The Daily - Evicted During the Pandemic

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

For years there has been an evictions crisis in the United States. The pandemic has made it more acute.On today’s episode, our conversations with a single mother of two from Georgia over several months during the pandemic. After she lost her job in March, the bottom fell out of her finances and eviction papers started coming. The federal safety net only stretched so far.And we ask, with Congress seeking to pass another stimulus bill, what do the next few months hold for renters in the United States?Guest: Matthew Desmond, a Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and contributing writer for The Times Magazine. For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here.Background reading: Emergency pandemic funding to help renters must be distributed by Dec. 30. But getting the money to those who need it is no small task.Residents of weekly rentals worry they will be kicked out if they can’t pay the rent. It’s unclear if the federal moratorium on evictions applies to them.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. As Congress closes in on a new round of pandemic relief, a major question is what it will do to protect millions of Americans from eviction. Today, my colleagues Stella Tan and Matthew Desmond on one family's struggle to hold on to their home. It's Friday, December 18th. Right now, one thing that's really been on a lot of people's minds is rent.

There is extreme anxiety among those who don't have income flowing in right now. There is nearly one third of people who rent their home in the United States did not pay their April rent. It's been emblazoned on the side of some office buildings. Cancel the rent. But what do you do with all the landlords who have mortgages themselves? Mortgages due. The rent is due. Now, if you live in federally funded housing, there has been a 120 day freeze on evictions. The moratoriums buy you time, but will require you to eventually pay the landlord for any

rent passed due. If they do not pay the full balance of their rent, that's when eviction proceedings could take place. So in the meantime, what do you do if you can't pay your rent tomorrow? Hello? Hello? Hello, this is Yolanda. Hi, Yolanda, this is Stella from the New York Times. How are you? Over the summer, as the country was facing record unemployment, I started looking into what was going on with housing and rent. And in July, I got in touch with a woman in a suburb of Atlanta named Yolanda Jackson.

I wonder if you could just start by telling me a little bit about yourself. Have you always lived in Georgia? No. I'm from Illinois, so I moved to Georgia about 15 years ago. And so you have two kids? Yes, ma'am, 20 and 15. Are they going stir crazy during the pandemic? Of course. How was that going? I mean, my refrigerator is a revolving door. Nobody's getting along. We're driving the dog crazy. So have you always lived in the place where you live now, the neighborhood and the building, or did you kind of move around Georgia a little bit? Well, no, I've been in this area since I moved to Georgia. And I've been over in this complex for the last seven years.

So this is home. You know, we're comfortable. We're safe. I had no real issues aside from, you know, the rent increasing. But that's just the way of life. So in this situation... Even though the rent for the apartment cost more than half her income, It was a struggle, but it was worth it for my children, you know.

she said she was doing her best to make it work. Yeah, well, I want to get a little bit of a sense of what life was like before all this hit. You know, what was your job? I was at the school, working as a special ed paraprofessional. Yolanda was working two jobs while finishing up her teaching degree. Late afternoon, evening, that's where I tutored and I supported kids with disabilities, just trying to get them, you know, as independent and to their level as possible.

So until March 17th, when everything just stopped. When they closed school down permanently, that's when it's like, uh-oh. It's like the bottom fell out. It's like the bottom fell out. Because when everything happened, you know, I only had like two weeks to stay. And to be honest. What was sort of going through your mind? Like, what were the calculations that you had to make?

It was just I wasn't prepared. You know, it was like I had already had my system. That's where I pay, you know, my bills from. So, you know, I just had to finagle everything. My rent is $1,340. And right away, that was the big expense. I had a college student because I was trying to help him also. You know, he didn't get a full ride. So I had, you know, put some of his tuition on the payment plan. So I was paying like $240 a month just for him. So when April came, it was like by the 15th, you know, you got all this stuff coming out and you don't have anything coming in.

