Mendelson continues threat of mass evictions
Chairman Mendelson is planning to revive his efforts to lift the moratorium on evictions at the June 15th Council session. He was momentarily defeated on May 18th, when the Council defeated his efforts to rollback the moratorium on evictions and utility shut-offs placed during the pandemic health emergency. Charles Allen, Janeese Lewis George, Brianne Nadeau, Elissa Silverman, Robert White and Trayon White co-introduced an amendment to remove the harmful language from Mendelson’s bill. During the debate, Councilmembers Henderson and McDuffie stated their support for Allen’s amendment. But Mendelson has not given up, and the threat to tenants remains.
Parroting the arguments of the landlord lobby, Mendelson claims that removing the eviction moratorium is necessary to push tenants to use STAY DC, the program set up by the Bowser administration to disburse rental assistance. He was backed up by Pinto and Cheh, who focus more on the urgency of disbursing the $352 million in federal rental assistance ($130 million of which must be used by September 30), rather than the urgency of keeping people in their homes. They appear to be unimpressed that 20,000 tenants have applied for STAY DC, with 13,000 having completed the process. No data have been provided by the landlord lobby or DC government estimating how many tenants are behind on rent who have not yet applied for STAY DC. There is also no data regarding how many landlords have applied for STAY DC and are waiting on tenants to complete the process. Yet with no solid basis for their arguments, Mendelson, along with his Council and landlord allies, would have us believe that the entire blame for the slow disbursement of rental assistance falls on tenants, and that the threat of eviction will act as a cattleprod to push them into applying — in short, a completely punitive approach based on a presumption of guilt.
Evictions should not be a rent collecting tool
Mendelson and the landlord lobby would have us believe that evictions are merely a legal procedure to collect rent — and for landlords, that is true. However, they ignore how eviction is experienced by tenants. In Virginia, which Mendelson cited as a model, 46,820 eviction filings have been filed in court and 15,198 families have lost their homes since the eviction moratorium was lifted on June 22nd. A study by the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University published in Fall, 2020 found that evictions have devastating effects on renters: financial pressure, loss of income due to court appearances, depression and high blood pressure. The same study found wide racial disparities in the use of eviction filings: in Ward 2, just 3% of renter households receive eviction filings, while in Wards 7 and 8, 25% of renter households receive them. Even if a majority of eviction filings does not result in actual eviction, there is trauma created by the fear of eviction. And in the significant number of cases that result in actual eviction, families are traumatized by homelessness, loss of belongings or resorting to housing that may be fraught with risk. Lifting the eviction moratorium will cause trauma and lead to evictions, with disproportionate harm to Black and Brown families.
Implementation Problems with STAY DC
Mendelson’s proposal to roll back the eviction moratorium was defeated because a majority of Councilmembers are skeptical of the program’s implementation. Lewis George spoke at length about the various obstacles STAY DC presents to tenants seeking to apply: barriers for tenants who lack internet access, language access barriers, and barriers to providing required documentation, to mention a few. Silverman derided the complicated and unfriendly software interface. Nadeau pushed the Department of Housing and Community Development (DCHD), one of the agencies administering the program, to provide bimonthly reports. Most Councilmembers appear ready to lift the eviction moratorium once STAY DC is proven to function properly.
STAY DC is not a comprehensive solution
While STAY DC may turn out to be an adequate vehicle for disbursing federal rental assistance, it is far from a comprehensive solution to protect tenants from eviction and onerous rental debt. Even if the Bowser administration performs universal, multilingual outreach (a pipedream) and eliminates all technical and bureaucratic barriers to implementation (pure fantasy), tenants cannot rely on STAY DC alone. What happens if recovery from the pandemic takes much longer than expected, with the hospitality sector suffering permanent job losses? What if the demands of remote learning makes it impossible for parents, especially mothers, to return to work? STAY DC funds are limited to 18 months of rental assistance per tenant. Workers who lost their jobs when the pandemic began last March and whose businesses have permanently shuttered or who cannot return to work by August are in danger of eviction despite STAY DC. And even those who are not evicted will likely suffer from significant debt burdens and downgraded credit ratings. It is also possible that DC uses every single dollar of federal rental assistance and still comes up short in terms of the amounts needed.
Any Councilmember who votes to lift the eviction moratorium without first enacting comprehensive legislation to protect tenants from eviction is voting to traumatize thousands of DC families. That is why it is essential that before lifting the eviction moratorium, the Council must pass comprehensive legislation, as called for by the Cancel Rent coalition, that will do the following:
protect tenants from eviction due to nonpayment of rent during the pandemic,
eliminate rental debt and fees accrued during the pandemic
compensate landlords, and
stabilize rents with a two-year rent freeze following the end of the public health emergency.
Only such a comprehensive approach can ensure a just and equitable recovery from the pandemic.
