Throughout the pandemic we’ve heard about the challenges that small businesses, workers, families, schools and more have had to experience.
WCCO’s Sloane Martin tells us about how another facet of society -- landlords and renters -- continue to struggle:
Around 50 percent of Minneapolis and St. Paul is made up of renters.
Gov. Tim Walz’s Executive order 20-14 went into effect in late March as a rent and mortgage suspension, ensuring that people who lost work in the pandemic are not displaced. It’s a moratorium on evictions as well as landlord-initiated lease terminations, lease non-renewals and notices to vacate. Renters are required to pay the rent when it’s due if they are able. It was updated in June to alter some exceptions, and then again in August with executive order 20-79, which remains in effect.
Under that executive order, tenants can only be evicted for endangering the safety of others, seriously damaging the property, or drug-related complaints.
Eric Hauge, the executive director at HOME Line, which offers free legal assistance to renters, said it's advised close to 4,000 households just on pandemic-related issues.
Hauge said nearly all of the 13,000 to 14,000 evictions statewide annually are due to nonpayment. In 2019, about 11,000 of those were in the seven-country metro area. According to research from HOME Line, between March 16 to October 16, there were only about 500 cases in the legal process.
“Evictions are not good for individuals, families and society as a whole,” he said. “We don’t want people facing homelessness and housing instability through a situation that, in most cases, isn’t their fault (in the pandemic.)”
The Trump administration enacted a nationwide eviction moratorium through the end of 2020. But Minnesotans in need of rental help are still waiting for each 30 day period, to see if Gov. Walz’s executive powers remain in place.
Walz this summer announced $100 million in CARES Act funding for housing assistance. If renters still have not been able to pay, they’re advised to seek help from the state or their county by visiting housinghelpmn.org.
At HOME Line they’ve heard of renters getting caught back up after missing rent for months.
“There’s been a lot of really good stories we’ve seen in terms of landlords and tenants communicating with each other, landlords being willing to set up payment plans, recognizing that a tenant has lost their job but they’re working to try and figure out what they’re going to do and they’re paying what they can either through emergency assistance unemployment,” Hauge said.
Unfortunately for Melissa Maier, she’s had no such success. She rents out a single home in St. Paul but said she has not received payment and has not been able to communicate with the tenant.
“I’m worried I’m going to lose my rental house and have to do bankruptcy which means I’ll probably lose the house in which I live,” she said. “
She’s worried the moratorium will drive smaller landlords from the industry with damaging ripple effects: fewer rental properties on the market can shrink supply and drive up demand and price.
“There’s not enough incentive for landlords to continue renting because they’re sinking,” Maier said. “Like me. I’m sinking. There’s no support for me. There’s definitely no reason for me to continue renting.”
Maier said she wished there was a solution that would provide support to landlords as well as to renters.
“The eviction moratorium has made a bigger divide between the landlords and the tenants than there ever was before,” she said. “That’s very unfortunate because the landlords need the tenants to pay the rent and the tenants need a place to live so they don’t end up being homeless. There’s a constant battle because of the inequality of how the eviction moratorium had been meant to help the tenants but there’s a lot of tenants that are now taking advantage of it.”
It’s hard to say for sure what those numbers are for sure, especially knowing the financial burdens many are facing during the pandemic. Hauge said there are bad apples on both sides -- landlords who have tried to self-evict and renters who perhaps could have continued paying rent. But that’s not a wise idea.
“The order since day one has always since the rent is still due,” he said. “Not paying right now is simply delaying things, not preventing someone from facing eviction and homelessness, it’s just delaying it right now. The rent is still due. And honestly, not paying it right now can harm you in other ways. It can impact your credit. It’s probably going to impact your ability to find housing in the future because your current landlord is probably not going to provide a positive reference.”
With a focus in the Twin Cities in addressing homelessness, Hauge said an abrupt repeal of the eviction moratorium could have tragic results with thousands of mass evictions, placing people on unsteady ground, or causing them to fall. He said there needs to be a plan in place for when it’s lifted, preferably through legislation.
“It benefits nobody to have a massive number of filed and the courts just totally overwhelmed. It benefits nobody. Really want the landlords want is the rent, so let’s have a plan to make them whole at the end of this, rather than just see mass evictions.”