Yolanda applied for unemployment, but the payments got tied up in the system. So while she waited, she tried to work something out with the landlord. And she showed me the correspondence she had with the landlord's representative. You know, she said, per the contract, I can't pay the rent in pieces. So I said, you know, may I get out the lease? You know, and she told me not to be responsible for penalty and payment. They just kept putting more and more fees. And I was like, I'm trying to get you the funds because I understand I owe because you can't live for free anywhere. It was just once you start tacking on all those fees, I haven't had income.

So I'm so far behind. I mean, I packed up my house. I mean, right now we're living in boxes. I started packing up in April because the only thing I could think about was when are the marshals going to come, you know, and set us out possibly, you know. So I'm just living out of boxes because I just don't know when our time is up. And I'm like, I have nowhere to go. I have no family here.

So I just chose to keep my family safe and healthy. And I just said, pack it up. If they come, at least I can run, get a U-Haul and we'll just put it on the U-Haul and I'll just go from there. Because I don't know what else to do. My back is against the wall. And that's just how I felt, you know, with no finances. I know that you can't live for free, but I also know that things have to be put in place

to get these finances back rolling again. As Yolanda was figuring out what to do, Congress was taking action. At the end of March, Congress passed the CARES Act, which halted evictions until August. But the eviction moratorium instituted by the CARES Act only applied to certain kinds of properties, about a third of rental homes nationally. And Yolanda wasn't really sure if it would help her. I mean, I understood it, I read it, but I didn't know, was it really a law that they had to follow?

You know, I was like, is it a loophole? You know how if you don't know it's 100% factual, you just say, let me just still kind of be proactive. I just didn't know if it was 100% real, you know? didn't know if it was 100% real, you know? And at the end of June, Yolanda came home and saw something posted on her front door. Well, that one came home on one Friday evening, and it was an envelope on the door that contained eviction papers. What was it like to see that there? It was embarrassing.

It was humiliating. I was angry. I was hurt. I was sad, frightened. I had so many mixed emotions. The kids were with me, and, you know, I had to let them in the house house and I had to tell them I forgot

something in the car and just go sit in the car and kind of cry because it was just hurtful because I try to internalize it all, but they can tell I wasn't being 100% honest. I was like, it's going to be okay. You know, we're going to find somewhere to go. But I think those papers scared them. The eviction warrant on her door said that she owed nearly $4,000 in rent plus $300 in late fees. It said that she had to formally respond to the warrant online within 25 days

from the day she got the notice. And if she didn't answer by then, marshals could initiate proceedings to force her out of her home at any time. And then what did you do? How did you respond to that? On the last day, when the answer was due, when I'm telling you my back was against the wall, I finally got my oldest son. I was like, come on, we have to go online and we have to submit this answer. You know, I can't just go down without a fight. You know, I do think I have

no rights. So you were sort of like my last resort is to fight this in court. Right. To fight it in court and to also, you know, just get a little bit more time to try to find my family and I somewhere to go, because I said, I know the court is backed up, so I know we're not going to get in right away. But at least if I provide an answer, they cannot just put us out. And it'll buy me some time. Right. As she waited for the eviction case to wind its way through court, the amount she owed in rent and in late fees just kept growing. I don't like the feeling of maybe we're one day close to the homelessness. I don't like that feeling.

Of course. I'm already at like 6,000 and something. That's what keeps me up. Yeah. Yolanda, I'm so, so, so cool to you for talking to me. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'll be in touch. Bye-bye. Okay. Bye-bye. Time is running out as the federal eviction moratorium is set to expire in just three weeks. Emergency eviction protections are due to end next week with millions of renters facing possible eviction. In March, the government passed the CARES Act, which provided an eviction moratorium,

but that is set to expire soon. Pandemic unemployment benefits introduced by the CARES Act are going to expire at the end of this month unless Congress takes action and fast. Yolanda? Yes. Hi, Yolanda. Hello. I'm good. Is this a good time? I'm sorry. This is a good time. I'm sorry. So two months later, in the first week of October, I called Yolanda back to see how she was doing. What happened was that lawyers from Atlanta Legal Aid ended up taking Yolanda's case. They discovered that her building was covered under the CARES Act. That means the landlord wasn't legally allowed to file an eviction in June. And so after we originally spoke, the eviction case against her was dismissed.

