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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction ban has been in place for about eight months, but a dozen legal aid attorneys, housing advocates and other experts told us that landlords are exploiting loopholes in the policy or skirting it altogether.
In our latest in-depth story, Carly Stern and I examined some of the tactics that landlords have used to continue evicting renters who have lost income due to the pandemic. Here are some of the things we found:
- Renters who are eligible for the CDC ban can’t be evicted for past-due rent, so landlords are increasingly citing other lease violations in court filings. In Tulsa County, Oklahoma, criminal activity is the most common lease violation cited in eviction filings, said Eric Hallett, the statewide coordinator of housing advocacy for Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma. He said those allegations often lack evidence, like a police report or arrest records.
- During the pandemic, more landlords have resorted to illegal lockouts and utility shutoffs, and some have avoided making major repairs to force renters to leave.
- With the eviction ban stretching on so long, tension between landlords and tenants has been growing. In several states, housing attorneys said that landlords are harassing, threatening and assaulting tenants more than they have in the past. “I think the desperation that a lot of folks are feeling is starting to really come out this late in the pandemic,” said Laura Tuggle, executive director of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services. “These kinds of things — they just don’t typically happen.”
- Again, the ban stretches on, but leases don’t. In at least five states, including Oklahoma, Mississippi and Ohio, landlords are opting not to renew their tenants’ leases, then filing evictions against renters who would otherwise be protected by the ban. Some judges view these types of evictions as a stand-in for past-due rent, and they block the eviction from happening. Elsewhere, those evictions go through. “It is a huge, major failing of the CDC order,” Hallett said.
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Another update from BigIfTrue.org: We published the last episode of our podcast, Hard Reset, yesterday. Thank you to our listeners, all of our terrific guests, my co-hosts JC Cortez and Justin Sanders, and Vancouver, Washington radio station KXRW for welcoming us to their airwaves.
While bittersweet, ending the show will allow us to dedicate more resources toward building our tiny but mighty nonprofit.
Thank you for reading Hard Reset. Send me feedback and tips: bryant@bigiftrue.org and 405-990-0988.
– Mollie Bryant
Founder and editor, BigIfTrue.org