The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Evictions rising in Conn. as rental assistance program faces backlog
As moratoriums have ended, final eviction orders have been rising in Connecticut at a time when officials say the state’s rental assistance program is backlogged and understaffed.
And some fear the situation is going to get worse in February when a Gov. Ned Lamont executive order expires, reducing the amount of time landlords need to give tenants to just three days before evicting them.
“I think people generally are still suffering and poor people are still feeling the effects of COVID,” said Nancy Hronek, a staff attorney who works on eviction defense at Greater Hartford Legal Aid. “We had an eviction crisis before COVID, and it certainly hasn’t made it any better.”
The issue has been compounded by Connecticut’s rental assistance program again seeing delays in application processing, which advocates say is slowing down payments for renters in need.
The program had hired additional case review staff temporarily before the funding ran out, Department of Housing spokesman Aaron Turner said.
“That level of staffing is not financially sustainable, within the program guidelines provided by U.S. Treasury,” Turner said.
Between contractors, consultants and department staff, there were 250 people working on the program at its height. As of Friday, there were 162 people working on UniteCT, “which is economically sustainable,” Turner said.
At its height, the program was processing fully completed applications within 15 days, on average. Now, a notice on the UniteCT website says the process could take up to 60 days.
The pandemic has also impacted “staff availability,” Turner said.
“Currently, we have the necessary staffing in place to meet the administrative cost limitations of the program and to continue to meet the needs of our applicants,” Turner added.
But housing advocates say the UniteCT program’s slow-down is hurting tenants, some of whom they say are having evictions filed against them while they wait for their applications to be processed or for money to come through.
Need hasn’t slowed down in recent months — the latest spikes in COVID-19 have caused more to miss work because of illness and quarantines. And some are still paying off back rent from months ago, said Virginia Spell, interim executive director of the Urban League of Southern Connecticut.
“We have been bombarded with folks who are facing eviction, who are not able to get resolution, who are frustrated, who are angry, who are scared,” Spell said.
She added that the slowdowns are also affecting landlords, who are frustrated at having missed rental payments for months.
“We’re really concerned
about some of the landlords that are very impatient and want to be made whole,” she said.
Eviction filings and final orders, called executions, have been picking up in Connecticut since a federal moratorium on most evictions for nonpayment of rent ended in August. There were 1,148 evictions filed and 292 final eviction orders issued up to Dec. 29, according to data from the Connecticut Fair Housing Center.
Final eviction orders are also up from lows earlier in the pandemic, but down from pre-pandemic levels, data shows.
Filings are also below December 2019, when there were 1,498, but up significantly from the 395 evictions that were filed in July 2021.
“It sure feels like we have more cases, it sure feels like we have more people who are desperate, it sure feels like we have more people who are at the end of their rope,” Hronek said.
And the assistance program’s slow-down is occurring even as the state’s own estimates said the program could help 3,500 Connecticut households in December, January and February.
Those estimates were included in a request for $243 million in additional funding the state sent in November to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Treasury is in the process of reallocating money from states and localities that were slower to spend their allocations.
For now, that additional money isn’t coming to Connecticut, Turner said.
“We heard back that the amount of reallocated funds requested by eligible grantees was far greater than the funding available to distribute,” he said.
The UniteCT program was funded with about $400.6 million for rent assistance in federal dollars through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. The program, which had two rounds of funding, was established to help prevent a flood of evictions for people who have been financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the first round of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, Connecticut received $235.9 million. The state’s total allocated for round two was $186.6 million. Some of that federal money went toward administrative costs.
Although early problems with the initial program caused a slow start, Connecticut picked up the pace this fall and met federal guidelines to spend at least 65 percent of the first round of funding by the end of September.
The state had spent $342.3 million on rental assistance as of Thursday, according to its data dashboard. Pamela Heller, an attorney with the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, said she has several clients who are waiting on application approvals and may soon face eviction.
Still more are in the recertification process. They previously applied for money and didn’t receive the full $15,000 that’s possible through the program. So they applied again, which is allowed through UniteCT.
One in particular submitted his recertification documents at the end of October, but still hasn't received assistance, Heller said.
“I have so many folks who are recertifying and are still struggling,” she said. “… That’s not to mention new applications, people who are just learning about the program.”
Advocates expect that the number of evictions will rise at a faster rate next month when a gubernatorial executive order expires, requiring landlords to have a UniteCT case number to file an eviction and give 30 days notice of an eviction.
The order, which expires Feb. 15, also includes a requirement that tenants be allowed to repay their rent within the 30 days to reinstate a lease.
After the order expires, the 30-day notice will go back to a three-day notice.
“We expect cases to be very, very fast, to move very quickly,” Hronek said.