But the CARES Act didn't get rid of the debt that Yolanda owed. So I talked to you end of July. What happened since the end of July? Okay, so from the end of July, I have still yet to hear from unemployment. I have not received the payment. We've reached out. They said I'm in queue to be reviewed because they've had an overwhelming amount, you know what I'm saying, of work, which I understand. Don't get me wrong. However, we're talking about since May and it's October and I still have yet to receive anything. and I still had yet to receive anything. She told me that at the beginning of September,

she was out of the house one day and her phone rang. And so I think I was out meeting with clients, you know, just trying to, you know, get myself back on my feet. And I get a devastating call from my son. Like, mom, you need to get home right away. And so I'm scared. And I'm like, are you okay?

Like, yes, but I need you to come home. So now I got to come back home to an emotionally distraught child because he's been served with legal papers at 15. They filed another eviction? It was 30 days from it being dismissed, I believe. It was a no-fail. So after the CARES Act eviction moratorium It was 30 days from it being dismissed, I believe. It was enough out. So after the CARES Act eviction moratorium expired in July, and a few weeks after Yolanda's first eviction case was dismissed, Yolanda's landlord filed a second eviction.

I felt like a failure. I just, I just, I felt empty. I was like, I just, I can't keep doing this. Just two days after Yolanda's landlord filed the second eviction, the federal government stepped in again. This time, it was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, that issued an order temporarily stopping evictions across the country. The CDC order protects most renters, including Yolanda, from being turned out of their homes until the end of this year, December 31st. But the order doesn't forgive debt. And it doesn't get rid of the second eviction case against Yolanda, because that case was filed between the two moratoriums.

And so Yolanda was worried about what might happen at the end of the year. And her son was on edge, too. His anxiety is building up. And her son was on edge, too. just constant reassurance and constant comfort. I can't be gone, like separation anxiety. But then he don't want to be erased from the house because he thinks that, oh, when he come back, we're not going to be able to get in or his stuff is going to be outside. It's just, it's a lot. His appetite has decreased.

He's saying, you know, I just don't have an appetite. I'm just not happy. You know, I don't want to stay somewhere they don't want me to stay. He's having anxiety on virtual learning. The teacher letting, you know, turn his camera off because we had the mailman come. It was a package too big for the mailbox. His medicine and stuff, he has asthma and eczema. So his medicine was delivered.

It was too big for our little mailbox. The mailman knocked on, you know, rung the doorbell. And I mean, this kid just flipped out on the computer. Wow. You know, he's telling his teacher they're here and she's like, who is Dave? You know, it's like, he's scared. Wow. It's a lie. It's a lie. What about your older son son is he still at home yes he understands he gets it and my focus with him is

I need you to finish school but he's trying to work because he feels like he needs to try to fill in some gaps because I know the importance of a degree. And I worked so hard to graduate him. He graduated high school with honors. He refused to go back because right now he feels like he got to help.

And it hurts because he should be learning. Yeah. He would rather, you know, give up his education to help his family. And I love it, but it hurts. If I worked hard for him to go to school. Yeah. It hurts. As you're looking to December 31st, what are you thinking well see i was trying to find somewhere

cheaper and seeing that was my thing is because you hurt my credit you hurt my rental history so it was like when i started applying for these places it came up and then they called you gave me a bad reference so what you want me to do? Then when it got dismissed, and I was like, okay. The thing is, an eviction filing will show up on your credit history, even if it's been dismissed. And Yolanda suspected that that was hurting her chances of finding a new place to live. I guess in the back of my mind, the worst case scenario

is we just have to go home. What do you mean going home? Where's home? Well, Illinois, you know, because, I mean, I have no family here. I mean, we'll be homeless. So do you have family in Illinois or do you have, you know, a sort of landing pad at all? No, I mean, I'll just have to go home and figure it out. We'll probably have to split up because, you know,

there's not one family member that can take us all in. You know, my parents are retired on a fixed income, and they live in places that don't support long-term guests. So it would probably just, you know, we'd have to split up, but I would love to see us split up then. Yeah. I thank you because this is helping me. It's like I

got it out. I'm sorry I broke down, but it's like I got it out. You know, I just, I really appreciate it. You gave me a little therapy today. Thank you, Wanda. take care and all right too all right i will keep moving okay all right We'll be right back. So, Matt, you've been writing about housing and evictions for a very long time now. And I wanted to try to understand how Yolanda's situation fits in with the bigger picture around the country. And so how many renters find themselves in a situation like Yolanda's right now, facing a potential eviction at this moment?

