'Coronavirus: Why US Is Expecting An 'Avalanche' Of Evictions'
- 'Coronavirus: Why US is expecting an 'avalanche' of evictions', By Jessica Lussenhop, BBC News, *June 19, 2020.
As hair salons, churches and restaurants reopen across the US, so are eviction courts. Advocates and experts say that an unprecedented crush of evictions is coming, threatening millions of Americans with homelessness as a possible second wave of the pandemic looms. Sitting in her car parked outside of the little white house in Kansas City, Missouri, where she'd lived for two years, Tamika Cole was overwhelmed. She'd worked a long shift as a machine operator the night before, at a factory where she makes detergent bottles for $18 an hour. It's good, stable work. Nevertheless, Cole was on the brink of losing her home. Her nerves were shot. "What am I supposed to do?" she said. "I'm tired of crying."
Cole said that she came home in early May to find an eviction notice affixed to her door. She believed that it was because of a dispute she had with her upstairs neighbour, but that her landlord never spoke to her about it before filing the eviction against her. Due to the coronavirus, an eviction moratorium was in place in Kansas City, and Cole's landlord couldn't force her to move out right away. But she said that didn't stop him from trying to make her as uncomfortable as possible, entering her apartment without her knowledge, cutting off her electricity, and unscrewing and removing a barred security door on her unit.
Now, due to the rapid reopening of Missouri and states like it all over the country, the moratorium was allowed to expire. The renter protections Cole had were gone and she was facing homelessness in the middle of the pandemic. "I've been up all night," she said. "I'm just trying to make it." In Kansas City, local courts declared a moratorium on evictions after a campaign by local tenants' rights activists. Similar campaigns have had success nationally, and as the pandemic went into full swing in the US in mid-to-late March, most places halted eviction proceedings in some form - either on the state or local level - as both a means of shoring up newly out-of-work renters and as a precaution against the spread of coronavirus.
The federal CARES Act, which passed in early April, froze evictions for renters living in federally subsidised housing or in property backed by government loans. Surveys estimated that in the month of May, nearly a third of renters failed to pay their landlords on time, and over half had lost jobs due to the crisis. But as the country begins opening up again, moratoriums are ending and 40% of states no longer offer renters any protection. The CARES Act protections only apply to less than one-third of the country's 108 million renters. Missouri is one of nine states in the US that never issued any type of statewide moratorium or stay on eviction proceedings, leaving it up to cities, counties and even individual courthouses to determine how to move forward.
As temporary protections are falling away, like a patchwork quilt slowly fraying, hundreds of evictions are already under way in states like Missouri, Virginia and Texas. That could be sending thousands to homeless shelters or to double up with family, at a time when coronavirus cases are still on the rise in many places.
"No court anywhere should be evicting anybody until at least the pandemic has sufficiently subsided," said Eric Dunn, director of litigation for the National Housing Law Project. "Most people being evicted right now - it's because their incomes have been disrupted during the crisis. Where are they supposed to go? It's not like they have money to move somewhere else."...
Read More, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53088352
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