Robust rental assistance is easing the expected wave of eviction judgments. But how long can it last?
Talis Shelbourne
When the federal eviction moratorium ended this summer, many housing advocates predicted an astronomical surge in eviction judgments.
Jamie Harris, a senior lecturer and the associate director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Urban Studies program, said the reality of what happened is more complicated.
“There was a lot of talk that there'd be a massive crisis, because you just (saw) the surveys of debt in terms of people who were behind on rent,” he said. “If you look at Milwaukee, the formal eviction filings are getting close to their average, so I think it's been more of a gradual return.”
The advent of robust rental assistance, distributed by Community Advocates and the Social Development Commission, has helped keep the rate from spiking.
Heiner Giese, a lawyer associated with the landlord advocacy group Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin, said he was not surprised at all. “All along I thought the predictions of a tsunami were way overblown,” Giese said.
Robert Penner, the outreach coordinator of a tenant advocacy group called the Milwaukee Autonomous Tenants Union, said he has been pleasantly surprised by the reduced rate of eviction judgments, yet remains pessimistic about the long-term housing outlook.
“I’m glad we’re not seeing the waves of evictions that were expected,” he said, “but I don’t think we can count that out as a possibility.”
Eviction filings are trending upwards
Eviction filings are different from eviction judgments. Filings mean that a landlord has petitioned the court to evict a tenant while a judgment means that a court found in the landlord's favor.
Alieza Durana, a narrative change liaison at the Eviction Lab, noted that the moratorium was extremely successful in reducing non-emergency eviction filings. However, since its expiration, Durana said the state is following a national trend which shows the number of eviction filings trending upward.
That's important because even an eviction filing can severely damage a renter's record, which makes renting a clean, affordable space more difficult in the future. Those most impacted, Durana said, tend to be low-income residents, Black and Latina women, families with children and families facing domestic violence.
Penner said he expects to see protracted waves of evictions in the future, and he pointed out that official numbers fail to recognize that even during the moratorium, evictions were still taking place, as the Journal Sentinel reported in July.
“We have been informed of a number of illegal evictions taking place that don’t go through the courts,” Penner said. “The landlord will either make the premise unlivable by removing doors, windows, appliances or cutting or electricity. Or self-help evictors who remove a tenant’s belongings while they’re gone and then put a lock on the door.”
There is also the fear that evictions will rise as more people hit the maximum amount of months for which they can receive rental assistance.
Penner said the limited eligibility period should be extended. “Our major concern is that the money that’s left over will either go back to the federal government or put into the general fund of the city or county to use for whatever they want. The money that’s been allocated for rent assistance should be used for that,” he said.
George Hinton, the CEO of SDC, said few have hit that limit, but it is still there. “I know of one or two people who have hit the max,” he said.
Giese cautioned that although eviction filings are trending more toward pre-pandemic levels, they are not there yet. With labor shortages creating so many job openings, he said he expects judgments to remain historically low.
“In addition to rent assistance being available, many people are getting the federal child credit monies, which for a family of three can be $750 to 900 a month,” he said, adding that such funds are helping those who tend to be evicted: low-income, single parents.
Rent assistance distribution slowed
If there’s one thing tenant and landlord advocates can agree on, it is that rental assistance distribution has been much slower than they want.
Penner said he knows many tenants who have been evicted while waiting for their applications to be processed.
“We’ve got tenants that applied in August and September who are still waiting to hear back and their cases are still pending,” Penner noted. “There needs to be a speed-up of the process of disbursement.”
Giese called the process “discouragingly slow.”
Hinton and Community Advocates Housing Strategy Director Deborah Heffner are urging patience.
Heffner said Community Advocates has hired more staff and created “cheat sheets” to smooth out the approval process.
Still, she admitted, “We are not perfect by any means.”
“It’s that balance of trying to move as quickly and efficiently as possible and also understanding we have a huge responsibility because there are a lot of dollars moving out,” Heffner explained.
Some slowdowns are being caused by incomplete applications while others are caused by the difficulty of trying to get the tenant and landlord to engage in the process, Heffner said.
Another factor slowing the process is that each package of funding comes with its own different set of eligibility rules.
“Every time we get another pile of money from the federal government or state, we have to rebuild the process and convey that to the community,” Hinton said. “Especially to individuals who may have applied for the money under one set of funding, we have to go back and say we need this new information for this type of funding. So those are probably some of the hiccups that you see.”
Working through print and online applications, Hinton said they have tried to make the process more accessible for more people. “We’re dealing with people in poverty and sometimes we’ve had to adapt to that and support our community in a different way,” Hinton explained.
Hinton said that SDC is disbursing roughly $1 million a week. The organization has distributed more than $23 million in rent assistance this year.
But every month that goes by without rents being paid, tenants risk eviction and landlords may be forced to sell their properties.
“I’m just hoping that the landlords can be patient with the renters, and they have the relationship with them to weather the storm,” Hinton said. “I worry that people will start to give up on each other.”
Can we keep our communities stable?
Although eviction filings are ticking upwards, eviction judgments have remained substantially lower than they were in 2019.
Housing experts and advocates from both the tenant and landlord perspectives say that’s likely due to rental assistance.
Rental assistance is not new. However, the coffers to support renters going through hardship have never been so full.
“In a typical year, we would have $200k to spend,” Heffner noted. Since the pandemic, both agencies have distributed tens of millions of dollars from the billions provided in the federal government's Emergency Rental Assistance program.
Prior to the pandemic, Hinton said, there were not enough resources to reduce eviction rates and not enough political will to address tangential issues, such as how much rent costs have outpaced incomes in recent decades.
“The real question is, how can we keep our communities stable enough where people don’t have to worry about being evicted?” he asked. “Affordable quality homes are important but also making sure people have the right income so they can pay for what they need to survive.”
Hinton expressed worry over what will happen to many of the supports constructed during the pandemic once coronavirus is no longer such a threat.
“Some of the evictions aren’t necessarily about the money, they’re about the relationship,” he noted. “There (were) a lot of people who had a lot of trouble paying their rent before the virus (and) that percentage is not going to change because there’s nothing changing (in) the economy.”
Harris said while programs such as the pilot Right-to-Counsel initiative are helpful, Milwaukee's affordable housing crisis is raising bigger questions about the value of shelter.
“Data looking at cost-burdened households in Milwaukee (shows the city) is certainly doing worse nationally, and it's and significantly worse than just two decades ago,” Harris explained. “I mean, there's no question that rents have been going up and the supply of affordable housing has been going down.”
“I think this is going to be a longstanding issue to grapple with just because of the sheer level of inequality and poverty in Milwaukee,” Harris said. “And there's a lot of pro-landlord legislation that's been adopted in the last decade. So how that's going to pan out? Is this a reckoning moment?”
Talis Shelbourne is an investigative solutions reporter covering the issues of affordable housing and lead poisoning. Have a tip? You can reach Talis at (414) 403-6651 or tshelbourn@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @talisseer and message her on Facebook at @talisseer.
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