Seventy-year-old Dana Williams, who is afflicted with serious cardiac conditions, hypertension, and asthma, relied on a walker to enter the courtroom. With a medical certificate in his possession, he implored the court to postpone his eviction from his two-bedroom dwelling in Atlanta.
Despite his empathy, the judge was bound by state law to evict Williams and his 25-year-old daughter De’mai Williams in April due to unpaid rent and charges amounting to $8,348 for their $940 monthly apartment. Since then, they have been in a state of uncertainty.
They relocated to a rundown hotel room in Atlanta with leaking bathroom ceiling, damaged furniture, and devoid of essential amenities like a refrigerator or a microwave.
Costing $275 a week, it was all they could manage with Williams’ monthly social security payout of $900 and the $800 his daughter receives from a state agency biweekly for caring for her father.
De’mai Williams expressed her desire not to be in the hotel room by the time her father’s birthday arrives in August, citing his health concerns.
The Williams are among the numerous tenants from New York to Las Vegas who are grappling with evictions or are on the brink of one.
Post the pandemic standstill, eviction applications by landlords have skyrocketed, fueled by increasing rents and a sustained deficit of affordable housing. Low-income tenants, now bereft of pandemic aid that kept them housed, are struggling to recover as they are unable to secure stable employment or their income has failed to match the escalating expenses of rent, food, and other essentials.
Consequently, homelessness is on the rise.
“With the end of protections, the expiration of the federal moratorium, and the drying up of emergency rental assistance funds in most regions,” says Daniel Grubbs-Donovan, a research specialist at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, “low-income renters are in a more precarious situation than before the pandemic due to factors such as dramatic rent hikes during the pandemic, inflation, and other financial hardships linked to the pandemic era.”
Eviction filings in certain cities have exceeded pre-pandemic figures by over 50%, as per the Eviction Lab which monitors filings in nearly thirty-six cities and ten states. Landlords file approximately 3.6 million eviction cases annually.
Cities most affected include Houston, with rates up by 56% in April and 50% in May. In Minneapolis/St. Paul, rates escalated by 106% in March, 55% in April, and 63% in May. Nashville saw an increase of 35% and Phoenix 33% in May; while Rhode Island noted a rise of 32% in May.
This data reflects a trend that began last year, with the Eviction Lab documenting nearly 970,000 evictions in the regions it monitors — a 78.6% surge compared to 2021, when an eviction moratorium was largely in effect across the country. By December, eviction filings were almost back to pre-pandemic figures.
Concurrently, rent prices nationwide have risen by approximately 5% compared to the previous year and 30.5% compared to 2019, as reported by real estate company Zillow. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates a deficit of 7.3 million affordable units nationwide, leaving displaced tenants with limited options.
A number of susceptible tenants would have faced eviction much earlier had it not been for the safety net established during the pandemic.
The federal government, along with many states and local governments, implemented moratoriums during the pandemic that halted evictions; most have now concluded. Federal Emergency Rental Assistance amounting to $46.5 billion was provided to assist tenants in paying rent and funding other tenant protections. However, most of this fund has already been spent or allocated, and calls for additional resources have not made headway in Congress.
“The disturbing resurgence of evictions to pre-pandemic levels is a distressing indication of the urgent need for action — at all government levels — to ensure people remain housed,” stated Democratic U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. She encouraged Congress to pass legislation to crack down on unlawful evictions, fund legal assistance for tenants, and prevent evictions from appearing on credit reports.
The situation in housing courts is becoming increasingly tense, affecting individuals like 79-year-old Maria Jackson.
Jackson, who spent nearly 20 years establishing a loyal customer base as a massage therapist in Las Vegas, faced a huge setback during the pandemic-triggered lockdown in March 2020. Her business crumbled, prompting her to sell her car and apply for food stamps.
She was unable to keep up with the monthly rent of $1,083 for her one-bedroom apartment and was evicted in March, owing $12,489 in back rent. She relocated to a former client’s residence about an hour northeast of Las Vegas. Last month, she found a room in Las Vegas for $400 a month, which she pays for with her monthly social security check of $1,241.
Eviction rates have escalated in upstate New York following the expiration of a moratorium last year. In 2022, a surge in eviction filings was noted in 40 of the state’s 62 counties, outstripping the numbers recorded prior to the pandemic. In an alarming development, eviction filings in two counties even skyrocketed to twice their 2019 levels.
Housing advocates had anticipated that the Democrat-controlled state Legislature would pass a bill requiring landlords to provide justification for evicting tenants and limiting rent increases to 3 percent or 1.5 times inflation. However, it was left out of the state budget and legislators did not pass it before the legislative session ended this month.
“Our state Legislature should have fought harder,” expressed Oscar Brewer, a tenant organizer facing eviction from the apartment he shares with his 6-year-old daughter in Rochester.
In Texas, evictions were held at bay during the pandemic by federal assistance and the moratoriums. However, with the lifting of these protections and the soaring housing prices in cities like Austin and Dallas, a record 270,000 eviction filings were made statewide in 2022.
Advocates had hoped that the state Legislature might provide relief, by redirecting some of the $32 billion budget surplus into rental assistance. But this has not come to pass.
“It’s a huge mistake to miss our shot here,” commented Ben Martin, a research director at nonprofit Texas Housers. “If we don’t address it, now, the crisis is going to get worse.”
However, some protective measures introduced during the pandemic are being made permanent and are impacting eviction rates. Nationwide, 200 measures have been passed since January 2021, including legal representation for tenants, sealing eviction records, and mediation to settle cases before they reach court, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
These measures have been successful in reducing eviction filings in several cities, including New York City and Philadelphia — the figures for May were 41 percent below pre-pandemic levels for the former and 33 percent for the latter.
The right-to-counsel program and the fact that housing courts are not prosecuting cases involving rent arrears are among the factors contributing to the decrease in New York City’s filings.
In Philadelphia, the eviction diversion program has resolved the cases of 70 percent of the more than 5,000 tenants and landlords who participated. The city also allocated $30 million in assistance for those with less than $3,000 in arrears and launched a right-to-counsel program, doubling the representation rates for tenants.
The future appears bleak for Williams and his daughter, who are currently stuck in their poorly-lit hotel room. With no microwave or nearby grocery stores, they rely on pizza deliveries and snacks from the hotel’s vending machine.
Williams used to enjoy hosting his six grandchildren for dinner at his old apartment, but for now, those days seem to be over.
“I just want to be able to host my grandchildren,” he said, pausing to cough heavily. “I just want to live somewhere where they can come and sit down and hang out with me.”
