There was a brief lull in evictions after the ban ended. But housing advocates say they’re on the rise in many parts of the country —- though numbers remain below prepandemic levels due to the infusion of federal rental assistance and other pandemicrelated assistance like expanded child tax credit payments that are also set to end.
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. Evictions in September increased 10.4% from August. October numbers were 38 percent above August levels and 25 percent higher than in September. Filings fell around 7 percent from October to November and now remain about 48 percent below prepandemic levels.
Among places where evictions are returning to normal
are Connecticut as well as Houston, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, according to the Eviction Lab. Florida, too, has seen a significant rise, with filings in Tampa and Gainesville returning to near pre-pandemic levels.
“There was a batch of initial commentary coming out when the moratorium ended and the tone … was, well, there wasn’t a tsunami so we don’t have an eviction crisis on our hands,” said Ben Martin, senior researcher at Texas Housers, a nonprofit focused on housing issues.
“That initial narrative was somewhat misleading. What we are seeing is a reflection of reality, which is that evictions take time to work their way
into and through the court system.”
Among the concerns is that some landlords who got federal assistance are still evicting tenants. A survey of nearly 120 attorneys nationwide from the National Housing Law Project found 86 percent had seen cases like this. They also saw increasing instances of landlords lying in court to evict tenants and illegally locking out 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.”