There are millions of Yolandas out there right now. The pandemic has caused wages to slow down, to disappear for a lot of people. But rent has never stopped throughout the pandemic. And so, you know, a lot of people find themselves in a really deep debt hole right now with their landlords. You know, the latest data from the census report that if you're in a home where someone has lost their job or lost wages and you're a renter, one in five of those homes are behind in rent. It means that over 7 million renters who have lost some income are behind in rent. So Yolanda's story is a story that's replicated in cities all across the country right now. How does that compare to the numbers before the pandemic?

across the country right now. How does that compare to the numbers before the pandemic? So we were in an eviction crisis long before COVID struck. In the average year in America, about 3.7 million eviction cases were filed across the nation. And so you take that situation that's already at critical levels and then you add just kind of the economic collapse that we've seen since the pandemic and you're in a really scary situation. And what was going on to explain why there was an eviction crisis even before the pandemic? So before the

pandemic, the country was reeling from an affordable housing crisis. And there were three main causes of that crisis. Cause number one is incomes for many American families have been stagnant over the last 20 years. You know, the last time the federal minimum wage was raised, for example, was 11 years ago in 2009. And so for many Americans, you know, what they're making today is what they made 10 years ago,

15 years ago. But, and here's the second cause, rents and other housing costs have soared. You know, rents have basically doubled in America over the last 20 years. And this is a story that's happened in the South, in the Midwest, in the coast, you know, everywhere in the country, it's getting more and more expensive to live. And then we might ask, and this is the third ingredient, is, you know, wait a minute. What about help from the federal government? And the answer is only about one in six eligible whole families who could receive assistance from the federal government in terms of public housing or a voucher that reduces their rent.

Only about one in six of those families receive anything. a voucher that reduces their rent. Only about one in six of those families receive anything. And so the waiting list for public housing in some of our biggest cities now is counted in decades, not in years. So if I applied for public housing in New York City today or Washington DC, for example, I'd be a grandfather by the time

my application came up for review. I have two young kids. And just to be sure I have those three factors straight, you're saying that as incomes have remained flat and rent has soared, the government has simultaneously not done very much to address those two competing realities. That's exactly right. And so I think that, you know, that's led us to a place where most renting families below the poverty line are spending over 50% of their income on housing costs. And one in four of those families are spending 70% of their income

just on rent and utilities. So that kind of brings us back to Yolanda. And it's clear to me why so many people, including her, are struggling to pay their rent. But I want to better understand why they're facing eviction. And we tried to get in touch with Yolanda's landlord, but we didn't hear back. So I wonder, what is your understanding of why so many landlords are trying to evict their tenants? I think that for many property owners, eviction

has been the go-to solution for when a tenant falls behind. You know, when we haven't had a serious investment by the federal government in housing, eviction is seen by more and more property owners as the only solution that they have. If a tenant falls behind and they evict them, that eviction doesn't solve their problem, right? They don't get paid. but, you know, they might have a chance to fill the property with someone else. And, you know, look, it's an incredibly difficult time for property owners right now. You know, they've experienced this giant loss of revenue. Most were excluded from aid to small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program. So if I was a florist or if I was a mechanic, I might've got a bailout from the federal government. But if I was a mom and pop landlord, I didn't receive anything like that. And so, you know,

landlords are feeling the crunch too. I do think that the crisis affecting tenants and the crisis affecting property owners are not the same thing though. And let me just kind of walk through that. You know, we have a national moratorium right now on eviction, but it's not like a get out of rent free card. You know, people still have to pay rent to stay in their homes. That's number one consideration. In other words, like, you know, a lot of landlords saying, okay, if my tenant doesn't pay the rent, I can't pay the bank and I might go into foreclosure.

