Coronavirus Updates – September 6, 2022

Sep 06, 2022

ERASE Updates

NLIHC’s End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) team has been tracking state and local tenant protections that were enacted beginning in January 2021. We have identified over 150 new protections and created the Tenant Protections Resource Page, which includes an interactive database, a state and local map that illustrates where the protections were enacted, and two publications (Tenant Protections and Emergency Rental Assistance During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic and Promoting Housing Stability through Just Cause Eviction Legislation).

The ERASE team recently developed a Tenant Protections Submission Form and would appreciate your collaboration! Did your locality or state pass any new protections this year? The policies and legislation can include short-term ERA-related protections and long-term protections that help prevent evictions and promote housing stability, such as source-of-income discrimination laws, right-to-counsel legislation, sealed or expunged eviction records legislation, just cause laws, and any anti-price gouging/rent stabilization laws. Please reach out to Jade Vasquez ([email protected]) if you have any questions or comments.

National Updates

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

HUD announced on August 23 estimated reallocation amounts for 62 Emergency Solutions Grants Program CARES Act (ESG-CV) recipients totaling $52 million. View all estimated ESG-CV reallocation amounts here.

Advocacy & Research

The National Women’s Law Center released its analysis of Week 47 (June 29 to July 11, 2022) of the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey. Amid rising household costs, Black women and Latinas continue to face the economic fallout from the pandemic. More than 4.8 million women (16.8% of women who rent) reported being behind on rent in the first half of July. Among renters, nearly three in 10 Black, non-Hispanic women and over one in five Latinas were behind on their payments, and over half of women experienced rent increases. More than 2.3 million women – 48.7% of women who were behind on rent – reported being very or somewhat likely to be evicted in the next two months, including nearly 1.8 million women of color.

The Housing Crisis Research Collaborative released a report examining how jurisdictions across the country used flexible COVID-19 relief funds to assist people experiencing or at imminent risk of homelessness. Jurisdictions generally used COVID-19 relief resources during the first year of the pandemic to deconcentrate shelters and create non-congregate shelter opportunities, increase outreach and provide hygiene materials to people in unsheltered locations, exit people to permanent housing, and prevent people from entering homelessness through homelessness diversion and emergency rental assistance. The authors spoke to policymakers in eight communities across the country to learn about the successes and challenges they faced in layering these different resources to address homelessness.

An Economic Commentary from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland explores trends in eviction filings during the pandemic and pandemic-era policies designed to mitigate housing instability. The author finds that restrictions on evictions are effective at reducing eviction filings and that emergency rental assistance tied to short-term eviction protections is potentially effective at reducing eviction in the short term but not necessarily in the long term. Finally, the author found that the tightening rental market increases the likelihood that landlords pursue evictions.

Reporting

Soaring inflation, the end of COVID-19-era eviction protections and emergency rental assistance, and the severe shortage of affordable housing are leading to increased rents and pushing many renters out of their homes. According to recent U.S. Census Bureau data, 8.5 million people were behind on their rent at the end of August, with 3.8 million of those renters saying they are somewhat or very likely to be evicted in the next two months.

According to a report released by Quote Wizard, 15% of people nationwide are behind on their rent, and 21% percent of people feel they will be evicted in the next two months. The analysis identified 16 states where more than 25% of people say they cannot currently pay rent or are worried they will not be able to do so in the next two months. Georgia, Louisiana, and Vermont have the highest numbers of people facing eviction. The analysis found that Black and Latino households are significantly more likely to be facing eviction compared to white households.

The Hill highlights Quote Wizard’s new report, which found that nearly one-fifth of Americans worry they will face eviction in the next two months amid soaring rents and inflation. The threat is greatest in Georgia, where 65% of renters fear eviction. After Georgia, the threat of eviction is highest in Louisiana, Vermont, Delaware, and Florida. A survey by Freddie Mac found that most American renters experienced rent increases over the past year while less than 40% saw their wages increase. Nearly one in five renters whose rental costs rose in the past year said they are now extremely likely to miss a payment.

Bloomberg CityLab reports that with rents at record highs and few pandemic protections in place, U.S. officials are looking to judges to slow the rise in evictions. At a White House Summit held on August 2, the Biden administration highlighted New Mexico’s efforts to prevent evictions at the court level. According to the White House, 180 jurisdictions across 36 states have adopted some form of eviction diversion since President Biden took office.

