The Biden administration extended the federal moratorium on evictions for another three months, but it had little choice as distribution of emergency rental assistance funds approved by Congress in December is barely off the ground in Florida and across the nation.
Davie resident Ross Fisher needs the money now. He and his wife owe back rent for February and March and in just a few days will also owe for April.
The moratorium extension, declared by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will protect the couple from being sued for eviction through June 30. The moratorium was scheduled to expire at midnight Wednesday.
“It doesn’t make my landlord less mad,” Fisher said of the extension. “He’s a tough dude, and he wants the money.”
Millions of tenants and landlords who lost income during the pandemic are in the same situation across the country, said David M. Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference, a nonprofit research organization that advocates for housing affordability. The latest extension buys more time to prevent an eviction crisis, he said.
“There’s no question that the three-month extension allows the appropriate amount of time for all rental assistance programs to be fully up and running. It’s a complicated and arduous process. We’ve never done anything like this before.”
Distribution programs are being created separately by 1,055 U.S. states, counties, cities, territories and tribal governments that received a share of $25 billion earmarked for tenants and landlords as part of a $900 trillion relief package enacted in late December. Another $20 billion was earmarked for renters and landlords in the $1.9 trillion relief package enacted on March 10, but it’s unclear how soon that money will become available, Dworkin said.
Fisher said he and his wife received federal rental assistance last year for five months through Broward County’s Family Success Division. But the county’s rollout of its program to solicit applications and determine eligibility has lagged those in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.
For the latest round of relief funding, Broward County, which received $60 million in emergency rental assistance funds, sought bids from outside vendors. In early March, a spokesman for the county administrator said officials expected to have a contract signed by March 19 and the program to begin accepting applications shortly afterward.
On Monday, the spokesman said the county expects to sign a contract with the firm Terta Tech Disaster Recovery “within the next week” and begin accepting applications “shortly thereafter.”
Without the CDC extension, thousands of South Florida tenants would have been at risk of eviction.
Broward Circuit Judge Jack Tuter, who helped create a program to make rental assistance funds available to tenants and landlords who agree to attend mediation, said about 2,488 eviction cases are pending in the county.
So far just 10 tenants who agreed to mediation have been approved for funding but “many more are in process,” Tuter said.
Information on the number of pending evictions cases in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade was not available Monday. In February, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Casa said 6,000 to 7,000 eviction cases were backed up in her county’s court system.
Miami-Dade, which received $60 million, accepted applications through its website between March 1 and March 15 and recently hired a consulting firm to verify eligibility.
Michael Liu, the county’s public housing and community development director, said it will take two to four weeks to review 16,000 to 17,000 applications, which include defendants in eviction lawsuits. No money has been allocated yet, as officials work to ensure funds go only to applicants who need it most, he said.
Palm Beach County opened its application portal on March 10 and closed it two days later due to high volume. It is scheduled to reopen April 1, a spokeswoman said. So far, 1,375 applications have been received for rental assistance and 39 checks have been issued for a total $221,567 — averaging $5,681 per recipient. The county received $45 million.
Florida’s Department of Children and Families, designated by Gov. Ron DeSantis to distribute $871 million to tenants across the state, is still in the process of soliciting an outside vendor to run that program, department spokeswoman DaMonica Smith said last week.
“I would consider that very slow, significantly slower than the vast majority of other states,” Dworkin said. “I have no idea why any state would not make this a priority. It’s important to low-income renters but equally important to apartment building owners.”
Louis Mata, spokesman for United Property Management, which oversees 9,000 units in South Florida, said landlords are becoming frustrated with the repeated extensions that are allowing people to continue to abuse the system by living rent free.
He called the extension a “one-size-fits-all approach” that fails to account for Florida’s booming economy. “Look around. Everything is open,” he said. “How does prolonging evictions help to stop COVID? We empathize with people affected and we are working with them. But there are abusers who are taking advantage. Clearly in Florida, this is not applicable. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road”
To be eligible for protection under the latest extension of the eviction moratorium, renters must earn $198,000 annually or less for couples filing jointly, or $99,000 for single filers; demonstrate that they’ve sought government help to pay the rent; declare that they can’t pay because of COVID-19 hardships; and affirm they are likely to become homeless if evicted.
More information on how to declare eligibility for the moratorium can be found at cdc.gov. Type eviction in the search bar at the top of the page.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
