A moratorium from evictions solves some problems and highlights others

Across the nation, people in arrears on their rent are savoring a brief and last-minute reprieve granted by the federal government’s decision to extend its moratorium on evictions.

Locally, as the end of the moratorium approached, the Homeless Leadership Alliance of Pinellas found itself inundated by apprehensive renters.

“We started getting about 30 emails a day as people were in sheer panic,” chief executive officer Amy Foster said.

According to the organization, about 13,140 Pinellas County households are behind in their rent. 

“There is a lot of despair we’re hearing directly from families every day. These are not people who are not working. They are people who are working and can’t figure out how to make ends meet. We do not have a single bed available for families right now,” Foster told me this week.

“There are 60 families that we know of sleeping in their cars and in the street.”

It’s a situation that portends disaster for thousands on the brink of eviction. Without financial help, some may be fortunate to be allowed to squeeze in with family and friends, but others might be forced to sleep in their cars, a surreptitious presence in a Walmart parking lot, or find a spot on the periphery of a city park. Surely you have seen the vehicles, windows covered with black garbage bags or bedding and parked in the same place day after day?

For some, this week’s 60-day eviction reprieve, ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, could simply be postponement of the inevitable. At present, according to information compiled by the Homeless Leadership Alliance as the end of the moratorium approached, about 2,100 evictions were near the final stage in the court system. In an ominous warning, it added, “When the moratorium expires, tenants will be served with writs that give them just 24 hours to vacate their homes.”

And go where, is the question. There are, the agency said, just 28 available and affordable units for every 100 low-income families in Pinellas County.

“Clearly, we are in a system that would not be able to handle that influx of evictions overnight,” Michael Raposa, CEO of St. Vincent de Paul CARES, said Wednesday.

An overwhelmed system will mean many people will end up without a roof over their heads, joining, the Homeless Leadership Alliance said, the 1,970 individuals and 2,760 children who are already without homes.

Surprisingly, Raposa offers a note of optimism. His agency has not seen a “dramatic increase” in requests for rental help, neither at its St. Petersburg facility, nor at the parish level.

“The thing that I do know is being homeless is not easy and getting out of it is even harder,” Raposa said. “A household that has been stable for a longer time, they’re probably going to fight to find another roof over their heads, or work it out with a network they have in place.”

What’s exasperating is that there’s plenty of federal money available to help keep people in their homes, but only a smattering has been distributed.

“It makes you wonder if people don’t know those resources are there,” Raposa said.

“I just think that government regulations got in the way,” Foster said of the slow disbursement, explaining that there is a sensitivity to preventing fraud.

“It slows the process, but it’s absolutely necessary. With this temporary reprieve, now is the time to look at what other communities have done” to speed up the process, she added.

And here’s the thing. Foster, who also sits on the St. Petersburg City Council, brought up something that has bothered me in recent years. There is an online application to get rental assistance funds, as it was to get the initial coronavirus vaccine appointments. I think it’s a format that shows little regard for segments of the population that may lack the devices, WIFI or the technological skills to get the money they so desperately need.

“It makes it super inaccessible to them,” said Karla Correa, an organizer with the St. Petersburg Tenants Union with colleagues William Kilgore and David Decorte.

 The grassroots organization has been spreading word about rental assistance money available from the county. “We want to make sure that people know about this,” said Correa, a political science major at University of South Florida.

There’s some urgency to their mission. About one in 20 households faced eviction before the pandemic, according to the Homeless Leadership Alliance, which added that it’s difficult “to predict what post-pandemic rates will look like, since landlords are likely waiting for the end of the moratorium to file.”

Again, the question is, where will the displaced go? Rents are already high in St. Petersburg, said Correa, who lives downtown. “Once the rent goes up, it will be difficult for me to stay. Many people are constantly leaving. People have to find new places. Those places that working class people can live in are becoming few and far between.”

The 21-year-old noted that the county’s eviction crisis is most severe in St. Petersburg, in the 33705 and 33712 zip codes, where the majority of the city’s Black residents live. “The Black community is getting hit by the eviction crisis and by the pandemic. People are getting sick. People are losing their jobs. People are losing other types of income. People are suffering left and right and having to pay medical bills. And rents are going up.”

The Rev. Watson Haynes, president and CEO of the Pinellas County Urban League, agrees that Black people are bearing a disproportionate share of the pandemic-wrought crisis. “We always have a hammer without the nail,” he said. “While other races have been able to handle this, African Americans, we are the last in the barrel.”

Correa and members of the Tenants Union welcome the new eviction moratorium. “It definitely couldn’t have been won without pushback from the people,” she said, praising Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo. – who had once been homeless as a young mother – for her well-publicized protest on behalf of the new moratorium.

“It’s really great to see people fighting back and it needs to be a mass movement,” she said. “We need back rent to be cancelled. Overall, though, it is a major victory in the fight for housing for all.”

Meanwhile, the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg is dispatching people door-to-door to help tenants apply for the important rent assistance funds, Foster said. And last week, the Juvenile Welfare Board launched an effort to help families navigate the process, she said.

Maneuvering the system apparently requires skill and patience. Alex O’Connell, who is studying for a master’s degree in public health at USF, rents in the Old Northeast. She applied for the county’s emergency rental assistance in April and did not receive it until last week. That, she said, was after many phone calls and emails over the course of several months.

It was a frustrating experience. “They did not have locals working on it (and) not even in the same time zone,” she said. “I would prefer local people working on local issues. I would prefer those jobs are here … It was so excruciating.“

Frustration is not limited to tenants. Apartment associations and landlords, also facing pandemic-related financial burdens, are just as upset with the slow pace of rental assistance payments from Pinellas County.  They’ve reported that the state’s OUR Florida system is faster, Foster said. “We are six to 10 weeks for payment and landlords are getting frustrated and don’t want to wait that long,” she said.

Still, some money is getting out. “We just need that to happen faster,” Foster said. So far, Pinellas County has distributed $6.8 million to 958 households from the $21.4 million it received to establish its Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program, Foster said. And the City of St. Petersburg has disbursed $3.8 million of its approximately $8 million to 397 households.   

It’s certainly good news that the pace of disbursements might be picking up. The new moratorium against evictions will not go on forever. Landlords have mounted legal challenges. Regardless, in coming weeks, thousands of families could be scrambling for a new place to live, or somewhere to take temporary shelter.