Landlords defying image with action
Tenant advocates: We work together
It is mid-morning at the Manchester Townhomes complex on the Northeast Side, and Anamaria Perales-lang is riding herd on her staff like a stern-but-loving principal.
The complex’s director asks about vandalism at the playground, hears complaints about mischievous, unsupervised children, and reminds them to wear gloves when they remove poison ivy.
The meeting adjourns, and Peraleslang sighs and says the job is like, “being a mayor of a little city.”
Yes, the job comes with plenty of hassles.
But she also points out that in PRECOVID-19 days at Manchester and the other two complexes she runs for Belle Harbour Management (Newcastle Townhomes, also on the Northeast Side, and Chelsea Townhomes on the
East Side), management did things like organize Halloween parties and hand out cookies to kids as they got off the school bus.
“We really do care about our residents,” she said.
And for that reason, Perales-lang bristles at one of the common narratives of the pandemic: The federal eviction moratorium was the only thing protecting stricken tenants from eviction by their greedy, heartless landlords.
“The city does these seminars, like `What to do if you lose your job,’ or `if
you’re being evicted, call us and know what your rights are,’” she said. “They have villainized landlords for doing their jobs. Only a landlord gets into trouble for wanting to be paid for the service we provide.
“If I go to Kroger and take something, people expect me to pay for it. I can’t say, `Can I have until October 1 to pay for it?’”
In reality, Perales-lang knows it’s not quite that black and white. The pandemic resulted in millions of people losing their jobs, including many working at lower-wage jobs in the service industry who may have been living paycheckto-paycheck.
That’s the reason the eviction moratorium was issued, and extended multiple times.
The Supreme Court on Thursday lifted the Biden administration’s newest federal ban on evictions, granting a bid from a group of landlords to block the pandemic-related protections for renters facing eviction in most of the country.
It was supposed to remain in effect nationally through Oct. 3, but Franklin County Municipal Court judges announced on Aug. 5 that because of a federal appeals court ruling, they would no longer honor the moratorium.
That gave landlords more leverage when dealing with tenants.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, millions of dollars of federal housing-assistance funds began flowing into social-service program coffers, and after an initial bottleneck in getting those funds to people in need, central Ohio officials say the money now is being disbursed more efficiently.
“IMPACT (Community Action, the South Side nonprofit that has coordinated much of the relief funds) has done a great job of working their butts off and trying to help out,” said Columbus attorney Michael Cassone, who primarily represents landlords. “A lot of landlords were saying at first they had to wait six to eight weeks (for money) but now they’re getting checks within three to four weeks, which is where they want to be.”
Cassone said he wants people to realize that landlords are not all “big bad ugly people who just want money.”
It might surprise some to hear that
several local advocates agree.
Bo Chilton, CEO of IMPACT, said overall, he felt landlords have worked well with his group.
“Honestly, I have been really inspired by the way the community has rallied together through this period,” Chilton said. “You will always have a few individuals who go their own way, but our community has really tried to come together to keep people safe in their homes.”
Phil Cole is executive director of the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies. When his group issued its annual report on poverty in the state on Aug. 9, he pointed out the importance of emergency rental assistance programs.
“It has kept people in their homes and apartments, and also kept landlords whole,” Cole said. “Sometimes housing advocates forget that many of these small landlords are one or two rent payments away from having trouble paying the mortgage on the rental property. We have to be concerned about them, too.”
Andy Lucas is one of those small landlords.
The Westgate resident gradually bought up seven rental homes around central Ohio and three years ago, the 61year-old retired from his job at Time Warner (later Spectrum) to live primarily on his rental income.
He said he has been fortunate that none of his tenants have been behind on rent during the pandemic.
“I feel blessed that I didn’t have any issues, because this is my income,” Lucas said. “It would have been devastating to me if I could not have gotten rent from one or two of these properties. I still have mortgages on all of them that I have to pay.”
As Chilton said, of course there are good and bad in every profession.
Chilton said some attorneys who represent landlords are encouraging their clients to file eviction notices, on the erroneous belief that tenants cannot qualify for the emergency rent assistance unless they have an eviction notice hanging over them.
That is just not true, Chilton said. “We urge landlords to work with us instead of filing the eviction,” he said, adding that having an eviction filing on their record can make a tenant become “an unrentable.”
Perales-lang also acknowledges some bad apples in her profession, or “slumlords” as she calls them. She is upset that they give all landlords a bad name.
For her part, she said she has yet to evict a tenant who lost their job during COVID-19, preferring to work with them before it gets to a crisis situation.
“You don’t kick out people when they need you the most,” she said. “We all recognize this (pandemic) happened to all of us, and we have to figure out a solution and get through it.” kgordon@dispatch.com @kgdispatch
“You will always have a few individuals who go their own way, but our community has really tried to come together to keep people safe in their homes.” Bo Chilton, CEO of IMPACT