Evicted in middle of virus pandemic
Crisis looms as families struggle, advocates warn
The residents of Apartment 2 said one word in court before the case was decided against them.
Sharetta Burleson and her boyfriend, Anthony Tillis, were among the handful of people who showed up to eviction court in person on a rainy Tuesday morning. Their docket time was set for 9 a.m. The clerk had spent the past 30 minutes checking in plaintiffs, defendants and attorneys on a Zoom call that was streamed on TV screens lining the courtroom walls.
Their landlord’s representative presented the case: Burleson and Tillis had not paid their rent. Judge Joe Stephens turned to the couple.
“Have you all paid your rent?” he asked.
At the same time, they replied: “No.”
Stephens thanked them for their testimony and decided the case in favor of
their apartment complex. They would have to be out in eight days.
As the novel coronavirus pandemic drags on, millions of Americans are left unable to make rent or mortgage payments and risk losing their homes. People have extended their credit lines, blown off car payments and drawn on savings to stave off homelessness. Advocates warn of a looming eviction crisis as people run out of ways to pay rent.
Tillis, 55, and Burleson, 35, live in the $750-a-month apartment with their son. They get by on Burleson’s disability check ($781 per month) and food stamps. Burleson used to do hair, cut lawns and get odd jobs to stretch their cash — jobs that don’t exist for her with the pandemic. She survives on doing a few women’s hair a week. Burleson’s mother, a home health aide, helps when she can, but the pandemic cut her hours, too.
It’s not just them. One of their upstairs neighbors in the complex — a nondescript gray twostory plopped down in east Houston — lost his job during the coronavirus pandemic. He started fighting so much with his girlfriend that he moved out of the state. Two doors down, in Apartment
4, 28-year-old Sharonda Donatto had just been evicted, too: She was late to court that morning, so the judge decided automatically for her landlord. Like Burleson’s mother, Donatto was a home health aide. Her hours
“We already knew … we were gonna have to leave this week or be ready this week.” Sharonda Donatto
started slowing down.
“We already knew basically we were gonna have to leave this week or be ready this week,” Donatto said. She lives in the apartment with her two children, 7 and 4. She’s not sorry to go. She pointed to stains on the shower wall that she said were mold and said they’d lived with roaches for months. When she stopped being able to pay all her rent, she said, her landlord stopped fixing the apartment. Their landlord did not respond to requests for comment.
In Apartment 2, Tillis and Burleson live out of an ice-stuffed cooler. They don’t have a refrigerator. It broke, they said, and they lost $350 worth of food.
“’Cause of this pandemic, I barely wanna go outside. But I know we have to survive. We have to eat. We have to feed the baby. He’s a big boy.” Burleson looked down at her son, Caleb, twirling on the carpet. “You want doughnut holes?”
Caleb grinned. “I’m gonna fly my doughnut hole to the moon.”
Burelson sighed. Tillis had gone out to what would be their stoop for a few more days to smoke a cigarette. She tries to smile for Caleb, not to cry in front of him, but she’s scared. She’s not sure where to go. Having an eviction on their records will make it harder to find a new apartment. They could try for a motel — but even that might be too expensive.
“We don’t know if we’re gonna have to go to a shelter,” she said. “We really don’t know.”