Extensions fall short as CT renters struggle
Connecticut’s rent shortfall is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars as people continue to suffer unemployment and income loss caused by the pandemic.
Extensions of the federal and state moratoriums have not been enough to stop all evictions — or help struggling individuals to pay their rent make up for the income lost.
Since March, about 3,000
eviction summary processes have been filed in Connecticut, with 700 executions delivered through the courts, according to Erin Kemple, executive director of the Connecticut Fair Housing Center.
This is still far below the average annual number of eviction cases in Connecticut, which are around 20,000.
Yet every week, staff at the center have watched eviction filings increase, now averaging about 100 a week, Kemple said.
“The eviction crisis is already here,” she said.
Nearly 20 percent of Connecticut households were behind on rent payments as of Dec. 21, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey.
The shortages are higher for people of color, with 30.5 percent of Black households and 22.2 percent of Hispanic households not caught up as
compared to 13 percent of white rental households who are behind on rent.
Federal and statewide rent moratoriums are halting evictions but not entirely preventing them, and once they expire, back rent will be due. Nationally 30 million to 40 million people are at risk of losing their homes, according to an estimate by the National Housing Coalition.
At risk of eviction
Manar Qasim and her husband Mohamed, of Middletown, are among those struggling to keep up with rent. Their landlord keeps charging late rent fees on top of the rent they can’t fully pay, Manar Qasim said.
It has forced them to cut back their necessary spending, use credit cards, and borrow money from friends and family. She said they’re doing everything they can to stay in their home, but are afraid their landlord will evict them when the moratorium is no longer protecting them.
Between 77,000 and
161,00 people in Connecticut are estimated at risk for eviction, according to an analysis by global advisory firm Stout.
The state’s eviction moratorium prohibits a tenant from being evicted, but includes a few exceptions: the renter is six or more months overdue; they have outstanding rent due on or before Feb. 29, 2020; they’re a nuisance; or the landlord wants to use the property as their primary household.
Kemple said more people every month meet the exception of being behind six or more months.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium prohibits eviction for any reason if a tenant signs a declaration attesting they fall under certain hardships due to the pandemic.
The federal moratorium has been in effect since Sept. 4, continuing through March 31, since President Joe Biden extended the cutoff date an extra two months through executive order last week.
Biden has called on Congress to enact legislation to extend the eviction and foreclosure moratorium through September.
Connecticut’s moratorium expires Feb. 9 when Gov. Ned Lamont’s executive powers do.
State Sen. Martin Looney, D-New Haven, said the legislature will need to grant some extension of Lamont’s powers to ensure there’s no gap in the executive orders as the legislature evaluates what orders should become established policy.
Looney said rental assistance will be part of that discussion, as well as help for small landlords.
The Connecticut Department of Housing is working to launch a new rental assistance program with $237 million expected to arrive soon from the federal government as part of pandemic assistance.
“I think everybody is hoping and praying that the money that’s come to the state will be deployed in a smart and strategic way to quell this potential tsunami,” said Erin Boggs, executive director of Open Communities Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for equitable housing.
The state’s previous rental assistance program closed in early December after spending $27 million of the program’s budgeted $40 million. The money spent went to paying past rent to landlords but not enough was spent to provide future assistance, Boggs said.
Multifaceted issue
While the moratoriums have aided several million Americans during the pandemic and helped to contain the disease, billions of dollars in housing costs have gone unpaid.
The estimated range of rent shortfall across the country is between $13.2 billion and $24.4 billion, according to Stout, which created an analysis using weekly data from the U.S. Census Bureau Household
Pulse Survey.
In Connecticut, it’s estimated as high as $274 million.
A renter’s inability to pay leads to small multifamily landlords losing income, which in turn can cause property deterioration as landlords can’t afford upkeep or repairs, potentially leading to foreclosures.
Joshua Pedreira, an attorney representing tenants and landlords in eviction cases, said both sides feel like they have nowhere to turn.
Pedreira said Connecticut law, including the moratoriums, generally favors tenants, but often renters are misinformed about their rights.
Kemple said the state’s moratorium is not enough to help renters, and extending it piecemeal causes stress and fear among tenants because they don’t know if they’re going to suddenly receive papers to attend court.
All of this creates wider equity gaps among people of color as compared to white people because of how housing influences other areas, she said.
More Black and Hispanic families rent their homes as opposed to owning them, with the opposite being true of whites, so with a rental crisis at hand Kemple said they’re expecting to see a large number of people of color being evicted.
“In addition to bearing the brunt of the physical costs of pandemic, they’ll also bear the cost of losing their homes,” she said.
Black and Hispanic people are hospitalized and die from COVID-19 at three to four times the rate of white people, according to the CDC.
Junta for Progressive Action, a New Haven nonprofit serving Latino and immigrant communities in the city, focused early on helping tenants with rent. The organization raised about $60,000 through GoFundMe and has distributed about $40,000 so far, said executive director Bruni Pizarro.
As they’ve been working to help their community, Pizarro said they’ve been bracing for the day the moratoriums end and what that will mean for renters and small landlords.
“If there was a bailout for the banks, why can’t there be a bailout for the people?” she said.
Pizarro said most of their participants have lost their jobs or had their work hours cut so that in June people were already worried about being evicted.
Confusing legalese
Cheila Serrano, Junta’s director of social services, said as tenants are getting notices to quit, they take it to mean an eviction has been ordered by the court and don’t know how to handle the process.
“Some people would rather be homeless than deal with the legal system,” Serrano said. “They don’t know anything about the law so we focus on helping people know their rights.”
In landlord-tenant disputes that go to court, about 80 percent of landlords have legal counsel while just 7 percent of tenants do, according to the Connecticut Fair Housing Center.
In addition to calls to extend the state’s moratorium, organizations including the Fair Housing Center and the Open Communities Alliance are pushing for funds to go to legal aid.
Looking forward, Boggs said she views this crisis as a jumping-off point for the state and nation to transform the approach to housing.
“I think about how the U.S. got itself out of the Great Depression, making smart decisions and investments in people,” she said. “We have an opportunity to do that with housing now.”