And that is a reality for many property owners. But the rules governing foreclosures and the rules governing evictions are different. So in most cases, if you fall behind on your mortgage, your bank has to wait 120 days to start the eviction proceedings. But in many cities, if you fall behind on your rent, you could be evicted in a matter of weeks. And it's also different losing a property and losing your home and being cast into homelessness, especially during a pandemic. So what do we know about what the next couple months are going to look like for renters who might be facing eviction? You've talked about the fact that historically the government has not been particularly invested in this issue. And is that what we're expecting as the situation gets worse and the pandemic continues?

I think there are a lot of questions left unanswered. So last week, the senators working on the Bipartisan Emergency COVID Relief Act released a statement about what the stimulus bill might include. For renters, there are two things that we need to pay attention to. First, the senator said that the relief bill will provide $25 billion in rent assistance, payments that would go either to landlords or to tenants that would directly attack rental debt. The second thing that the senators said was that they will provide quote,

an eviction moratorium until the end of January 2021. So the question is, what's that eviction moratorium gonna look like? Is Yolanda gonna be able to benefit from that moratorium or is that moratorium gonna kind of leave her in the cold? And these are questions that we just simply don't have answers to yet. Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you, Stella.

If the CDC's temporary hold is not extended, 30 to 40 million Americans could lose their homes. But it's a band-aid. It's not a solution because this is essentially a deferral of those rent payments for the next several months. They will still become due. America will face a large-scale eviction crisis unless something is passed soon as the eviction moratorium is set to expire on January 1st. Hello? Hi, Yolanda. Hello. How are you doing? All right. So, Yolanda, tell me, what has happened since we talked in October? Well, I'm finished. I graduated. I finished my student teaching. Congratulations. Thank you. And tell me about how your family celebrated you getting the teaching certification? What happened? Oh, I just put on my cap and gown.

You know, I was walking through the house. I mean, the kids are really excited because, again, I mean, it was a milestone. So they were just real happy for me. Yeah. So I'm just now waiting to obtain a position, you know, a teaching position. And we're scheduled to go back on January 4th. So hopefully in the next couple of weeks, you know, everything picks up with my employment. We did go to court in November, I believe.

Their attorney wasn't prepared. He did not show up. So the judge set it over until the 21st, which is Monday. So right now we're still in litigation. I haven't heard anything from the landlord. It's like we're at a standstill. And what are you thinking for when the moratorium expires? Right now I'm thinking that I just want to have a good holiday and then maybe I have to go based off the judgment.

So I'm just, I'm just, it's like I just have to keep breathing because I just don't know what's going to happen. And I just want the kids to have a good Christmas. Just take a day off of worrying. Just enjoy, relax. I guess I just want all the worrying to stop for one day. I just want one day. But the most part, I think we all are just trying to suppress and keep going. Well, thank you so much, Yolanda.

Thank you. On Thursday night, Democrats and Republicans were still debating whether the latest stimulus package should include $25 billion in emergency rent relief and whether to extend the current moratorium on evictions past the end of the year. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The coronavirus is ravaging California, leaving just 3% of the state's ICU beds available as of Thursday. In Los Angeles County, officials say that on average,

two people are dying every hour, and one out of every 80 people are now thought to be infected with the virus. And a Times investigation has raised doubts about the account of the central character in Caliphate, a Times audio series published in 2018. The man, who called himself Abu Huzaifa, claimed that he had carried out brutal acts, including murder, as a member of ISIS in Syria. But since the series aired, the Canadian government has charged him with lying about his experience. The findings of the Times investigation are described by executive editor Dean Baquet in an update to the series, released this morning. Today's episode was produced by Stella Tan and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Mike Benoit and Lisa Tobin

and engineered by Chris Wood. by Mike Benoit and Lisa Tobin, and engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Matthew Goldstein and Aliza Durana. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilbaro. See you on Monday.