'I feel really, really helpless': NJ renters and landlords face looming eviction crisis |
Published November 19, 2020 Annis Nanton could no longer afford her $1,600 monthly rent. The 54-year-old Jersey City resident worked as a home health aide. But in May, the older woman she cared for died from COVID, Nanton said. So she searched for new jobs, called charity numbers, went to the food pantry to feed herself and her two kids. She couldn’t reach anyone in the unemployment office, and her daughter was denied food stamps, she said. She also had to cope with the recent deaths of her sister and mother. Her landlord kept asking her to pay — or leave. The landlord needed a tenant who could pay rent so she could cover her mortgage. By the end of July, Nanton's landlord filed an eviction notice, since she owed more than $10,000. “I feel really, really helpless,” Nanton said recently as she shed tears. “I have nowhere to go that I can afford.” New Jersey renters like Nanton can’t be kicked out of their homes, even if they miss rent payments, under a COVID eviction moratorium Gov. Phil Murphy signed in March — at least for now. But tenants and advocates fear what could happen when that protection expires. They predict a tidal wave of evictions numbering in the hundreds of thousands if financial aid or legal help isn’t made available to renters in a state where 1.8 million people have applied for unemployment since mid-March. A bill designed to provide a cushion for paying back rent, nicknamed “the People’s Bill,” has lagged in the Legislature since April, and lawmakers have only two scheduled voting sessions left this year. And landlords associations have pushed back against the bill, saying lawmakers should wait to see what relief the new Biden administration may offer. The bill does not require rent forgiveness, or provide money to help renters pay back their landlords — measures that will be necessary for those who can’t make up the thousands they owe in back rent, experts say. And only 13% of 60,000 applicants won state rental relief through a recent lottery program. Meanwhile, Congress has so far failed to pass new stimulus measures that include emergency rental assistance. “Having more time to pay back rent is great, but it’s not going to be enough,” said Amy Albert, a staff attorney with the Waterfront Project, a legal services nonprofit working to prevent evictions and foreclosures in Hudson County. “And the programs that the state has done so far have been a lottery system. ‘We’ll pay your rent if you win the lottery.’ It’s too uncertain. It’s tough.” Under New Jersey’s eviction moratorium, landlords can still jump-start the eviction process and be ready to kick out non-paying tenants the day the moratorium ends. It will expire two months after the end of the state’s “public health emergency,” a period that Murphy continually renews each month. Landlords have filed more than 45,600 eviction notices with courts from March through October, according to the Administrative Office of the Courts. "And our data only cover court filings — they do not include experiences of illegal or informal evictions, which we estimate occur at double the rate of legal eviction filings," said Alieza Durana, with Princeton University's Eviction Lab. Landlords and tenants can also go through a mediation process or come to an agreement or settlement. Before Nanton received help from the Waterfront Project, she agreed to a deal she did not understand. She gave her landlord $1,000, most of what she had been able to save. In exchange, she would agree to leave the apartment by Oct. 31. She did not know about the eviction moratorium, had nowhere else to go and had only a month to figure it out. Albert, her lawyer, filed a motion to cancel the agreement, enabling Nanton to remain in her home, trying to find a solution. Her family keeps suitcases and plastic containers packed with their belongings, ready to go just in case. It’s an undesirable situation for both sides, since small landlords who depend on rental income to cover their mortgage, property taxes and other expenses are not being paid, and they cannot displace current tenants for others who could make payments. “This bill shifts the burden from one impacted group of people to another — small landlords and homeowners — and provides no meaningful financial assistance to them,” said David Brogan, executive director of the New Jersey Apartment Association. “This incentivizes non-payment in rent, so how are landlords supposed to afford their insurance, property taxes, utilities, maintaining the building and keeping food on the table?” As of mid-September, 330,000 to 480,000 of New Jersey’s 1.2 million renters were at risk of eviction, according to a study by the business management consultant Stout for the National Council of State Housing Agencies. By January of next year, the Garden State could see 280,000 eviction filings, with a rent shortfall of up to $1.3 billion, the Stout study predicted. A stalled first step The legislation also includes an incentive for small landlords to forgive missed rent by offering them an income tax write-off. And the bill addresses homeowners who are landlords and fell behind on their mortgage payments because they lost the revenue from rent, by providing a form of mortgage forbearance. “If we don’t act, we’re going to see mass waves of homelessness starting with tenants, and then landlords will go to court to recoup