The flood of evictions that politicians and housing advocates desperately warned of has yet to materialize three months after the Supreme Court revoked the Biden administration’s COVID-19 eviction ban.
Eviction filings remain below pre-pandemic levels despite dire predictions of mass homelessness when the Supreme Court struck down the eviction moratorium in August.
In the first three months since the moratorium ended, eviction filings increased by roughly 20% compared with the final three months that the ban was in place, according to data released last week by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.
Yet the number of eviction cases remains roughly 40% below pre-pandemic levels, the Eviction Lab found.
“This was a manufactured crisis that allowed the administrative state to make up rules it wasn’t allowed to make up,” said John Vecchione, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which filed a class-action lawsuit to end the moratorium. “The idea that these landlords are itching to throw someone out is a lot of hooey.”
When the moratorium ended, the forecasts from housing activists and liberal politicians couldn’t have been more alarming.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimated that “millions of people” would lose their homes while “the [COVID-19] delta variant ravages communities.”
The Aspen Institute said 3.5 million were likely to be tossed out of their homes.
Rep. Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat and Black Lives Matter activist, predicted that 11 million people would lose their homes. She protested the end of the ban by leading a sleepover demonstration outside the Capitol.
Ms. Bush did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Experts gave several reasons why the eviction onslaught never materialized.
One of the key factors is that the government stepped in to fill the void. The Treasury Department picked up the speed in which it disbursed federal rental assistance funds to cities and states, and local governments enacted eviction bans before the federal moratorium expired.
Landlords became more willing to cut deals, and an improved job market made it easier to afford rent.
While no single factor undercut some of the gloomiest predictions, each played a role in keeping evictions well below historical averages, experts said.
In New York, a city moratorium has kept eviction filings at 85% below the pre-pandemic average since the federal ban was revoked. In Austin, Texas, which has one of the most stringent eviction moratoriums in the country, filings remain about 20% below historical averages.
Evictions have surged, however, in some places that were protected only by the federal moratorium.
Las Vegas and Columbus, Ohio, which did not enact local protections, surpassed their historical averages for eviction filings since August. More than 4,500 eviction filings were reported in October alone, exceeding the pre-pandemic average by 25%.
Evictions aren’t rising everywhere, though only 37% of the country is covered by some sort of local ban.
When Connecticut’s state moratorium expired at the end of June, filings flooded its courts. More than 1,000 cases were filed in September alone. Despite the increase and lack of local protections, Connecticut rates remain about 40% below historical averages.
Some local protections are set to expire soon. Austin’s eviction moratorium will lapse on Dec. 31, and New York’s will expire on Jan. 15.
Jasmine Rangel, a research specialist at Eviction Lab, said it’s unclear how the looming expirations will impact eviction filings across the nation.
“We have to see how these specific areas with strong local protections act in the new year,” she said. “Whether it’s completely eliminated or just held off a large tsunami of evictions, the state and local actions have really helped.”
The federal government has begun rapidly distributing the $46 billion in federal rental assistance that Congress set aside as part of the COVID-19 pandemic relief package.
After a slow start plagued by computer problems and bureaucratic snafus, the Treasury Department picked up the pace this fall. More than 2.5 million payments have been doled out, and the department estimates that at least 80% of the program’s funding will be spent or allocated by the end of the year.
In September alone, the Treasury Department wrote checks for nearly $2.8 billion to help cover costs of unpaid rents.
Several large cities and states have exhausted their federal rental assistance.
Texas and Atlanta have stopped accepting applicants, and Oregon has temporarily halted new applications. California and Philadelphia have warned that they are close to exhausting their funds.
Texas disbursed nearly $2 billion to roughly 284,000 households.
According to Eviction Lab’s data, municipalities that doled out funds had fewer eviction filings.
Arlington, Texas, initially distributed 9.5% of its allocation in June and July. Its 846 eviction cases during those months were about 98% of its historical average. Chesterfield County, Virginia, spent 88% of its allocation in June and July, and only 162 cases, roughly 15% of its historical average, were filed.
The funds have helped tenants cover back rent and given landlords confidence that they will receive the rent money owed. That has kept them from pulling the trigger on evictions.
Other government programs working in combination with the rental assistance relief have helped keep a flood of evictions at bay.
“We theorized that increased support like the child tax credit or expanded unemployment helped families survive the financial strain of the last few months,” Ms. Rangel said.
Mr. Vecchione, the lawyer with New Civil Liberties Alliance, worries about what landlords will do when government funding runs dry. He said many are selling their properties or otherwise getting out of the business rather than struggling in the current environment.
“The money being paid helps them mitigate the damage, but you don’t know how long it will last,” he said. “How long will the states and federal government continue to prop up renters?”
Still, landlords are willing to make deals to keep tenants in their homes.
An October study by Housing Matters, an initiative of the nonprofit Urban Institute, concluded that most landlords are willing to barter with tenants who get behind on rent.
The study found that landlords were willing to forgive back rent, set up payment plans, offer social services assistance, or accept services such as cleaning and maintenance to help cover the debt.
“No one wants to evict their tenant,” Mr. Vecchione said. “It’s a pain in the neck to evict a tenant. When the market functions as it should, they make deals. These deals are being made again.”
