A federal moratorium on evictions has tied landlords’ hands and led to tenants simply refusing to pay rent. That’s according to Stella Dean, a board member of the Springfield Area Landlord Association. Rental assistance has been made available and many Springfield-area tenants are availing themselves of it in cooperation with their landlords. But Dean said many other tenants do not qualify for rental assistance, or do not see the benefit if it will not cover all of their back rent.
Since early 2020, a federal moratorium on evictions, put in place by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has banned evictions due to nonpayment by renters who are in “communities experiencing substantial or high transmission of COVID-19.” By the National Low-Income Housing Coalition’s estimate, that covers as many as 90% of all renters in the United States.
“It is never in the best interest of the landlords to evict a resident,” Dean said. “It’s our goal to set them up for success, not failure. We have many residents who are in agreements now, who are back-paying, and who will not get evicted.”
And yet, as the moratorium was again extended through the beginning of October of this year, eviction cases are moving forward and tenants are being evicted in Sangamon County. The Sangamon County Circuit Clerk’s office told Illinois Times that there were 1,400 eviction cases filed in 2019, compared to 738 in 2020. As of earlier this month, there have been more than 250 cases so far in 2021. The Circuit Clerk’s office did not have figures on how many rulings resulted in eviction.
David Amerson, legal counsel for the Springfield chapter of the Illinois Police Benevolent and Protective Association and a founder of the Central Illinois Worker and Tenant Association group on Facebook, said many landlords are bringing forth eviction notices and court proceedings, and Sangamon County judges are putting them forward. Amerson has represented tenants in court.
“Any conscientious judge who has a subscription to a newspaper should delay that case or throw that case out because of the moratorium, but that is not what I saw,” Amerson said. “Even when I took these cases to trial, they found ways to get around the moratoriums.”
It’s a situation that has resulted in an influx of calls from tenants for legal aid, said Michelle Davis, managing attorney for Land of Lincoln Legal Aid’s East St. Louis-based referral center, which fields calls from 65 counties in Illinois, including Sangamon. Many cases are “self-help” evictions, Davis said – cases in which tenants allege a landlord is resorting to tactics such as turning off electricity or changing locks to attempt to drive tenants off a property in lieu of taking the matter to court. A hotline the referral has set up to field calls for tenants seeking legal aid in evictions cases receives as many as 60 calls per week, Davis said. That’s about triple the amount it was receiving when the hotline first went online in April.
The number of self-help cases arising from allegations of landlord misconduct has also risen noticeably since 2019 based on Land of Lincoln Legal Aid’s requests, Davis said. The office fielded 438 eviction-related calls during the period between March and June of 2019, 16 of which were self-help cases. In the 15 months since January 2019 and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, her office opened 54 self-help eviction cases. Over a 15-month period from April 2020 until June of 2021, her office opened 162 self-help cases, she said.
“I think some of the landlords, and not all courts, are honoring all aspects of the moratorium,” Davis said. “As opposed to nonpayment of rent, [landlords] just became more creative on ways to bypass the moratorium.”
Davis said the influx of calls her office received could also be the result, in part, of a concerted effort on the part of Land of Lincoln Legal Aid’s efforts at reaching those seeking legal help during evictions processes.
For Sunni Deetz, the moratorium has for the moment kept her in her home. Deetz, 43, of Blue Mound, said her apartment was secured through a Section 8 public housing voucher. Deetz, a single mother to her school-aged daughters and a 25-year-old son with severe autism, said the combination of her child care duties and the danger the pandemic poses to her family have made securing employment difficult. She says she’s grateful for the moratorium, which has put a stop to eviction proceedings for the time being.
All the same, Deetz said, conflicts with her landlord have been unbearable. “I am grateful and thankful, because of my kids, that we’re able to stay somewhere and have a home. But it’s still like going through hell.”
Kenneth Lowe is a Springfield resident and a regular contributor to Paste Magazine.
This story has been updated to correct the job affiliation of David Amerson.
This article appears in Back to School.
Somewhere along the line during the Pandemic, the media seemed to decide that people renting apartments should never have to move if they stop paying rent, or they will become homeless people.
In other words, if you get an apartment, and sign a lease- there should be no consequences for refusing to pay for it like you agreed.
The ‘Moratoriums’ were never meant to protect people from having to pay their bills. They were an emergency measure by a government claiming to be temporary overwhelmed by a once-in-history Pandemic- one where they just simply didn’t have time to get financial aid out in time.
But they’ve had 17 months now to catch up.
Its no longer an emergency.
If the government wants to choose people who are deserving of free housing, then they should do so, and pay for it. Not force other people to house them for free.
The Moratoriums are a false promise and a scam; in the end they run middle class housing out of business, reduce choices for tenants, monopolize housing under big corporations. They encourage abuses; ruin tenant records and credit so they will never be able to get loans and buy houses of their own.
The emergency is over. We have vaccines. We have jobs.
Its time for personal responsibility again.
The vast majority of landlords are small, individual owners who have a few rentals. Many of these are working people who used real estate investing to add to their portfolio for retirement. They have mortgages, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, and utilities that continue to be due yet, due to the moratorium, they have no income to pay these expenses. This means they are at risk of losing significant retirement savings and having their credit score destroyed.
Sadder yet are the number of renters who refuse to pay their rent despite being fully employed and able, not because they didn’t have the money but simply because the government says they can get away with it.
It was understandable to have a short term moratorium in the outset of the pandemic. Now going on 1.5 years, it has been stretched by politicians to benefit a certain number of people while destroying the rights and investments of another group of people.
Government should NEVER be able to destroy one class of citizens in order to help another class of citizens. All Americans should be aghast that the government has, without legislation, destroyed the rights of a group of citizens at the stroke of a pen by a bureaucrat.
What if politicians decide that cars are critical to people being safe and decide that no one has to pay for a car? What happens when food is deemed essential and people who don’t want to pay for food can just take it for free? Sound ridiculous? That’s what the government has done on rent. What is next?
How is it fair for the government to force me to give 100% welfare to any tenant that just chooses to not pay rent because the politicians say so.
I asked one tenant to pay just 1 dollar, they said they would and of course did not. So far my family is out over 100,000 dollars since this started. I still have to pay the taxes, bank payments, grass cutting, insurance etc. Some of the people who aren’t paying my company make over a hundred thousand a year.
My other business had 11 interviews set up, one showed, finally got 7 hired, only one lasted more then 1 day. This is the same problem at every business in town and across the country. So it is certainly not accurate to say they can’t get a job.
When this all goes away all employers will look at a 6 to 12 month gap in employment and put these people at the bottom of the hire list. They will also see the eventual judgement from the landlords and have another reason to not hire these people. Also people have no idea that their insurance is based from their credit score, so not paying rent will show on their credit report and the insurance companies will charge them a higher rate.
Every time the government fools around with a free market they cause extreme problems. In this case housing prices are up due to inflation caused by the government, and landlords aren’t getting paid because of government actions. So landlords sell their properties. When they sell, there are fewer properties to rent and rents go up simple supply and demand. I have seen 20% increases or more in the last 6 months. AND I am forced to raise the rent on existing tenants, some have never seen a raise in over 10 years. So this government stupidity is, as always, passed on to those who can pay.
Also I am not accepting the government payments for tenants, too many strings attached.
We have totally lost personal responsibility. In the end those who have responsibility will succeed and those who don’t will not succeed.
The weak shall perish