Evictions happen despite rent aid
A day before she was due to be evicted from her Atlanta home in November, Shanelle King heard that she had been awarded about $15,000 in rental assistance. She could breathe again.
But last month, the 43-yearold hairdresser got a letter from her landlord saying the company was canceling her lease in March — seven months early — without any explanation.
“I’m really p***** about it. I thought I would be comfortable again back in my home,” said King, whose work dried up during the pandemic and who now worries about finding another apartment she can afford. “Here I am back up against the wall with nowhere to stay. I don’t know what I am going to do.”
Although the $46.5 billion Emergency Rental Assistance Program has paid out tens of billions of dollars to help avert an eviction crisis, some tenants who received help are finding themselves threatened with eviction again — sometimes days after getting federal help. Many are finding it nearly impossible to find another affordable place to live.
“It is a Band-Aid. It was never envisioned as anything more than a Band-Aid,” Erin Willoughby, director of the Clayton Housing Legal Resource Center Atlanta, said of the program.
“It’s not solving the underlying problem, which is a lack of affordable housing. People are on the hook for rents they cannot afford to pay,” she said. “Simply finding something cheaper is not an option because there is not anything cheaper. People have to be housed somewhere.”
The National Housing Law Project, in a survey last fall of nearly 120 legal aid attorneys and civil rights advocates, found that 86% of respondents reported cases in which landlords either refused to take assistance or accepted the money and still moved to evict tenants. The survey also found a significant increase in cases of landlords lying in court to evict tenants and illegally locking them out.
“A number of issues could be described as issues related to landlord fraud … and a set of problems I would describe as loopholes within the … program that made it less effective to accomplish the goal,” said Natalie Maxwell, a senior attorney with the group.
National Apartment Association President and CEO Bob Pinnegar said the survey was not based on facts, adding that its members are doing everything they can to keep tenants in their homes, including lobbying to get rental assistance out faster.
“Skewed surveys aren’t reflective of the entire situation. By and large the rental housing industry has gone to great lengths to support residents, including when it comes to rental assistance and adherence to laws and regulations,” Pinnegar said in a statement.
Legal aid attorneys interviewed across the country confirmed they are seeing a steady increase in cases in which tenants were approved for rental help and still faced eviction.
These include the mother of a newborn and two other children in Florida who received rental assistance but was ordered evicted after the landlord refused to take the money. Another Florida landlord lied in court that she hadn’t received the money in a bid to push through an eviction.
There have also been cases in Georgia and Texas in which landlords who received assistance moved to end leases early, increased rents to unaffordable levels or found reasons other than nonpayment to evict someone, lawyers said.
“As it is right now, it doesn’t seem to be working as intended,” said Tori Tavormina, an eviction prevention specialist with Texas Housers. “It feels much more like it’s a program that is alleviating the pressure of the eviction crisis but not solving the underlying problems.”