Lehigh County sees spike in evictions
Rising rents among main factors; lawyers can help those taken to court
In the Allentown apartment where she was living with her three children, Felicia Cantave noticed leaking from the ceiling in multiple rooms, including one of her son’s and her daughter’s.
After a couple of years of the leaks not being addressed, Cantave said, she decided to stop paying rent in 2021.
As a result, she said, her landlord evicted her, taking the case to court, where he won. Cantave, 11-year-old Amir, 8-yearold Kamron and 1-yearold Kamora were forced to find a new home.
Staying in a hotel, Cantave had to make compromises such as asking people to look after her daughter while she worked as a transportation clerk, or missing work to watch her.
“I was living in a hotel for about six to seven months because no one wanted to rent me because of my eviction,” Cantave said. “It set me back a lot. I didn’t have day care, really too much of anything. My son also said to me something that broke my heart. I will never forget, he said, ‘Mom, I see you working
so hard and we went from our big house to this little place. Maybe if I wasn’t here, it’d be easier for you.’ “
Lehigh County had the fourth most evictions filed in the state in 2021, behind only Philadelphia, Allegheny and Dauphin counties, according to the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania. Based on the number of renters per county, the Housing Alliance found, Lehigh ranked No. 3 in the state, behind only Dauphin and York counties. (Northampton County ranked 12th in terms of overall evictions, and seventh in eviction rate).
More than 8,300 tenant-landlord cases have been filed in Lehigh
County since August 2020, according to a news release from county Controller Mark Pinsley’s office. Of those cases, more than 2,500 ended in evictions; 120 were won by the tenant. The other cases would have had outcomes such as a settlement or the judge throwing out the case, according to Joshua Siegel, the assistant operations manager for the controller’s office.
Pinsley said those 2,500 eviction cases would translate to about two to three times that number in people being evicted.
Eviction filings and orders rose after the end of multiple eviction moratoriums during the pandemic, the Housing Alliance reported.
Being behind on rent is a big reason for eviction, according to Jessica Reimert, deputy executive director for operations at Community Action Lehigh Valley (formerly the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley), an anti-poverty nonprofit.
In Allentown, rents have increased by over 28% since the start of the pandemic, according to a report by Apartment List. Median monthly rents in Allentown are $1,291 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,605 for a two-bedroom, Apartment List found. Other analyses have found even higher numbers. Rent.com last month reported a one-bedroom apartment in the city costs $1,837 a month, while a two-bedroom apartment costs around $2,193.
Pinsley said the people most affected by evictions are those who have lost a job, especially during the pandemic, such as cashiers and waiters.
ZIP codes with higher percentages of households led by people of color and women with children also correlate with higher eviction filing rates, according to the Housing Alliance data.
Beyond nonpayment, Reimert said, other reasons for evictions include being distracted from paying bills because of mental health issues, not properly taking care of apartment spaces and landlords wanting wealthier tenants who can pay more rent.
Marc Rittle, executive director of New Bethany Ministries in Bethlehem, said wages haven’t kept up with the increased cost of living, including both the cost of housing and necessities like food.
“At times like this, I think you see the wealth gap widening even more,” he said. “The rich truly are getting richer and the poor truly are getting poorer.”
Possible solutions
Solutions that would help decrease eviction rates in the county, according to Reimert, would be more affordable housing and access to mental health services, especially for people with low income and who are dealing with anxiety and depression. Even a normal workday can prevent people from having the time to take off from work and prioritize their mental health, she added.
“[More mental health services] would aid in getting people the ability to keep their jobs … which will then be essential to pay their rent and care for their property,” she said. “The pandemic was hard on everybody and we’re seeing that carry on through the dismantled social situations and people struggling to return to a normal routine.”
Rittle said the main way to stop evictions would be for property owners to stop increasing the price of rent.
“I’m not an economist, but it looks like a bubble where … either everyone is just going to lose their home or property owners are going to have to reduce their rents,” he said.
A few landlords have reached out to Rittle to say they’ve been keeping rents low or won’t evict tenants until finding an alternative solution for them, he said.
Pinsley last year proposed a $1.5 million investment in a “right-to-counsel” program that would provide tenants representation in eviction cases. as well as decreasing service costs in processing evictions.
Pinsley cited a study commissioned by the Philadelphia Bar Association that claimed tenants experienced disruptive displacement 5% of the time when they were legally represented compared with 78% of the time when they weren’t.
James S. Tupitza, a West Chester lawyer who has 50 years of experience in landlord-tenant cases, said tenants having a lawyer present allows their case to be taken much more seriously and provides the tenant knowledge of the law they may not have otherwise.
“A landlord is going to be very experienced in the rules of the road, so to speak, and a tenant is going to have zero experience,” Tupitza said. “So they might be bluffed into something. If you’re going to go play pro baseball, you don’t walk into the field by yourself. You hire a pro baseball player to play the game for you ... because you’re just not going to be able to do it.”
Pinsley proposed getting the money from the American Rescue Plan, the 2021 economic stimulus bill meant to speed up the country’s recovery from the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
“In many cases, if you end up talking to some landlords, I think what you would find is that the landlords would like this as well because ultimately, what they want is their money,” Pinsley said. “They’re not necessarily interested in kicking somebody out so long as they’re getting paid. A lot of the time, the issue with the people who are being displaced is that the rent is 30% or more of their income. So if you get behind on your income when rent is 30% or more of it, you can never catch up.”
The Landlord Association of Pennsylvania didn’t reply to requests for comment.
Lehigh County allocated about $100,000 to Pinsley’s plan in July.
“We wish that we could fund every great idea,” Community and Economic Development Director Frank Kane said. “When that [$100,000] runs out … it’s possible we could entertain the idea of funding more.”
Creating jobs that can keep up with the rate of inflation in the county would help decrease the number of evictions here, he said.
In the meantime, the county has assisted 3,500 households so far with the $47 million distributed from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, Kane said.
“That’s exactly the issue,” Pinsley said. “Some of these people will be entitled to money that they can use. It’s possible that these landlords would be paid back, it’s just that there’s a timing issue.”
Pinsley still wants the larger investment, even if it’s over a period time.
“My hope is … we can create enough information so that people put some pressure on the commissioners [so] that they immediately invest about half a million dollars,” he said.
Cantave didn’t attend the court hearing in her eviction. She said she would have if she hadn’t been in a car accident that day.
She said she didn’t have legal representation during her eviction; having it “absolutely” would have helped her case, she said.