“I’m Scared to Be Homeless Again”: As Delta Rages, So Do Predatory Landlords

Threatening eviction during a national moratorium is illegal, yet landlords across America continue to engage in ruthless and unlawful tactics to circumvent tenant rights with no repercussions.

Simone worries about becoming homeless again. She lives with her boyfriend and two children in Los Angeles and worked as a certified nursing assistant before being moved to part time in March 2020 when the pandemic struck. By mid-April she was cut down to two days a week before her employer finally told her, “Don’t come back to work.”

Simone is behind on rent, and her boyfriend’s social security checks haven’t come through lately. Despite a city-wide ban, her landlord has begun threatening her with late fees and eviction. Her landlord has even demanded Simone’s food stamps as rental payment.

“I have always gone above and beyond to try not to have payment or housing issues because I did in my childhood,” she told PRP. As Simone’s landlord bombards her with phone calls, texts, threats, and confrontations — with no solution in sight — Simone says she’s become “very depressed” and her anxiety has gone “through the roof.”

Simone should not be in this position. In response to the converging deluge of economic and public health crises at the beginning of 2020, all levels of government moved quickly to implement housing protections.

Simultaneously, the CDC implemented an eviction moratorium as part of the CARES Act—which was due to end this month, July 2021. In addition, cities and states enacted their own moratoriums, adding anti-harassment protections and implementing emergency housing assistance funding to keep people in their homes. As the Delta variant sweeps across the nation, President Biden has extended the federal moratorium until October 3rd —effective August 3rd.

Simone’s landlord threatening eviction despite the national moratorium is illegal, and yet landlords across America continue to engage in ruthless and unlawful tactics to circumvent tenant rights without any repercussions.

This is what we at Public Rights Project refer to as the equitable enforcement gap: the mismatch between the laws on the books and the lived realities of underserved communities — particularly people of color, immigrants, and low-wage workers — who rarely benefit from the protections we’re all promised.

For the past year, PRP has interviewed people across the country impacted by this enforcement gap around housing. Their stories of landlord abuse, neglect, and flagrant violation of the law underscore the urgency with which state and local governments must not only act to enforce tenants’ rights, but hold the violators accountable.

“My landlord is talking to neighbors and members of the community about my inability to pay,” Simone says. “It is embarrassing and it’s humiliating to go anywhere. We were trying to move at the beginning of June. I don’t want to, but I have to.”

We’ve long known that housing instability is intrinsically coupled with deleterious health effects. The mortality rate for twenty-five to forty-five-year-olds is nine times higher for men who are homeless and ten times higher for women who are homeless compared to the general population of Massachusetts. Over one third of newly homeless people in the New York City shelter system have major depression, and over half have a substance use disorder.

Housing instability also profoundly affects young people. Adolescents who experience school moves are 50 percent more likely not to graduate from high school. Housing instability also exposes young people to increased risks of teen pregnancy, early drug use, and psychological distress.

Simone worries about these possibilities for her children constantly. “I’ve watched the landlord bring her family members in — her son is a looming figure here — and kick people out,” she says. “I don’t want my children around that. I wake up every day nervous.”

The action taken by state and local governments in response to the pandemic has been invaluable to residents vulnerable to housing instability. Researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research estimate that policies limiting evictions reduced COVID-19 infections by roughly four percent and COVID-19 deaths by 11 percent; if the national eviction moratoria had not been implemented in 2020 within four months of the outbreak, cases in the U.S. would have increased by 433,700 and deaths by 10,700. While these policies have been instrumental in protecting many tenants, without vigilant enforcement, they still leave many more renters vulnerable.

Ricardo is a father of three, a property manager living in Baltimore with his children, aunt, and uncle, who is suffering from cancer. He makes commissions off of contracts, but those requests have “completely stopped.” He says clients owe money on past contracts, but due to the pandemic, they haven’t been able to deliver on that front either. It’s a vicious cycle with cascading effects.

Starting in March of 2020, he has not been able to pay his rent in full. Ricardo knows a local eviction moratorium is in place, but he doubts it would protect him and his family from losing his home.

“The landlord has tried to raise [the] rent, calls me several times a day, and shows up to my property announced,” he says.

“He has gone inside the property, threatens to change the locks, and threatens to throw all my stuff outside. This is especially scary as I have children.”

Ricardo worries about his children seeing the landlord. He knows the landlord cannot legally evict him right now, but he worries about being kicked out anyway. “[The landlord] told us he does not care…if we do not have the rent by a certain day, he will file for eviction.”

Despite this harassment and intimidation being illegal, some tenants surrender their homes because they fear having an eviction on their record. This is what John, a Detroit native, did. Right before the pandemic hit, John got laid off from his contracting job before coming down with COVID-19 — all of which was complicated by his asthma. He had to quarantine to recover and could not look for work.

“The food pantries have kept me alive,” John says.

John’s landlord began verbally harassing him about his rent, despite John’s promise that he would pay her once his stimulus check came. “She said that she did not want me back here after May and I didn’t have to pay her for May as long as I was out by June 1.”

John is unemployed and has no idea where he’s going to live next, but he is at a loss for other options. “I’m worried because if I have an eviction in my name, it’ll be hard to find a new place to live,” John says. “We have agreed to terminate the lease, but I won’t just walk out and be homeless.”

Many landlords have created living situations so unbearable that tenants forgo housing they are legally entitled to stay in. Others have nowhere else to go and, unable to afford counsel to fight back, have little option but to endure. Reports of landlords exploiting the uneven power dynamic have also spiked; abuse ranges from sexual harassment to demanding sex in return for rent.

Even government assistance programs have been exploited by landlords. Some have outright refused to participate. In North Carolina, one program allows landlords to accept rental assistance under the condition that they do not evict the tenant within the first 90 days after the most recent month’s rental payment. In practice, this has resulted in instances where the landlord collects back rent from the government and then evicts the tenant anyway.

Preventative regulations are only as good as the enforcement that upholds them, and the pandemic has exacerbated the equitable enforcement gap. While life returns to normal for many Americans, vulnerable tenants continue to see landlords violate their rights with impunity. At Public Rights Project, we know getting a law on the books is only the first step in safeguarding individuals’ rights.