The package also provides $ 25 billion in emergency rental assistance.
If the package is complied with, none of the measures will likely be enough to keep the highest-risk tenants in their homes last January.
“While extending the CDC eviction moratorium for just one month is not enough to keep people housed during the pandemic, the extension provides essential and immediate protection for millions of tenants about to lose their homes in January said Diane Yentel, president and chief executive of the National Coalition for Low-Income Housing.
Once the moratoriums are lifted, many of these tenants are expected to pay the full rent or have some sort of payment plan with their landlord, so they could lose the home.
CNN Business spoke with several tenants who have been struggling to pay their monthly payments as a result of the pandemic.
“Money accumulates against me”
Kelly Green, who lives in a $ 1,429-a-month apartment in Daytona Beach, Florida, has not been able to pay rent since September.
“The only reason I have a roof over my head is because of the eviction moratorium,” Green said.
Green makes a living selling biker clothes with rhinestones and sequins at motorcycle rallies and other festivals.
After the March break, there were no festivals, no events and no revenue. Still, he put together his savings, stimulus payments, rent relief and unemployment insurance and managed to keep his rent running until July. But he didn’t know how he would get to the two bosses after ending the $ 600-a-week unemployment supplement.
Green was able to talk about a coronavirus-related rent relief fund offered to him by the county of Volusia, where he lives. He applied for help and was awarded $ 4,500 for three months rent.
“I thought ‘great.’ This will pay a few months’ rent and I can move out in November when my current lease ends and I will still have a good credit rating that will allow me to rent another apartment,” he said.
Without that money, Green could not pay the full October, November, or December rent. And, since he maintained his lease in November, he now has a monthly contract that is more expensive at $ 500 a month.
“Even if the moratorium is extended, the money is accumulating against me,” he said. “What would help me the most is for me to receive a rental aid check for three months, to have it taken from me.”
He knows it doesn’t make sense to stay and watch him grow the amount he owes, but he said he doesn’t know where he’s going without risking friends and family from exposing himself to the coronavirus.
“It totally depresses you,” he said. “You want to surrender. Where will I go when the CDC order expires and I have this eviction on record?”
It should be out of Christmas
Mercedes Darby lives in a three-bedroom apartment in Nashville with her three high school children and her daughter, Princess Thomas, who is in college. The two usually split the rent. But since they were both fired in March, they haven’t been able to pay the $ 1,250 monthly rent since April and currently owe $ 9,000 in rent and subsequent fees.
Although Darby provided its landlord with a CDC statement, which protects the family from being evicted for non-payment, they are now being evicted for a breach of the independent lease: Darby’s name is not on the lease .
Darby says the lease is in Thomas’ name, but he has lived there since they got the apartment a year and a half ago together and has been paying for it all the time.
After losing the date of the eviction court on Dec. 15, there was a default ruling that gave the family 10 days to leave. So Darby is packing everything he has to save.
“We have to go out on Christmas Day or the sheriffs will be here,” Darby said after sentencing. “Without money, I have to find a temporary place.”
Darby was fired from her job management services for members of a large insurance company in March. Since July I was looking for a new apartment. But even after paying the application fees, it was repeatedly rejected due to her credit history and a previous bankruptcy. Now it is likely that your daughter will also have problems due to this eviction.
In November, Darby was hired again for a similar job and the money has come back in. But now he has to pay much more in fees and deposit money for an apartment because of its history.
“I have a well-paid job,” he said. “I earn enough, if you don’t want to triple the amount in advance.”
For now, he’s looking for a place to spend his family during the holidays while finding a more permanent home and preparing for his court appointment in February for the subsequent rent he owes.
“We have nowhere to go,” he said. “We don’t have family here and our friends can’t catch us all. I’ll try to find a hotel. But that will bring me all the money I have to spend on another apartment.”
A relief from the rent is expected
Bryan Clift’s job as a waiter in Minneapolis, on the outskirts, dried up last March, at the same time his 10-year-old daughter Iyla’s school moved online. Iyla’s mother, who did not see regularly, he died a few weeks ago. Now, Clift has about $ 2,000 back in rent and is in danger of being evicted.
“My daughter is all I have,” she said. “I put it first. The most important thing is to make sure it has a roof over its head and that the food is on the table.”
They did well during the summer, with unemployment insurance payments they received. But when the $ 600 a week in extra payments expired, he feared he would be left behind with the $ 1,500 monthly rent for the two-bedroom apartment.
“When I saw my savings go down I went to talk to the people I was leasing to, with whom I’ve always had a good relationship,” he said. “I said I would try to do my best. I was suggested to apply for a rent reduction.”
He has applied for and hopes to receive money from Prism, a non-profit organization of local social services. But it is not yet in hand.
“It’s a waiting game,” he said. “If you ask for help right now, it will take a while.”
With this support planned, he hopes to close the income gap until he can get back to work.
“I could go looking for work now,” he said. “I want to. I don’t like to sit down. But without the schools open, I can’t go to work. If something doesn’t change for me in the coming months, what will I do? Return all the bills I can. And this rental aid will help , but for how long? ”
Any additional help from the government is welcome, he said, however, “I could do without the stimulus check if I had better unemployment, because you can extend it further.”
Evicted despite CDC protections
The worst has already happened with Jordan Mills and Jonathan Russell and their two-year-old daughter Valkyrie.
Although they were protected by the eviction moratorium, a court granted eviction anyway.
“People like me are still being evicted for non-payment,” he said.
He made a payment agreement with his landlord, but was left behind for about $ 450. The owners filed the eviction alleging a violation of a portion of the CDC statement in which Mills agreed to make “best efforts to make timely down payments that are as close to full payment as the individual’s circumstances.” allow it “.
Mills went to court to appear at the eviction hearing, but says he was unable to attend because he had no money to pay for parking.
“I couldn’t afford to park, it’s all $ 20,” he said. “I literally live melee. I paid yesterday. I have $ 4 for my name.”
In May, Mills, who is a deputy director of a payday loan company, had seen hours cut. He realized that his family could not pay the rent along with his high utility bills during the Texas summer.
He applied for and received rent assistance money, a lump sum of $ 3,500 for three months ’rent.
When Mills contracted the coronavirus, she said, her child care provider dropped them preventively and her husband quit her job as a security guard to care for Valkyrie full-time, further reducing their income.
After the court ordered his eviction in November, they did not wait for the sheriff to arrive. Mills borrowed $ 1,400 from his mother and moved his family out of the three-bedroom, one-bedroom mobile home they rented for $ 1,175 a month and into a 470-square-foot one-bedroom apartment in San Antonio.
The family’s new apartment is located in a building known as a “second chance” lease, for people with eviction or bad credit.
Mills paid dearly for this second chance. In addition to the $ 750 a month income, a $ 299 deposit and a $ 300 pet deposit, he also had to pay a $ 650 risk commission because of his history.
“The worst has happened,” he said. “But I’m afraid of how it will affect me when I’m going to rent to a bigger place, to a safer place. We have cockroaches. I don’t want to stay here.”
“If there was something for them, they wouldn’t be so quick to activate tenants.”