Evictions loom as grace periods end
After dark on a warm night this spring, Wilfredo Avila and his girlfriend Patricia Carillo lumbered toward the park near their apartment in Washington, D.C., their arms heavy with plastic bags filled with their clothes.
The couple had only lost their jobs at an auto repair shop and bakery two weeks earlier. It was enough time to nudge their life already on the precipice of disaster — in which any cash they earned was almost immediately spent on necessities — over the edge. A day earlier, they had offered their landlord everything they had: half of the $925 they owed for the bedroom they were subletting in the man’s home.
“Be out by tomorrow,” he told them, “or we’re going to have problems.”
Avila, who is from Honduras, knew from watching the news that evictions had been banned in Washington during the pandemic. He also knew that calling the authorities could draw attention to his lack of immigration status. So the couple set off.
They walked for hours, talking about what to do next. Eventually they sat down on a bench to rest, still with no plan, and nodded off to sleep.
When the nation’s economy ground to a halt this spring, economists warned that an avalanche of evictions was looming. The federal government and many states rushed to ban them temporarily. They placed moratoriums on mortgage foreclosures to relieve financial pressure on landlords.
But 20 states, including Louisiana, Texas, Colorado and Wisconsin, have since lifted their restrictions and researchers have tracked thousands of recent eviction filings in places where data is available. Eviction bans in nine other states and at the federal level are set to expire by the end of the month. All told, Amherst College anticipates that nearly 28 million households are at risk of being turned out onto the streets because of job losses tied to the pandemic.
Even in places with ordinances barring evictions, the protections have been of little help to immigrants like Avila and Carillo, who fear that complaining to the authorities about their landlord could lead to a consequence worse than homelessness: deportation.
Landlords argue that they are unfairly being forced to absorb the brunt of the financial burden of pandemic job losses. “Why isn’t food free? Why isn’t clothing free? Why aren’t all the other necessities of life free, yet shelter is being made free?” said Sherwin Belkin, a legal adviser for the Real Estate Board of New York, which represents property owners.
In Washington, where an eviction moratorium is still in place, the attorney general’s office has collected 165 complaints of illegal evictions and late fees and sent 38 cease-anddesist letters to landlords since April 24, when it began keeping data. In one apartment building in the district, landlords posted signs in Spanish announcing that tenants who missed rent payments would be evicted immediately, according to Jennifer Berger, who heads the office’s social justice division.
Berger said immigrants have lodged the majority of complaints her office has received. She suspects far more have lost their homes than those who have come forward to complain.
“There’s inherent coercion within the immigrant community because they live in fear of being deported, so they’re afraid to speak out,” she said.