Florida housing attorney describes devastating effects of the end of the eviction moratorium

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling lifting the Biden government’s eviction moratorium will greatly accelerate the ongoing housing crisis in the US. This is all the more true given that it is taking place amid a worsening pandemic that has killed over 654,000 people in the United States alone as of this writing. In addition, federal unemployment benefits will expire across the country in a few days and consumer prices, including those for residential property, will continue to rise.

Although evictions in the US are not tracked nationwide, the Princeton University Eviction Lab has documented 488,069 evictions in the six states and 31 cities as of mid-March 2020, with some cities already at or above pre-pandemic evictions.

Rents are skyrocketing across the country. Tampa Bay, Florida leads the way with rental growth of 15.6 percent in the first half of 2021 alone, the highest increase in the country according to data from CoStar, a national real estate company. The next highest growth rates were recorded in Austin, Texas (15.3 percent); Raleigh, North Carolina (14.9 percent); Orlando, Florida (14.5 percent) and Phoenix, Arizona (13.7 percent).

Housing advocates protest against evictions earlier this month. (AP Photo / Brittainy Newman, File)

Last week, the Commerce Department reported that the government’s main inflation indicator, the core consumer spending index, rose 3.6 percent in July compared to the same month last year, the largest increase since May 1991. Volatile food and energy prices rose 4, 2 percent year-on-year, the highest since January 1991. Energy and food are up 23.6 percent and 2.4 percent year-over-year, respectively, which is a large part of inflation.

The National Equity Atlas estimates that around 6.4 million households are behind on rent, although the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities puts that number at 11 million. Total rental debt is estimated at $ 21.3 billion, which is an average of $ 3,300 for each household that is behind with rental payments.

While $ 46.5 billion in pandemic federal aid has been allocated, only about 11 percent has actually been distributed, with some states, including New York, not yet distributing a single cent.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke to William Kilgore, a housing activist with the tenants’ union in St. Petersburg, Florida, about the implications of ending the eviction moratorium.

St. Petersburg, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, is the largest city in Pinellas County with a population of 272,000. According to the 2019 US Census Bureau statistics, the median household income in Pinellas County is $ 54,000, with 11.4 percent of the population officially living in poverty, although the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) puts its poverty rate at 12.2 percent. Between 2015 and 2019, the home ownership rate was 67 percent, meaning that around a third of the apartments are owned by landlords and management companies.

“Here in Pinellas, we’ve had just over 2,000 open evictions since the pandemic began,” said Kilgore. “We are examining these cases, which are moving on to the final eviction. You do not yet have the deed of ownership, the final eviction notice, in which the deputy hands over the property to the landlord and removes all tenants remaining on the property, possibly by force.

“Since March of last year there have been 2,500 ownership notices. One thing about the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] Moratorium, it’s weak from the start and only covered non-payment of rent if you were in financial distress due to COVID. It would protect you in that case. But landlords can get around this by evicting you for violating a rental agreement if you have an unauthorized person in your apartment, or simply saying at the end of the rental period that they will not continue the rental agreement. “

Kilgore stated that some landlords have held back filing because of the eviction moratorium and will now begin filing. He said litigation for rent debt payments is “something we will see in the next few months, even for years,” and likened the impact to that of the Great Recession sparked by the 2008 financial crisis. He said many indebted and bankrupt homeowners are still facing the consequences of this crisis in court.

Regarding the social impact, he said, “People will be permanently poor, some people will have a really hard time, and it will continue to affect the health of the community. We’ve seen some of the highest COVID rates in Florida, and now we’re seeing the biggest increase yet. “

Almost 21,000 new cases were registered in the state on Saturday. According to official figures, nearly 44,000 Floridians have died of COVID-19 so far.

“There was a study by UCLA that estimated that there were 10,000 additional COVID-19 eviction-related deaths in the first four or five months of the pandemic prior to the moratorium … So I think we will see more deaths to.

“You are ready to sacrifice people’s lives to sustain the multi-billion dollar rental industry.”

St. Petersburg is a omen for the rest of the United States. The Sun Belt region saw the highest increases in residential property prices as the demand for housing outstrips supply, affecting both rents and private homes.

The number of US rental apartments shot up by around half a million in the second quarter of 2021, according to industry advisor RealPage, the strongest quarterly increase since data collection began in 1993. The occupancy rate was at a record high of 96.9 percent last month.

Also in July, the costs for new rentals rose by 17 percent compared to the payments made by the previous tenants. Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Bloomberg Businessweek: “The entire housing market is on fire, from home to rent, from high-end to low-end, coast to coast.

In the run-up to the lifting of the moratorium, the Biden government and the Democratic Party, which controls both Houses of Congress, made little or no effort to extend the eviction ban. The right-wing majority in the Supreme Court noted in their unsigned, eight-page judgment that “Congress has indicated that a further extension would almost certainly require new legislation, but it has not taken any action in the weeks leading up to the expiry of the moratorium. “

The reality behind the pathetic pleadings of so-called “progressive” Democrats like Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush for an eviction extension law is the determination of the Biden White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership to end any federal aid programs under way of the pandemic, with the exception of the trillions the Federal Reserve pumped into financial markets to protect and expand the fortunes of corporate oligarchs.

This is an integral part of the bipartisan policy dictated by the ruling class to reopen schools and get back to “business as usual” even as COVID infections, hospital stays and death rates rise to new record highs. The aim is to blackmail workers back into unsafe factories, workplaces and schools that are at risk of poverty and homelessness.

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The post Florida housing attorney describes devastating effects of the end of the eviction moratorium first appeared on Daily Florida Press.

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