Pot bangers in LR urge break for state’s renters
Governor called on to halt evictions
Perched atop her parents’ parked car, 6-year-old Jett Pennington used a spatula and a spoon to drum on an upside-down pot Friday outside the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion.
Cars with signs propped in their windows calling for an end to evictions and a freeze on rent payments lined the street outside the mansion. Protesters wearing masks marched up and down the sidewalk, clanging dishes together above their heads and chanting for rent relief during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I just think the governor needs to wake up and face reality,” said Neil Sealy, an organizer with Arkansas Renters United. “Covid-19 is not going away anytime soon.”
Arkansas Renters United members organized the “pots and pans” protest, and about 30 people marched outside the Governor’s Mansion. Many more sat in cars and joined in.
As first-of-the-month rent payments come due in Arkansas and nationally, record numbers of people have applied for unemployment benefits, and many more either don’t qualify or haven’t been able to get through logjammed state systems, The Associated Press reported this week.
Many states and localities have put policies in place to halt evictions, foreclosures and utility shutoffs to avoid pushing people into or near homelessness during a time when people are being asked
or ordered to stay in their homes, according to the AP.
Tenants-rights groups across the country have held protests similar to the one in Little Rock, asking for a cancellation of rent and a hold on evictions. Many are part of a nationwide effort for people who “can’t or won’t” pay rent on the first of the month, according to the website for We Strike Together.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson has not instituted any hold on evictions in Arkansas. In the past couple of weeks, he’s encouraged landlords to work in a “humanitarian fashion” with their tenants and said it’s his office’s understanding that most evictions already filed aren’t a result of the pandemic.
“There’s a lot of different reasons that a landlord might need to take action, a whole host of different reasons … I don’t think the right answer is to use my executive power and to stop all proceedings in Arkansas regardless of the reason,” Hutchinson said during Friday’s press briefing.
Hutchinson also recommended that Arkansans who can’t pay rent because they’ve lost their jobs during the pandemic get help from nonprofits.
In an interview Friday, Sealy said that he wants to see a total eviction moratorium, with some exceptions for renters who commit crimes or destroy property.
He also would like the federal government to enact a hold on all payments from renters, and issue stipends to landlords.
“It’s going to take a while for us to recover,” he said. “We’re all going to have to chip in.”
About one-third of Arkansans are renters.
On Tuesday, the Arkansas Supreme Court issued an order that anyone who files an eviction for nonpayment of rent must affirmatively state that the property is not covered by the federal coronavirus relief measure. The act bans evictions from many federally backed properties such as federally subsidized housing, rural voucher-program housing and housing financed through federally backed mortgages.
The state court’s order bans evictions from these federally funded properties until July 25.
Still, Sealy said, evictions are occurring during the pandemic and families don’t have anywhere to go. Many have seen delays in receiving their stimulus checks and increases in expenses with children moving back home from college and school-age children at home all day.
“It seems he [Hutchinson] thinks that landlords and tenants are working it out, but that’s not the case,” Sealy said.
In previous interviews, representatives from the Landlord Association of Arkansas said they’re encouraging members to work with tenants as much as possible.
Samantha Nguyen attended the protest with Jett, her 6-year-old daughter; Indie, her son who is almost 2; and her husband, Riley Pennington.
Nguyen and Pennington both worked in the restaurant industry — he as a bartender and she as a server. The Little Rock couple lost their jobs and have been getting by so far. But on May 10, they could face late charges if the $850 rent on their three-bedroom apartment isn’t paid.
Nguyen said they’re lucky to have help from family members and friends.
“Without them, we would be already homeless,” she said, adjusting the toddler on her hip as she marched in front of the mansion’s gates.
Nearly a block away, Shalonda Michelle stood, rapping the inside of a pot with a metal spoon. She wanted to join the protest but as a cancer survivor, she needed to stay as far away as possible from the other protesters to avoid infection.
Throat cancer left her voice raspy and quiet, she said, and gave her an understanding of what it’s like to not know whether you’ll be able to pay monthly bills.
“I’ve been in that position,” she said, describing a treatment that lasted longer than she’d anticipated, leaving her unable to work.
She’s a single mother with four kids — 20, 18, 16 and 15. She’s also a part-time employee and full-time student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock studying mass communications, mass media and sociology. She grew up in the now-demolished Highland Court projects and said she saw the threat of eviction firsthand as a child, as well as a “bad neighborhood” rife with violence and drugs.
She has moved to a safer part of town now and started getting a college degree because she wants to help make a difference for people who have low incomes.
Michelle said she was at the protest Friday because she wants to governor to hear the requests of low-income renters during the pandemic.
“He is the governor of all people,” she said. “That is rich people, middle-class people and poor people. Poor people voted for him. Renters voted for him.”
“There’s a lot of different reasons that a landlord might need to take action, a whole host of different reasons … I don’t think the right answer is to use my executive power and to stop all proceedings in Arkansas regardless of the reason.” —Governor Asa Hutchinson