The Prism examines how cities have used the past two years to experiment with eviction prevention strategies. According to NLIHC, 29 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have passed new tenant protections since January 2021. Some jurisdictions have managed to make their emergency rental assistance programs permanent through local taxes, and others have adopted “just cause” eviction protections and right-to-counsel laws.

The New York Times highlights the impact of waning federal pandemic aid on households. Federal COVID-19 relief – such as rental assistance, stimulus checks, and expanded food assistance – has run out at the same time as costs for housing, food, and gas have skyrocketed. The “Inflation Reduction Act” signed into law on August 16 excludes many of the investments in President Biden’s Build Back Better framework and the House-passed bill, including a $150 billion investment in affordable housing.

Bloomberg and Marketplace report that an estimated 20 million households in the U.S. are struggling to pay their utility bills. According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, the total amount of utility arrears was $16 billion in June, just under the highest number of arrears this year – $16.5 billion in March. Pre-pandemic, the total amount of utility arrears was about $8 billion. Jean Su, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, which tracks utility shutoffs across the U.S., said she expects a “tsunami of shutoffs.”

An MSNBC op-ed highlights how Republican governors in Mississippi, Nebraska, and Arkansas refused federal emergency rental assistance (ERA) meant to help their residents remain housed. Without ERA, low-income households in these states are struggling to remain housed. In Mississippi, 155 evictions are filed each day – a filing rate of 14.7%, more than double the national rate. The eviction rate in Arkansas is higher than it has been in five years.

State and Local News

Arizona

Evictions in Maricopa County are on track to far surpass 2021 levels. So far this year, 35,000 evictions have been filed with courts, compared to 42,000 evictions for the entire year in 2021.

California

The Los Angeles Times reports that the City of Los Angeles may terminate many of its COVID-19 protections against evictions and rent increases by January 2022, ending what have been some of the country’s strongest and longest-lasting tenant protections during the pandemic. Read the proposal released by the city’s housing department to learn more.

The City of Long Beach was awarded a $13.1 million forgivable state loan to provide additional funding for the Long Beach Emergency Rental Assistance Program. The additional funds will enable the city to provide assistance to approximately 1,300 additional applicants who applied to the program before March 31 and have been approved.

During the pandemic, San Francisco saw a drop in evictions due to pandemic-related emergency rental assistance (ERA) and eviction protections. But with ERA funds dwindling and eviction moratoriums ending, eviction rates are rising again. The San Francisco Standard compiled data visualizations that track eviction data by neighborhood and show how eviction rates have changed. The neighborhoods of Tenderloin, the Mission, and SoMa consistently had the largest shares of eviction notices before and after the pandemic. The “types” of eviction have also changed over time, with certain types of eviction notices increasing more than others. Eviction notices filed as “nuisances” rose by 25% between 2021 and 2022, which concerns housing advocates who warn of the effects of “low-fault evictions.”

Connecticut

Of the $1.5 billion in Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds that Connecticut received, the CT Mirror reports that only 1% has gone towards housing-related projects. NLIHC found that Connecticut currently lacks an estimated 85,400 homes that are available and affordable to renters with extremely low incomes. Advocates view the lack of spending on local housing initiatives as a “significant misstep.”

Delaware

As of August 23, the Delaware Emergency Housing Assistance Program (DEHAP) has dispersed over $100 million in emergency rental and utility assistance, serving about 15,000 families. Earlier this month, Delaware was recognized at the White House Eviction Prevention Summit for using its rental assistance program to keep eviction rates low during the pandemic and after federal and state eviction protections had expired.

Florida

According to the Orlando Business Journal, eviction filings in Orlando have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, outpacing the past four years. Over 1,330 evictions were filed in July, up 107% from last July. In the first seven months of 2022, more than 8,300 evictions were filed in Orange County – more than were recorded in the first seven months of 2019 (6,094) or 2018 (5,885). According to the U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey, 40.3% of Floridians in the week of July 27 to August 8 were behind on rent or mortgage payments and faced the possibility of eviction or foreclosure within two months – higher than the U.S. average of 36.7%.

Georgia

According to a Quote Wizard report, Georgia has the highest number of renters facing eviction. Seventeen percent of Georgians are behind on rent, and 65% of Georgians say they cannot currently pay rent or are worried they will not be able to do so in the next two months.

A congressional report found that corporate landlords were responsible for a staggering proportion of evictions that occurred in metro Atlanta while the federal eviction moratorium was in effect. The report, released by the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, calls attention to the “machine-like eviction filing system” that Ventron – a corporate landlord operating predominantly around Atlanta – employed during the pandemic.

