That’s left legal-aid groups scrambling to educate tenants, landlords, and even judges about the federal eviction prohibition, which should prevent cases against renters like Meadows in the first place. The stakes are especially high because eviction filings are on the rise in Maricopa County-more than 1,300 this month, according to CLS-and Arizona is still allowing constables to physically remove tenants who can’t demonstrate that they have been directly impacted by COVID-19. “We’ve had people call and say they couldn’t hear the judge, or they don’t have a computer or scanner to send in proof that they paid rent,” said Pam Bridge, litigation and advocacy director for Community Legal Services. Ultimately, Meadows’s case was dismissed, but things might have gone differently if he hadn't had an attorney, which the majority of tenants facing eviction do not.Īrizona is one of a handful of states that are allowing evictions to proceed through remote hearings, adding technological barriers to a process that’s already difficult for most renters to navigate. Liebler picked up a subsequent call from an anonymous number, which turned out to be the judge.
Eventually, Liebler hung up to call the court clerk-who told him the judge had already tried to call him. On the day of the hearing, Meadows and his attorney, Lewis Liebler, called in to the number they’d been given and waited for more than two hours, without hearing any cases called. Adding to the confusion, Meadows’s eviction hearing was conducted entirely by telephone, since Maricopa County courts are closed. The Maricopa County judge presiding over Meadows’s case was also unaware of the extent of the federal eviction prohibition, according to an attorney with Community Legal Services, the Phoenix-based nonprofit that represented him. “They’re trying to kick people who are already down,” he said. He said that his building’s new owner had recently evicted two other families and moved to evict him, after he mistakenly paid rent on the 5th of the month, when it was due under previous ownership, instead of on the 1st. Meadows pays a portion of his monthly rent using a Section 8 housing voucher, and the rest with federal disability payments. When Dennis Meadows, 52, faced eviction from his Phoenix-area apartment this month, he said he had no idea that he should have been covered under the federal eviction freeze, even though he follows news about the pandemic closely. The lack of implementation of CARES Act protections, therefore, has implications for millions of struggling tenants. While some tenants are protected for now under a patchwork of state and local eviction moratoria, others are falling through the cracks.Ī report from the National Multifamily Housing Council estimated that nearly one-third of all renters were unable to pay their rent on time in April. But to date, neither federal agencies nor most state court systems have moved to implement the law. The CARES Act covers tens of millions of properties, though it stopped short of an across-the-board eviction and foreclosure moratorium, proposed in an earlier relief bill introduced in the House of Representatives. But with no enforcement mechanism, landlords and even public-housing authorities in some states have continued to file for eviction without consequences. The CARES Act included a 120-day ban on removing tenants from properties that receive federal subsidies or have federally backed mortgages.
Tenants in federally subsidized low-income housing are still being evicted, despite protections passed as part of last month’s sweeping COVID-19 relief package.
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