'Mass evictions' feared in Iowa when governor's order giving renters relief for nonpayment expires
Brandon Cinkan and Alison Burke welcomed their newborn son into the world on May 18.
On May 28, they could lose their home.
The Marion family has been among the many Iowans living with eviction proceedings looming over their heads for the last two months.
Those proceedings have been just hanging, frozen, since March 19.
In March, Gov. Kim Reynolds issued a public health emergency declaration pausing most evictions, including those for nonpayment of rent, to keep people in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic. The order also included a ban on foreclosures and utility shutoffs due to nonpayment.
The order lifts at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, May 27, and, with the change, advocates fear a flood of evictions will soon follow.
Cinkan, a carpenter, was laid off about a month ago. Burke, a data entry clerk, is also out of work. Unless Reynolds extends the eviction moratorium — something she has not indicated she will do — Cinkan, Burke and their young family, which includes a 3-year-old son, could be homeless soon.
With tens of thousands of Iowans still unemployed because of the pandemic, many Iowans may find themselves in the same situation. Housing advocates fear lifting the moratorium with so many people out of work will result in a spike in evictions, causing panic among Iowa families and, ultimately, the potential for homelessness.
"I think there could be a wave of evictions that could have not only a devastating impact on individuals' lives but also on public health," said Mark Stringer, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa. "Because if people don’t have anywhere to go, then that’s going to keep them from being able to self-quarantine if they somehow get ill or stricken with COVID."
In an effort to prevent "mass evictions," the ACLU and 22 other civil rights, domestic violence and sexual assault survivor organizations in Iowa wrote a letter urging Reynolds to extend the order to at least 45 days after the state's recommended social distancing requirements end. Those requirements are ongoing and do not have an end date.
Reynolds looking into options
Reynolds' March order says that Iowans "should not expect" an extension of the state's eviction protections. On May 18, when asked, Reynolds said she didn't rule out an extension and was still looking at how to proceed.
“We're looking at a couple different scenarios on how we move forward with that, to make sure that we’re not removing that too soon,” she said.
Reynolds has pointed to federal aid for renters through the CARES Act, a sweeping aid package approved during the height of the coronavirus spread. That federal act allocates money to cities and states to help with a variety of social services, including housing assistance.
But the rules around that aid haven't been created yet, and the money has not been placed into the hands of renters.
Some private companies are making allowances.
Iowa utility company officials have said they will extend their policy past that date to avoid mass shutoffs.
MidAmerican Energy has filed a plan with the Iowa Utilities Board that says it will not disconnect anyone for nonpayment until July 24 at the earliest and will instead use a gradual process of outreach to customers and allow people to enter longer payment plans.
Des Moines Water Works public affairs manager Laura Sarcone said the utility hasn't set a date that terminations will begin, but plans to give advanced notice to customers and allow them to make arrangements. So far, the utility has canceled more than 5,000 shutoffs since March 17, Sarcone said.
The anti-eviction order offered Cinkan and Burke immediate relief. The couple had lost an eviction case for nonpayment of their February rent. The Linn County Sheriff's Office was prepared to execute the order on March 20, Cinkan said.
"We had no clue what was going to happen,” Cinkan said.
But the order also has caused financial stress for some landlords, especially those who rely on rent as a large portion of their income.
"If there isn't some kind of an offsetting loan program, or even grant program, for landlords, they will absolutely be flooding the courts with original notice for forcible entry and detainer — which is an eviction," said Andrew Lietzow, executive director of the Iowa Landlords Association.
Landlords still have bills due during the pandemic: utilities, upkeep and mortgage payments, he said.
An informal poll by the Iowa Landlords Association of 100 landlords conducted after April rent was due found more than 46% said the governor's proclamation pausing evictions could "severely impact" their financial well-being.
“We don't have very many of our members that don't have a heart,” he said. “But what they’re going to say is nobody gets to go out and rent a car, and have a car for three months, and then say, ‘I like the car so much I’m going to keep renting it, but I don’t want to pay anything.’”
'There's a lot of anxiety'
State housing advocates are steeling for the potential flood of evictions and Iowans who need financial assistance.
