I was in court yesterday trying to stop yet another slew of evictions. Most of the tenants are fine for now.
That’s because while I was in court, I received a text announcing that President Joe Biden extended the CDC Eviction Moratorium one more month. This is the last extension. July 31, 2021, the check becomes due.
I interrupted the judge to advise him of the extension. Even the judge was happy to hear the news.
It was just six days away from the expiration of the moratorium and the system was about to wreak havoc on many people. It still will come August 1, 2021
I am a tenant lawyer.
Between January 2021, and April 2021, I represented over 100 tenants in court facing evictions.
The number is likely closer to 150 tenants because I am only counting the tenants I was able to assist in court and stop an imminent eviction.
Last year, from September 2020 — December 2020, the numbers were even higher. And again, I am only speaking of tenants I was able to assist not the many I could not assist, or who dropped off the radar, or who vacated their homes, or apartments.
I am also just talking about myself and the work I do and not the many others who are doing that same work, in their part of the country.
I represent low to moderate-income tenants in court cases. Most of them are evictions. Since Covid-19 showed up nearly all the cases are related to loss of work due to Covid-19 in some way.
In just three months, the county where I appear in court has provided $8 million in rental assistance to try to stop the bleeding out there.
I have been doing tenant advocacy work since 1993 and it is one of the things that I do. I do it now through a law clinic in a Midwest city.
I am the supervisory attorney and I have law students who work the cases in court. They do much of the work. They do a magnificent job.
Yet, at the end of the day, my students and I had to ask — what in the hell is going on? Why are all of these people being evicted? Why are people being kicked out of apartments and houses because they lost their jobs, could not pay rent, all because of a virus they didn’t create.
I stopped asking that question. I know. Through no fault of their own, hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps, millions have been staring at the street for the last year.
This is embarrassing. What kind of country is this really?
I wish I could say what this is but it is not a country if you are okay with people being evicted because a virus caused them to lose work, income, and now, their home.
I could give you a cross-section of the people who were gainfully employed, paying their bills, and then suddenly, they were unemployed. Broke and looking at the street.
They had unemployment insurance payments but those aren’t enough and we all know it. That relic from the Roosevelt New Deal era needs an overhaul.
Besides, that was then, this is now. The United States is not the United States of 1933. It is not ready to face anything in a real way and fix it.
I remember back in March 2020 when Covid-19 dropped and I knew it was going to be bad for renters. So many people were suddenly out of work.
And though initially, many landlords were kind and caring to their renters, the landlords have bills to pay as well. Mortgages. Insurance payments. Repairs. Employee payroll. They have to make the ends meet.
Sure, state governments issued eviction moratoriums and foreclosure moratoriums, but those did not last long.
Within a month or two of the closures, the politics of the pandemic took over. President Trump urged his supporters to force states to open back up and end the lockdowns and government measures put in place to stop the spread.
Of course, people facing eviction due to loss of work were in the crosshairs and had to make a choice: do I wait this out, or do I demand the government open things back up so I can work?
Many opted for the latter. Open back up, I will take my chances. It was public chaos. Mostly, it is a lack of leadership.
Eventually, most of the moratoriums were terminated or came to an end. And as expected deaths and infections increased. People had to hit shelters, shack up with family or friends, or find a place in an already crowded space. It was a playbook on how not to stop the spread of a deadly virus.
By September, the CDC issued a federal moratorium on evictions. Under certain conditions, tenants could not be evicted in any state. Then federal funds finally trickled out to help tenants pay their rents and a bit of order arrived.
Yet, this was no real solution. This was a bottle of Advil for a painful injured ankle that needed surgery and rehabilitation actually. Eventually, the Advil will run out and the pain will come back.
The better, more humane solution for everyone was to declare a moratorium on all evictions except in a very narrow set of cases and pay owners and landlords directly. But that is not how things work in the United States.
This is the free market. Laissez-faire. “Let them do.” And that is usually what is done. Adam Smith’s invisible hand does its thing.
Many landlords who did sue their tenants told me over and over — they should have saved for a rainy day. Or, the more popular one, I pay my bills, they should pay theirs.
Millions of people lost work in the U.S. due to the crisis. I wanted to tell these landlords that it is unlikely they are going to be able to find a new tenant if this one is evicted.
And it was true, in many cases. Many never had any intention of evicting anyone. They just wanted the cash from the government providing rental assistance.
They felt that if they sued the tenants, the system would be forced to help them, and then they could get their rent. It is an incredibly backward system.
As I said before just pay the landlords and leave people out of it. Why create these multiple hurdles of bureaucracy? Abolish the landlord so to speak by paying people’s bills until this is over.
But this is how it was done and is still being done.
The federal government passes a law granting assistance. Each state gets some money to distribute.
The money trickles out to the states. (I wonder how much interest the states earn when the money sits in the state accounts, by the way?)
The states then send the money (eventually) out to the various counties or cities running the assistance programs.
The counties and cities eventually send the money to non-profit organizations sometimes who finally pay the funds to the landlords. A tenant is saved from eviction.
Why run the program that way? Too many wasteful steps. So much time lost.
Just nationalize the housing market. Tell the tenants and the landlords that until this is under control, no evictions, no foreclosures. Nothing. We got this. Show some leadership.
Of course, the lawyers won’t like that. How will they make money if they can’t sue anybody for eviction and bill a landlord?
Good question. But there are plenty of other things for lawyers to do to earn money. And it is only temporary until we get this virus under control.
I should also point out that the end of eviction moratoriums and evictions resulted in a surge of new coronavirus infections and deaths. People were evicted, had to hit the shelters, or overcrowded apartments, and the virus spread more.
This is a terrible story I bet some are saying. Sounds like Albert Camus’ The Plague. Only, it is not fiction; it is real and is happening (and happened) in America.
Stay tuned.
References
Center for Budget and Priorities, “Tracking The Covid-19 Recession Effects,” June 2021, found at https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/tracking-the-covid-19-recessions-effects-on-food-housing-and
Albert Camus, The Plague, Hamish-Hamilton, 1947
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Hubert O’Grady — Public Domain