their losses, and good luck recovering funds from a person who is homeless,” said the bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Britnee Timberlake, D-Essex. “The New Jersey Apartment Association has been delaying this bill from the beginning. Every other day it’s a new argument.” Landlords associations say the bill will have the unintended consequence of shifting the tax burden onto homeowners who are not landlords. They argue that if tenants don’t pay their rent, the owners of multifamily properties will file tax appeals to lower their property tax payments, since the properties are valued by their net operating income. If those tax assessments are lowered, then property taxes could rise for non-landlord homeowners to make up the difference, if the state or federal government doesn’t provide assistance. “It’s not the People’s Bill, it’s the tenants' bill,” said Derek Reed, past president of the Property Owners Association. “It doesn’t speak for housing providers and doesn’t speak for the homeowners who will see a huge shift in property taxes.” Now the ball is in the Senate’s court, and the chamber’s leader, Steve Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said he thinks the bill still has problems. “We want to help the people, but landlords are people, too,” Sweeney said. “There’s a sweet spot to it, but we’re not there yet. But we’re working towards it.” Sweeney said he would put the bill up for a vote in December if “we could get some kind of commonality.” Existing relief and what’s needed The state set up a $100 million rental assistance program to provide up to six months of rent to New Jerseyans, chosen through a lottery system. Of the more than 60,000 who applied, only 8,000 households will receive the financial aid. In October, the state put aside another $12 million in federal CARES Act funds for rental or mortgage assistance, and counties are creating their own relief programs with federal dollars. New Jersey also opened up a $15 million program for landlords who forgave tenants’ missed rent payments, nowhere near the $1.3 billion rent shortfall Stout predicted. Under an executive order Murphy signed in April, tenants can use their security deposits and the accrued interest on those deposits to pay rent, which must be paid back to the landlord six months after a public health emergency or at the end of the lease, whichever is later. But these programs barely scratch the surface of the need faced by people at risk of being displaced. “New Jersey can’t, by itself, with its constitutional limitations of creating money, provide full rental assistance, which is why we’re supporting the People’s Bill,” said Staci Berger, president of the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, an association of nonprofit housing and community development groups. “It buys time for the federal government to get its act together and give us the relief we need with the HEROES Act.” The $3.4 billion federal HEROES Act — which House Democrats passed in May and which stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate — includes a $100 billion emergency rental assistance program and a $75 billion homeowner fund aimed to prevent foreclosures. Steps to protect tenants The New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund, a nonprofit chaired by first lady Tammy Murphy, is offering a $2.35 million grant to pay for counseling and pro-bono legal work to help tenants facing eviction. But more is needed to represent the thousands who fear losing their rental space, experts say, and New Jersey can do more by following the lead of other states that have taken key steps to protect tenants. A coalition of lawyers and housing groups urged in June that New Jersey should join 14 states that require landlords to submit a certification and other evidence that attest they are allowed to start eviction filings. They also pointed out that 19 states don’t allow eviction filings for non-payment because of a COVID-related hardship. "That's one hole in New Jersey's moratorium, that landlords can still file," said Matt Mleczko, with Princeton's Eviction Lab. "A filing can still be really, really harmful to a renter’s credit history or ability to obtain affordable housing in the future." Annis Nanton, meanwhile, keeps searching for a steady job that will pay for her expenses. She has cobbled together sporadic child care jobs, but the pay varies depending on how many days her clients need her. It’s not close to what she made as a home health aide. She struggles to find a new place she can afford. She likes Jersey City. It’s quiet, and the people are kind. She began visiting the United States in 1986 from her home in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She found work in Brooklyn and later Hoboken, and then moved into her current home in 2019. She’s stashing away $100 here, $50 there, from her child care work. She enjoys baking sweet coconut bread and banana bread that people enjoy so much they pay her for it. “I don’t like to owe anyone anything,” Nanton said. “I like to work. Once I get a steady job and get back on my feet, I know I will be able to do the things to help myself.” Staff Writer Stacey Barchenger contributed to this article. Ashley Balcerzak is a reporter in the New Jersey Statehouse. For unlimited access to her work covering New Jersey’s Legislature and political power structure, please subscribe or activate your digital account today. |