About 29% of Iowa’s 1.2 million households live in rental units, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2018 American Community Survey.
"There’s a lot of anxiety,” said Alison Clark, a board member for the Iowa City Tenants Union, which has been working to educate local renters on the resources available to them. “Iowa City has a lot of renters who are service industry workers, which has been hit very, very hard. A lot of people who had been furloughed and laid off are just not entirely sure how they’re going to make it happen.”
Lifting of the moratorium would come as businesses begin to reopen, but as unemployment remains in record territory. Iowa also continues to see hundreds of new coronavirus cases each week, even though virus activity appears to be trending slightly downward in the state.
At the time of Reynolds' first order, the Iowa court system had more than 500 eviction cases pending, according to an analysis of court filings by Iowa Legal Aid.
Those cases may move to the forefront after the order lifts — and the number will grow.
Renters and the groups that represent them fear the problem will be compounded in June, when another payment is added to missed rent from previous months.
Pam Carmichael, executive director of HOME Inc., which offers landlord-tenant counseling, said she expects cases to flood the group’s call line around the middle of June, as people miss that month's rent payment.
“I think it will be worse in May and probably June, July and August, when stimulus money runs out and there will be nothing that they can do,” Carmichael said. “There will be some financial assistance around, (but) I cannot expect it will be as much as we will need."
Experts say problems paying the rent could continue for months — even years — as the state and nation dig out of the economic recession caused by the widespread virus-related shutdowns.
"The problem of folks not being able to afford housing is going to go on until the economy and the jobs are back as they were, and that’s not going to happen fast,” said Eric Burmeister, executive director of the Polk County Housing Trust Fund.
May 27 is only the first date that marks the likely end of relief for renters. Through July 24, the federal CARES Act has suspended evictions for those who receive federal housing assistance and for nonpayment of rent on properties with federally backed mortgages. The Urban Institute estimates that the federal moratorium protects more than one in four rental units nationwide, or about 28%.
In Des Moines, the majority of affordable housing units are owned by landlords with no connection to those federal programs, so they're affected by the earlier state deadline, Burmeister said.
The different deadlines mean the effects could be staggered. While experts believe there are pent-up evictions that landlords haven't been able to file during the moratorium — which could lead to an initial wave — there is also evidence that federal stimulus money and increased unemployment benefits are so far helping keep some people in their homes.
Burmeister said there's no way to track how many Iowans are behind on rent. But between the federal government's one-time stimulus checks and the addition of an extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits until July, he assumes many people who otherwise would have fallen behind have been able to continue making rent payments.
The National Multifamily Housing Council’s Rent Payment Tracker shows 87.7% of households in professionally managed apartments paid their rent in full or partially as of May 13, down about 2% from the same time last year.
“So, what happens after that? Is the sort of ‘rent bubble’ really going to occur not necessarily right now when the moratorium ends, but is it going to occur after these federal programs start to expire?” he said.
There's still evidence that people are facing difficulty despite the federal programs. As of Tuesday, more than 1,600 people had called Iowa’s 211 hotline to ask about rental assistance since the eviction moratorium went into effect in mid-March.
Alex Kornya, litigation director for Iowa Legal Aid, said he expects a "giant spike" of eviction filings in late May and early June. Kornya said as of Wednesday morning, 663 eviction hearings were set across Iowa for after the moratorium. Some of those hearings are for cases that were filed before the deadline, while others are new cases.
Of those 663 eviction hearings, 443 of them are scheduled the week of June 15, and the number continues to grow, Kornya said.
He said the group is working with the court system to ensure judges have enough information on the federal connections of properties as they consider eviction cases. An Iowa Legal Aid analysis of the 663 eviction cases shows at least 90 of them could have been filed in violation of the moratorium.
Families of color to see greater impacts
Advocates fear those getting evicted when the governor’s moratorium lifts will disproportionately be Iowans of color in the black, Latino, immigrant and refugee communities, which, generally, have lower incomes and less savings and represent a larger percentage of renters than white families.
