City leaders need to do more to stave off looming eviction crisis
For the first few months of the pandemic, Veronica Trancoso of Pasadena managed to make ends meet, even without her regular income from cleaning houses, which plunged as clients sheltered at home.
She began making enchiladas and selling them to passersby, as well as construction workers in her neighborhood. That brought in some money — enough to pay for utilities and other small bills.
But in recent weeks that business has faltered, too, as heavy rains across southeast Texas drove the construction workers inside. And now the 47-year-old’s financial position is precarious enough that she’s worried she and her children will end up on the streets.
“No hay trabajo,” Trancoso said — there is no work. One of her neighbors was already evicted, she added, after falling severely behind on rent. Another “self-evicted,” out of fear of a legal process that could expose her to immigration authorities.
An alarming number of Americans are in a similar predicament, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic itself, the toll it has taken on the economy, and the relatively skimpy relief provided to struggling workers thus far as part of the response to both.
The unemployment rate has soared, across the state and country. A federal evictions moratorium, prohibiting landlords whose properties are backed by the government from evicting tenants, expired last month. So did emergency unemployment insurance, also part of the CARES Act, which had supplemented lost wages with an extra $600 a week. Amid a congressional standoff over a new aid package, President Donald Trump on Saturday signed executive orders to extend the evictions moratorium and provide a lower amount, $400 a week, to the unemployed; Democrats have questioned the legality of the moves.
“It is a humongous problem,” said Marcia Johnson, a professor of law at Texas Southern Univer
sity, prior to Trump’s announcement.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, she continued, there was an evictions crisis in Harris County, with a disproportionate impact on African-American women and children. COVID-19 has exacerbated that problem by creating new challenges for anyone experiencing housing insecurity.
“It’s not a matter of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” said Johnson, who also serves on the Housing Stability Task Force established in June by Harris County and the city of Houston.
At the task force’s last meeting, she continued, they heard testimony from a man, the sole provider for his family, who had been unable to work since contracting the virus.
“I don’t know if there was a dry eye in the house, because it was a Zoom, but there wasn’t a dry eye here,” she said.
Dana Karni, an attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid who also serves on the task force, said that she considered July 25 — the day the aforementioned provisions in the federal CARES Act expired — a sort of “doomsday.”
The evictions moratorium hadn’t covered all renters, or been enforced particularly well. A new analysis led by South Texas College of Law-Houston professor Eric Kwartler finds that nearly 24 percent of the evictions filed in Harris County during the threemonth period it covered were illegal. Still, it was some measure of protection for many renters in Harris County, who were already facing a scarcity of affordable housing as well as a statewide legal regime that is, from a tenant’s perspective, not especially friendly.
“Couple that with the fact that I think we’re scratching 100 degrees outside in Houston; rent is due; school is around the corner … ” Karni said.
She added that she’s particularly distressed for families facing the prospect of eviction while preparing for the school year, which is set to begin virtually.
Although officials in other big cities and counties have extended some local protections for renters, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner declined to bring up a proposal that would have created a grace period at a City Council meeting this past week. The mayor explained, “I am concerned that a moratorium does not remove the financial obligation and increases the hole people would have to dig themselves out from under.”
Instead, council passed a second rental relief program, for $20 million. The first round of funding, $15 million approved in May, was spoken for in less than 90 minutes. In San Antonio, leaders last spring set aside $50 million for rental and mortgage assistance and still had about $20 million left at the end of July.
There’s a general consensus that the government needs to do more, lest the pandemic spiral into a disaster of even more epic proportions. Among advocates, there’s a sense that the action needs to come from the local level.
“We’re the only large city without a moratorium, or even something as weak as a grace period,” said Josephine Lee, an organizer with El Pueblo Primero. She explained that she’s particularly worried about low-wage and immigrant workers, many of whom are considered “essential” but lack the health care coverage that might go along with that; they may “have to choose between homelessness or their health.”
When our neighbors are forced to make that choice, it will take a toll on the entire community.