When the nation's economy ground to a halt this spring, economists warned that an avalanche of evictions was looming. The federal government and many states rushed to ban them temporarily, and they placed moratoriums on mortgage foreclosures to relieve financial pressure on landlords.
But 20 states, including Louisiana, Texas, Colorado and Wisconsin, have since lifted their restrictions and researchers have tracked thousands of recent eviction filings in places where data is available. Eviction bans in nine other states and at the federal level are set to expire by the end of the month.
All told, Amherst College anticipates that nearly 28 million households are at risk of being turned out onto the streets because of job losses tied to the pandemic.
Even in places with ordinances barring evictions, the protections have been of little help to immigrants, who fear that complaining to the authorities about their landlord could lead to a consequence worse than homelessness: deportation.
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Landlords argue that they are unfairly being forced to absorb the brunt of the financial burden of pandemic job losses. "Why isn't food free? Why isn't clothing free? Why aren't all the other necessities of life free, yet shelter is being made free?" said Sherwin Belkin, a legal adviser for the Real Estate Board of New York, which represents property owners.
The government, he said, should provide vouchers to tenants who cannot pay rent because of the pandemic, and landlords should be allowed to use the courts to evict those who still do not pay. "Something is wrong when a private industry is being asked to take on its back what is really a public housing emergency," he said.
In Washington, where an eviction moratorium is still in place, the attorney general's office has collected 165 complaints of illegal evictions and late fees and sent 38 cease-and-desist letters to landlords since April 24, when it began keeping data. In one apartment building in the district, landlords posted signs in Spanish announcing that tenants who missed rent payments would be evicted immediately, according to Jennifer Berger, who heads the office's social justice division.
Berger said immigrants have lodged the majority of complaints her office has received. She suspects far more have lost their homes than those who have come forward to complain.
"There's inherent coercion within the immigrant community because they live in fear of being deported, so they're afraid to speak out," she said. "My gut instinct is that there are people who have experienced this and certainly didn't report it."
That was the case for Enriqueta, who asked to be identified by her first name because she came to the United States illegally from Mexico. She and her husband were working as house cleaners in Austin, Texas, but lost their jobs in March. April 1 came and went. Within a few days, her landlord began knocking on the door of her apartment and demanding the rent.
A $300 bill for water overuse appeared under the apartment door, which she said she found confusing because the apartment had no dishwasher or washing machine. She chose not to fight back, fearing that the authorities might try to separate her from her American-born sons, who are 6 and 8, and deport her.
Instead, they fled to the home of one of her husband's cousins, who said they could live temporarily in his living room. As is often the case, the eviction was not an isolated incident, but a catalyst that she said sent her family into a tailspin.
Her husband started drinking excessively and then left her. During the 2½ months that she and her sons slept on an air mattress, they rarely slept through the night, awakened each time someone came into the house or went to the sink for a glass of water.
The boys stopped attending online school classes because the home where they were staying did not have internet access. She hardly had time to look for a new job; she spent all day trying to keep her sons from upsetting their new temporary landlords.
Even if she found the money, because of her legal status, she did not have a form of identification she could use to rent another apartment.
City officials learned of their situation through her sons' school and helped them move last week into a bedroom they are now subletting in a different apartment without a formal lease. But with no job and businesses in Texas shuttering again because of coronavirus outbreaks, she said she fears a second eviction could be coming if she can't keep up with her $600 rent payments.