“The issues that COVID is exposing are truly issues that we’ve been dealing with for much longer than COVID has been around,” said Kameron Middlebrooks, president of the Des Moines chapter of the NAACP.
More:Midwest among the worst place for blacks to live, new report says
Just 26% of black Iowans own their own homes, compared to nearly 74% of white Iowans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey. About half of people in Iowa's Latino community rent. And black Iowans earn a median annual income of $31,053 — about half of white Iowans' median income of $60,123.
That inequity means Iowans in communities of color may be less able to pay rent if they become unemployed, Burmeister said.
Additionally, fear about returning to work may be higher among black Iowans because they face a higher risk of catching and transmitting COVID-19.
Black Iowans represent 3% of the state’s population but 12% of positive coronavirus cases as of last week, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health.
"We don’t want people to have to pick their paycheck over their health," Middlebrooks said. "We commend the governor for issuing this in the first place, but we encourage and push her to extend it because this is a critical protection that our communities need. And the pandemic is not over, so I don’t think the services to help them should end at an arbitrary date."
Help is on the way, but when?
Under the CARES Act passed by Congress in March, federal aid is available to cities and states to help with costs associated with COVID-19 — including rental assistance to prevent homelessness.
But it's unclear when that money will be in states' and cities’ hands to turn over to past-due renters.
“Our fear here among the housing folks is that when our moratorium wears off on evictions, we’re still not going to have money available and programs available to help people,” Burmeister said.
The Iowa Economic Development Authority and the Iowa Finance Authority will receive $34 million in CARES Act funding to distribute as needed. Neither agency has created rules for distributing the funding, and only a portion will go toward housing assistance.
Funding is earmarked for things like child care payments, food bank supplies, small business assistance and equipment for telemedicine, as well as eviction and foreclosure prevention.
Meanwhile, Iowa’s largest cities were allocated $9.5 million collectively. Many cities have yet to determine how to distribute the money, though Des Moines officials have said the city will use up to $700,000 of its $2.2 million on rent and mortgage relief. West Des Moines, which is getting more than $192,000, plans to use most of it for rent, mortgage and utilities assistance for low-income residents affected by the virus.
While Burmeister said officials at the Polk County Housing Trust Fund are grateful that help is coming for renters, they’re fearful it may be too late. The evictions process typically takes 30 to 60 days. Burmeister hopes money will be released before a case file is closed and the renter becomes homeless.
“A lot of things can happen in that time, and hopefully one thing is getting the federal money to pay off that landlord,” he said. “But we don’t have that money, and promises don’t pay rent.”
For Cinkan and Burke, the search for new living arrangements has been difficult during the pandemic, and they worry that a fresh eviction on their record will make it harder.
“In the meantime, we’re stuck here at this place where we know it’s inevitable that we’re going to get kicked out,” he said. "It's extremely stressful."
What should I do if I get an eviction notice?
For renters who may get an eviction notice, the first piece of advice experts say is: Stay put.
A tacked-on notice from your landlord is not the impetus to make your family leave the apartment, said Eric Burmeister, executive director of Polk County Housing Trust Fund. Only a judge can order a notice to vacate.
"Before people start to become homeless, there has to be a court hearing, and a judge has to issue the appropriate order," he said.
The process can take 30 to 60 days and may take longer while social distancing measures are in place.
There are several numbers to call for help:
- HOME Inc.: 515-243-1277 or https://form.jotform.com/90515767630157
- United Way: 211
- Iowa Legal Aid: 800-332-0419
Pam Carmichael, executive director of HOME Inc., says it's better to call for help before a formal eviction notice is filed with the courts. Many nonprofit organizations can help negotiate a payment plan with your landlord to avoid a court order. Be sure to have all interactions with your landlord documented in writing.
These organizations also can point you in the right direction for financial help when CARES Act money becomes available.
Ian Richardson covers the Iowa Statehouse for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at [email protected], at 515-284-8254, or on Twitter at @DMRIanR.
Kim Norvell covers growth and development for the Register. Reach her at [email protected] or 515-284-8259. Follow her on Twitter @KimNorvellDMR.
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