Indiana

Prosperity Indiana – an NLIHC state partner – released a Court Watcher’s Toolkit that allows advocates to take action during the eviction process in court and create a recording of the proceedings. “Bearing witness to the eviction crisis in Indiana and sharing that story helps us as advocates to take those stories to Indiana legislatures and say this is a top priority,” said Andrew Bradley, policy director at Prosperity Indiana. The organization estimates that more than 110,000 Hoosier households are behind on rent and in danger of losing their homes.

Iowa

The Des Moines Register reports that Iowa renters have several more weeks or months to apply for emergency rental assistance (ERA), depending on where they live. Residents who live outside of Polk County have until August 30 to apply for ERA administered by the Iowa Finance Authority, which has allocated nearly $130 million of the $192 million in federal ERA1 funds. The statewide program has helped more than 15,500 renter households. Polk County will be accepting applications through October and possibly into November. To date, Polk County has assisted more than 10,280 households with ERA1 funds.

Louisiana

Quote Wizard by Lending Tree released a study based on U.S. Census Bureau data that found that 30% of people are behind on their rent in Louisiana. Sixty-one percent of Louisiana renters say they cannot currently pay rent or are worried they will not be able to do so in the next two months.

Maryland

Nearly 2,000 families in Prince George County are still waiting for rental assistance, including some who claim they applied over a year ago and are now facing eviction. The Prince George County Emergency Rental Assistance Program has distributed nearly $84 million in ERA to over 8,800 applicants. While the program stopped taking applications in December, a backlog of nearly 2,000 applications remains.

Nevada

The Nevada Independent reports that state lawmakers on August 17 allocated $25 million in State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) to sustain Clark County’s emergency rental assistance (ERA) program and support the county’s new eviction diversion program. Of those funds, $15 million will supplement funding for the CARES Housing Assistance Program, which will help an estimated 2,000 households with their rental and utility costs. The remaining $10 million is allocated to the Nevada Housing Division to fund the county’s eviction diversion program. In April, Nevada lawmakers approved $250 million in SLFRF for affordable housing, and the governor’s office plans to request an additional $250 million in SLFRF for the affordable housing program later this year.

Nevada lawmakers allocated more American Rescue Plan funds for emergency rental assistance and eviction prevention, according to the Nevada Current. Clark County Deputy County Manager Kevin Schiller warned legislators that a “human services pandemic has not peaked.” He explained that more funding is needed to keep people in their homes, divert tenants from the court system, and prevent overloading the social safety net.

New Jersey

The eviction protections signed into law by Governor Phil Murphy last year have resulted in the dismissal of more than 10,000 cases in landlord-tenant court, state officials report. However, housing advocates argue that the law was not uniformly implemented across every county, leaving some more vulnerable to losing their homes. As emergency rental assistance funds dwindle, eviction filings in New Jersey have reached the highest levels since the pandemic began. Courts are struggling to handle a backlog of over 31,000 eviction cases, with Essex County accounting for half the number of backlogged cases. Moreover, fewer than 2% of tenants have representation in court compared to about 85% of landlords. Advocates are fighting to ensure that the anti-eviction protections passed a year ago are fully enforced.

Legal advocates at Rutgers Law School Camden are offering free legal assistance to help tenants apply for financial assistance and, if needed, represent tenants at eviction hearings.

Hundreds of tenants who were approved for New Jersey’s emergency rental assistance (ERA) programs have not receive the payments, and in dozens of cases, the missing ERA payments have led to eviction proceedings. Many tenants were told their cases were being investigated, but they were not given a timeline for resolution, and some have been waiting for more than a year without answers.

New Mexico

According to SourceNM, state lawmakers plan to introduce legislation in 2023 that would make the COVID-19 emergency rental assistance program permanent and make it harder for landlords to evict tenants. Representatives Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe) and Angelica Rubio (D-Las Cruces) introduced in 2021 and 2022 legislation designed to balance the rights of tenants and landlords by amending the state’s “Uniform Owner-Resident Relations Act.” Representatives Rubio and Romero will introduce in 2023 the third iteration of housing reforms that would codify into state law the emergency rental assistance program.

