Attorneys working to contain “mess” of evictions as moratoriums expire 

For tenants struggling to pay their rent in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bad news continues to pile up. 

A statewide moratorium on eviction hearings that had been in place since shutdowns began in March expired in June, and a separate federal moratorium that protected roughly a quarter of the nation’s renters expired on July 24. Now, attorneys across North Carolina are working with tenants and landlords to keep evictions to a minimum but are concerned that more people will be left homeless as the pandemic continues. 

Gov. Roy Cooper’s moratorium on eviction hearings, which expired on June 20, didn’t stop landlords from filing eviction papers–it only halted summary ejectment proceedings. As of the end of June, there were 9,701 pending eviction cases in North Carolina, according to figures from the North Carolina Judicial Branch.

David Bartholomew, an attorney with Pisgah Legal Services in Asheville, said his nonprofit has received around 100 calls the past month from people who are at risk for eviction. Buncombe County hasn’t yet seen an increase in summary ejectments, but Bartholomew said he expects that to change in August and September, as many people are just a job loss or one “big thing away” from being evicted.

“In this case, one big thing has happened to a lot of people,” Bartholomew said.

To try to prevent that from happening, the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts has applied for funding from the Office of State Budget and Management to create an Eviction Mediation Program that would allow landlords and tenants to engage in pre-trial mediation with the goal of reaching a settlement agreement, said Sharon Gladwell, a spokesperson for the Judicial Branch. 

The money would be used to create a one-year Eviction Mediation Coordinator position and to pay the salaries of mediators. The federal government has awarded $26 million in Community Services Block Grants to 33 agencies in North Carolina, Gladwell said, and that CSBG funding is fairly flexible and can be used for many different types of services, including rent payments.

Legal Aid of North Carolina has also been working with Duke University School of Law’s Eviction Diversion Program and the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy to try to keep the number of cases ending with evictions as small as possible. 

Already, some cases are being resolved by getting landlords to work with tenants to come up with payment plans that allow renters to remain in their homes. Isaac Sturgill, an attorney with LANC said that in early June there had been around 1,800 pending eviction cases in Mecklenburg County. By the end of the month that number had been reduced to 1,075, according to Judicial Branch figures, although that number was still the highest of any county in the state.

But Jesse McCoy, an attorney and director of Duke’s Eviction Diversion program, warned that without more government assistance, “the situation can only get worse.”

“On one hand, landlords have been left holding the bag for any and all overhead expenses they have incurred over the past few months through no fault of their own,” McCoy said. “But it is also not the tenant’s fault as to why they cannot pay the rent. Evictions on anyone’s record significantly reduce the number of prospective landlords who will be willing to rent to you. We could be creating an even bigger issue when it comes to credit reports that inhibit the ability of these tenants to acquire capital or alternative lodging. This current situation is a mess.”

Attorneys who represent landlords concurred that the pandemic has put their clients in a very difficult position as well. Eric Remington of Ward and Smith in New Bern said that most of his firm’s landlord clients are doing what they can to work with tenants. 

“But the landlord-tenant relationship is a two-way street,” Remington said. “Tenants need to be proactive about reaching out to their landlords and making every effort to comply with the terms of their lease. Otherwise, landlords have no choice but to pursue eviction so that the leased space can be provided to a tenant who can and will abide by the terms of the lease.”

Many landlords have to make mortgage payments of their own on the properties that they own. Those whose mortgages are federally subsidized, or whose properties are covered by various federal affordable housing programs, had been barred from evicting tenants as part of Congress’s COVID-19 relief act, but that moratorium expired on July 24, putting about a quarter of renters at further risk of eviction.

North Carolina Chief Justice Cheri Beasley extended an order that same day requiring landlords to submit an affidavit attesting to whether their properties are backed by the federal government, since landlords must give at least 30 days notice before filing eviction papers.

The statewide moratorium on evictions had also forced appeals in eviction cases that had been filed before the pandemic started to be put on hold, but the lifting of that moratorium has allowed district courts to start hearing those appeals, although they still remain subject to social distancing requirements that limit the number of people in the courtroom at any given time.

“I feel that the new scheduling process is actually more efficient because having set hearing times eliminated a significant amount of time that used to be spent waiting for the case to be called after the calendar call,” Remington said. “It is hard to predict what the courts will do in the next several months with the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, but I believe the situation will get better as the court personnel become more familiar with the new rules and gain more experience with scheduling and handling cases.”

For those tenants who are now in danger of being evicted, “attorneys need to embrace the fact that many of our clients are going to be screwed by the government’s inability to act quickly in providing rental assistance,” said McCoy.

“Attorneys should assess whether the landlord is evicting solely based on nonpayment of rent, and if so, whether the landlord has engaged in a good-faith attempt to establish a payment,” McCoy said. “They should ensure that the landlord’s ledger is accurate and that the landlord had been properly upholding his duties to the tenant–failure on the landlord’s part could potentially reduce the degree of financial liability that a tenant may have.”

Follow Bill Cresenzo on Twitter at bcresenzo@nclw