‘The eviction crisis is real’: Years in the making, COVID was a tipping point

The end came in a note taped to Cherrie Hakim’s door.

It may not be her door for much longer.

Hakim has lived in the southeast Kansas City home with her husband, a Korean War veteran, for the past 19 months. The foundation leaks, so much so that family photos stored in the basement have been destroyed from water damage and black mold has laid claim to surfaces.

Still, behind that door is a home. It’s where Hakim and her husband are helping to raise their three grandchildren.

Hakim, who has dealt with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for most of her life, spent a month in the hospital this summer. Then she and her husband had to buy a new car because the old one gave out — after they poured $2,000 into it trying to fix a number of issues, including the battery and starter. The setbacks exacerbated the Hakims’ already fragile financial footing.

Bills were piling up, and the couple fell a month and a half behind on rent.

They’d had housing issues before. Their last address had three floors, which was a struggle for her husband, Bilal Hakim, who served in the Marines and had one of his legs amputated. Cherrie Hakim spent much of her time helping him get from floor to floor so they could go to doctor’s appointments.

One of their homes before that caught fire.

When the pandemic hit and Cherrie Hakim’s hours at her part-time job were cut, they applied for protection through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium — which the Supreme Court ended in late August — but her husband’s retirement and Social Security income meant they didn’t qualify.

The notice on her door told Hakim they had 10 days to vacate. Her landlord had given her a first notice two days before. In the months since she came home to that second eviction notice, Hakim has been locked in a legal back and forth with her landlord that will determine her family’s housing future.

Hakim and her husband are among the hundreds of renters in Kansas City and the millions across the country who face eviction daily — the result of systems that often keep those scraping to get by out of safe and affordable housing, which activists regard as a basic right.

For landlords, evictions are often a way to get the most out of and to protect their investments — simply a business decision. Tenants’ rights activists see evictions as acts of violence.

Hakim has been trying to work with her landlord to get back on track, she said. She came up with nearly half of the rent they owed one month and said she asked for more time to catch up. But instead they received an eviction notice. A crisis escalated by COVID More than 3.5 million people, or 43% of those surveyed, said they were “somewhat likely” or “very likely” to be evicted from their home, according to a survey done in August by the Census Bureau.

In Missouri, 93,459 people were likely to be evicted — more than half of those surveyed.

This is not a new phenomenon. Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, which has compiled data on evictions as far back as 2000, found that Missouri’s eviction rate — the number of evictions per 100 renter homes — peaked in 2010 at 3.98% compared to 2.95% nationwide after the Great Recession.

The specter of an eviction crisis in Kansas City and across the country has loomed for years.

In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic thrust a bigger strain on those already experiencing financial distress and housing instability, a group of tenants’ rights activists and renters struggling with some of the same issues founded KC Tenants. It’s a diverse multi-generational tenants’ activist group that’s been working to ensure affordable, safe and accessible housing.

The group was the driving force behind the city passing its first-ever tenants bill of rights in December 2019. KC Tenants leaders who championed the resolution and ordinance shared stories of evictions; one woman was forced to choose between paying medical bills and paying her rent — she was evicted.

Landlords at the time saw the bill as potentially damaging to business and creating a hostile environment in which to provide housing.

“I bought a house in Kansas City today. I actually just closed on it,” Robert Long, president of Landlords Inc., said at the time. “And I’ve never been so unexcited to purchase a home in my life.”

Three months later, Kansas City and Jackson County saw their first cases of COVID-19.

The region shut down in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Then, unemployment skyrocketed. By the end of March 2020, thousands had already lost their jobs: 42,207 Missourians filed initial unemployment claims for the week ending March 21, up from 3,976 the previous week and an increase of more than 961%.

The job losses disproportionately affected low-income workers, women and people of color, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Evictions occur for a number of reasons: tenants damaging property, violating the lease or simply falling behind on rent.

Not being able to pay rent is one of the most common reasons for an eviction filing. And with thousands out of work in the state at the beginning of the pandemic, fears of an eviction crisis increased.

Those fears in part led to the 120day moratorium on evictions that was tied to the CARES Act, passed in March 2020. Research from the Urban Institute estimated the moratorium covered one in four rental units. The act also provided some emergency rental assistance.

In September 2020, the CDC, too, issued an eviction moratorium it hoped would slow the spread of COVID-19, saying in the order that the moratorium facilitates “self-isolation and self-quarantine by people who become ill or who are at risk of transmitting COVID-19.”

The moratoriums seemingly worked, putting in place a barrier to evictions during what was for some the most vulnerable time in their lives. It has its staunch critics, however, who argue it wasn’t enough. It didn’t, for example, prevent debt from accruing.

Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants, recently shared on Twitter the story of a young dad who noticed a “huge negative balance” in his bank account after his wages had been garnished to pay down his more than $12,500 eviction judgment. He’d already been evicted months ago.

One paycheck from disaster When it comes to determinants leading tenants into a cycle of eviction notices and housing instability, nothing may be worse than not knowing where the next paycheck will come from.

Kirk McClure, professor emeritus of public affairs and administration at the University of Kansas, who has decades of experience in affordable housing, said income certainty has a big impact on someone’s ability to be securely housed. A widely fluctuating income is worse than a steady income at a lower rate, he said.

Gina Chiala, the executive director and staff attorney for the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom, said that the majority of tenants are cost-burdened, which, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, refers to those households that spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

The root of the issue, she said, is in the workforce. Companies paying less than a living wage and not providing paid sick days or sustainable working conditions mean “the tenant is always just one mishap away from falling behind on their rent and being evicted.”

In many ways, the battle for sustainable housing is being waged on the front lines of the minimum wage war.

Stand Up KC, a worker advocacy organization, has organized local rallies in the Fight for $15, a labor group unionizing fast-food workers. McDonald’s has said its hourly wages will rise to $15 an hour by 2024.

The federal minimum wage has stayed stagnant at $7.25 since 2009, even as inflation has risen 24% and workers have had to work more hours to afford the same items.

The Kansas City Council has introduced a resolution to increase the minimum wage of all city employees to $15 an hour. Missouri’s minimum wage is $10.30 an hour. By 2023, it’s expected to rise to $12.

Despite increases, however, it’s still hardly enough for a single adult to get by — let alone if someone has children.

According to an MIT Living Wage Calculator, launched by Amy K. Glasmeier in 2004, a single adult in Kansas City would need to make at least $14.40 an hour to get by. That doesn’t account for disposable income for eating out, entertainment, savings or investments. Add one child into the mix, and the number doubles to $30.02. With a second child, it’s $36.64. Even with two adults working full-time and no children, the living wage would be $11.56. Add one child, and it jumps to $16.43 and then $20.25 with two children.