New York

The Times Union reports that Albany is on track to see nearly 3,000 eviction filings in 2022, with some cases stretching on for months. The courts are clogged with eviction cases, and the state is struggling to keep up. The number of eviction filings is disproportionately concentrated in several neighborhoods, including Arbor Hill and the South End. Non-payment eviction cases made up 83% of all filings in July. Advocates say most housing authority cases are resolved by putting tenants on payments plans, typically around $75 a month, to make up their back rent.

Oregon

As federal rental assistance funding comes to an end and the costs for rent, food, and gas continue to rise, Oregon residents are struggling to make ends meet. The Biden administration says the $350 billion given by Congress to state, local and tribal governments should help fuel some assistance programs even after federal aid runs out. With inflation soaring, Portland food banks are seeing an increase in demand, and researchers believe that food insecurity may continue to worsen.

Pennsylvania

Lehigh Valley Live reports that the closure of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program is expected to cause a rise in evictions. As of June 2022, 3,204 evictions had been filed in Lehigh County in 2022 alone – more than two-thirds of the total number of evictions filed in 2021.

Eviction filings across Allegheny County exceeded 1,000 in July for the second straight month, reaching pre-pandemic levels. The McKeesport Housing Authority was the largest single eviction filer in July, filing 78 new eviction cases.

Rhode Island

Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza joined city officials and housing advocates on August 24 to announce the Providence Eviction Defense Program, funded with a portion of the city’s “American Rescue Plan Act” (ARPA) funds and managed by Rhode Island Legal Services. The one-year program, funded by $600,000 of the city’s ARPA Fiscal Recovery Funds, will provide legal aid to Providence residents who earn 65% or less of the area median income or who live in a qualified census tract.

Vermont

According to a report released by Quote Wizard, 44% of Vermont renters say they cannot currently pay rent or are worried they will not be able to do so in the next two months. Further, more than 90% of people behind on their mortgage payments in Vermont fear they will soon lose their homes.

Virginia

Axios reports that Virginia is experiencing a surge in evictions that housing advocates have been warning about since the pandemic began. After the last state-level eviction protections expired in July, eviction filings surpassed pre-pandemic levels and are rising fast. With more than 16,000 eviction hearings scheduled this month, thousands of Virginians are likely to lose their homes. Governor Glenn Youngkin recently vetoed a bill that would provide tenants a meaningful opportunity to appeal an eviction and announced he would not support additional housing subsidies.

The Charlottesville Legal Aid Justice Center has seen a significant increase in eviction lawsuit filings, with nearly 200 evictions filed in Charlottesville and Albemarle County just last month. The end of emergency rental assistance and eviction protections has left tenants seeking other options to remain housed.

Eviction filings are soaring in Albemarle County as the emergency rental assistance program winds down, reports Charlottesville Tomorrow. The majority of eviction cases filed recently are from larger apartment complexes in Albemarle County. The rise in evictions is attributed to expired pandemic-related tenant protections and the end of the Virginia Federal Rent Relief Program, which stopped accepting applications in May. Some tenants and landlords who applied and qualified for the program – including many who appeared in Albemarle General District Court last week – are still waiting for the rental assistance payments to come through.

Some residents of the Stone Ridge apartments in Portsmouth are facing eviction despite having proof that rent relief checks are coming. The Virginia Rent Relief Program requires participation from both the landlord and the tenant. Tenants at the Pointe at River City apartments say they are being evicted despite being approved for rent relief because the property management company did not receive the money. Landlord turnover has caused issues when new landlords fail to fill out their application, leaving applications in limbo.

Washington, DC

An eviction prevention hotline for Washington, DC, residents has prevented 70% of evictions sought by landlords from September 2021 to March 2022. Six legal aid organizations created the Landlord-Tenant Legal Assistance Network (LTLAN) in June 2020 to provide free representation to low-income residents. Two years after launching, network attorneys have fielded over 3,000 calls from residents and helped nearly all of them. The demand for legal aid is steadily increasing as more evictions are filed each month in the District. LTLAN is receiving nearly twice as many calls as it did last year, and in late July, DC surpassed 300 weekly eviction filings for the first time since 2020.

Wisconsin

Eviction filings are rising again in Milwaukee County after tapering off for several months, reports the Wisconsin Examiner. During the first week of August, 327 evictions were filed – about 72% above average. The Milwaukee Autonomous Tenants Union (MATU) warns that dwindling emergency rental assistance (ERA) funds will lead to more evictions. MATU highlighted that forcing tenants to rely on their landlords and employers to receive ERA is a significant barrier within the program and puts tenants at the mercy of those who hold more social and economic power.

Guidance

Department of Housing and Urban Development