With eviction moratorium lifted, affordable housing advocates brace for crisis
As legal protections ended last month for renters facing evictions, affordable housing advocates and legal experts predict that North Carolina could see a wave of evictions in the coming months.
Over 10,000 eviction cases are on file in North Carolina courts. Since the state eviction moratorium ended on June 21, hearings are being scheduled this month in Durham and Wake counties, said Peter Gilbert, lead attorney at Legal Aid of North Carolina for the Eviction Diversion Program in Durham.
“Now that the courts are reopened, I suspect that we’re going to see perhaps record numbers of filings,” Gilbert said.
“July and August are always months that have very high filings, but I think that we may see an enormous wave of filings over the next few months,” Gilbert said. “The new filings are going to compound with the several months of previous filings and we’re going to be seeing a lot of evictions this summer, I’m afraid.”
In April, State Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley halted court proceedings, including eviction hearings, until June 1. In late May, Gov. Roy Cooper extended the moratorium until June 20 by executive order.
The moratorium prevented eviction hearings, but it did not stop landlords from bringing these cases to court, which has created a backlog, said Jesse McCoy II, supervising attorney at Duke University’s Civil Justice Clinic.
Landlords filed over 2,000 eviction cases statewide in April and May alone, according to court data gathered by The News & Observer from the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts.
When an eviction case is brought to the court, a hearing is normally required within seven days, but Beasley extended this requirement to 30 days due to COVID-19 restrictions.
A federal eviction moratorium remains in effect, but that order only applies to renters where the landlord has a federally backed mortgage. Landlords filing eviction cases in state court must provide an affidavit showing that the property is not financed by a federally backed mortgage.
‘Danger to public health’
Samuel Gunter, executive director of the North Carolina Housing Coalition, said evictions in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic are a danger to public health.
“It’s going to have profoundly negative effects on families and profoundly negative effects on the community and public health,” Gunter said. “If you’re going to shelter in place, you have to have a place to shelter in.”
Gilbert said evictions forcing people to seek shelter elsewhere, or become homeless, will hinder efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“We’re staring down the barrel of a very severe housing and eviction crisis,” Gilbert said.
“We know that stay-at-home orders and social distancing are essential to stemming the pandemic. My fear is if tens of thousands of North Carolina families are facing homelessness due to these evictions, that is certainly not going to help us get the spread of this disease under control.”
There already was an eviction crisis before the pandemic, McCoy said, and now the coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating the issue.
“This crisis is going to take that crisis and make it look laughable,” McCoy said. “If we had a crisis before, this is an outright calamity at this point.”
The City of Durham plans to provide almost $1 million in rental assistance to renters through federal CARES Act funding, Gilbert said, but that is not enough to cover the majority of renters in Durham.
Gilbert said if 10% of renters in Durham — about 6,000 households — couldn’t pay the city’s average of $1,000 in rent, then $6 million in assistance would be needed every month.
“$1 million total, while it sounds generous, is barely going to scratch the surface of the need for families who are facing eviction,” Gilbert said.
Without an eviction moratorium, McCoy said, renters will need rental assistance from the federal level as nonprofits don’t have enough resources to cover rent that has accumulated from nonpayments during the moratorium.
“The odds of finding funding from organizations outside of the CARES Act to pay three months of rent is very low,” McCoy said.
North Carolina legislation stalls
House Bill 1200, introduced in the North Carolina General Assembly on May 26, would provide $200 million in federal CARES Act funding to individuals facing foreclosure, eviction or utilities loss. But that bill stalled in the House as the General Assembly essentially entered summer recess.
Rep. John Szoka of Cumberland County, who co-sponsored the bill, said it stalled because the General Assembly is waiting to see if Congress will allocate more COVID-19 funding to states.
“What we got to look at now is the uncertainty of the future,” Szoka said. “If Congress did not act to give us more, then we could have potentially put ourselves in a bit of a bind further down into the late summer. I think it was prudent to hold back on that bill right now to see what’s going to happen.”
The legislature is still in session, but Szoka said lawmakers are there just to consider veto overrides should Cooper veto any recently passed legislation.
Szoka said bills like HB 1200 won’t be considered until lawmakers return from recess in early September.
Gunter said systems need to be put in place now to disperse the federal funding. He said it could take weeks to hire staff and build systems that efficiently allocate funding to individuals who need it.
“You have to start doing that now,” Gunter said.
“We have nothing concrete to tell anyone that hope is on the way. That support is gone,” Gunter said about the bill stalling. “It’s not in place and evictions are happening. It’s going to be too late to help a lot of people.”
Szoka said states have to balance their budgets, and that has been especially difficult given the economic loss resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This has been the most difficult budget that I’ve dealt with,” Szoka said. “The economy has never taken a downturn like this ever.”
Szoka said the best path forward is to lift COVID-19 restrictions and to send people back to work.
“At the state level, we have to balance the budget, so the only thing that’s going to solve this in the long run is the economy opening back up safely, and people going back to work safely,” Szoka said.
However, as North Carolina has slowly lifted restrictions, new cases and hospitalizations have steadily increased, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
On July 1, DHHS reported that 901 North Carolinians were hospitalized with COVID-19, up from 650 a month ago.
That same day, NC DHHS reported 1,373 North Carolinians had died due to complications associated with COVID-19.
Ford Porter, deputy communications director with the Cooper administration, said the state has submitted a waiver request for increased flexibility on federal money so it can be used for rent and utility assistance.
“Many North Carolina families have been hit hard by this pandemic, and Gov. Cooper is focused on supporting them,” Porter said.
“The legislature should pass funding such as the current HB 1200 that would use federal coronavirus relief funds to create rental, utility and foreclosure assistance programs to keep North Carolinians in their homes.
“NCDHHS has separately provided $26 million in Community Service Block Grant funding to community action agencies across the state that can be used for rental and utility assistance, which should be available soon. But this is one-time funding from the federal CARES Act, so it will not last, and it’s important that the legislature take action to help North Carolinians in need.”
Szoka said HB 1200 is still on the table, and he has urged lawmakers to act rather than wait for Congress.
“It hurts more every day,” Szoka said. “I’m not sure we’re going to see something sooner rather than later out of D.C. I certainly hope so.”
This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 6:00 AM.