Residential renters deserve the same 90-day coronavirus protections that Governor DeWine just gave businesses

by Spencer Wells

April 10, 2020 — On April 1, Gov. Mike DeWine issued Executive Order 2020-08D, which provides eviction and foreclosure protections for commercial businesses for 90 days. Now, the governor should provide similar protections for Ohioans who rent their homes.

The Ohio Supreme Court’s vague recommendation that municipal courts should stop processing residential eviction hearings is not enough to save thousands of Ohio households from involuntary displacement because of a coronavirus-related layoff.

The governor should immediately:

• Order a statewide moratorium on residential evictions for at least 90 days.
• Require residential landlords to accept late and partial payments during the moratorium period.
• Prohibit landlords from charging late fees during the moratorium period.
• Encourage courts to hold informal meetings with tenants and landlords to seek mediated agreements before permitting landlords to file evictions after the moratorium is over.
• Direct local law enforcement to prevent landlords from taking the law into their own hands with “self-help evictions” such as turning off utilities, padlocking the premises, or seizing a tenant’s belongings.

At the same time Gov. DeWine was announcing the commercial property moratorium, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and a group of 80 housing and homeless advocates delivered a letter to the governor calling for a statewide eviction moratorium. So far, the response is “crickets!” Now’s the time to act.

Money is on the way! Most tenants will receive the CARE Act emergency payment of $1,200 per person sometime between this week and August. Many tenants will be eligible for unemployment compensation with a federal $600 bonus when the state unemployment office becomes unclogged.

How does a householder budget to adapt to these exigencies? A statewide residential eviction moratorium with tenant protections shouldn’t cost the state a penny. No involuntary displacement, no emergency relocation funds, reduced short-term rental assistance, no one sent to a shelter, no lost school days.

There are at least four other good outcomes from a statewide residential eviction moratorium with tenant protections:

1. Provide consistency of treatment across Ohio’s legal system of 164 municipal or county courts with 252 judges. With clear guidance, there’s less chance of outlier decisions that will only beget litigation that could be better directed to solving residential evictions when evictions do resume.
2. Promote equitable mediated solutions in lieu of court proceedings. Owners and tenants will be able to maintain a working relationship before an eviction record ends up in an adversarial conflict.
3. Landlords will be made whole. Meanwhile they will be able to defer their own mortgage expenses under the governor’s 2020-08D order and offset their cash flow losses through the provisions of the CARE Act small business loans.
4. Families will remain stable. “Eviction is more than a forced move. It”s a destabilizing event that can send a family into a cycle of financial and emotional turmoil, affecting their current and future prospects for residential stability.” So says the Urban Institute’s Housing Matters website. “Residential instability can be especially traumatizing for children, with stress having wide-reaching consequences, including on their educational achievement. When children whose families receive housing subsidies live for longer periods in subsidized housing, those children see lower incarceration rates and higher pay as adults.”

Last Friday, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio told a caller to the Brian Lehrer show that “we’ll work that all out later” when asked about an eviction freeze. That’s understandable, because New York City is the undeniable epicenter of the coronavirus crisis.

In contrast, Gov. DeWine has the luxury of having already laid the groundwork for a real residential eviction moratorium. The time to act is now.

Spencer Wells is the former executive director of the Cleveland Tenants Organization and former tenant outreach director for the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio. Since his retirement, he has served as the volunteer community manager for the Rental Housing Information Network in Ohio (RHINO) and the Cleveland Lead Safe Network.

This opinion piece ran today on Cleveland.com. The author gave MVFHC permission to publish it also here on MVFHC’s website.

Are you being threatened with an eviction during the current COVID-19 crisis?

If you are facing eviction or housing discrimination during the COVID-19 crisis, you can find information and resources by visiting mvcovid19eviction.com.

Important news from the Fair Housing Center

The Miami Valley Fair Housing Center is committed to the health and safety of our clients, our staff, and our community.

Given the evolving situation with COVID-19, we have decided to take appropriate measures to reduce risks associated with the transmission by making changes to how we deliver services to our community.

The Miami Valley Fair Housing Center’s office will be CLOSED to walk-ins and classes will be postponed beginning Monday, March 16, 2020, until further notice.

Instead, the Fair Housing Center staff will be operating via phone, email, and video conference during our usual hours, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm EDT.

We apologize for this inconvenience, but we must do our part to prevent the spread of the virus in our community, while at the same time doing everything we can to keep our services available and operational remotely.

If you have any questions, please call us at 937-223-6035 OR by emailing info@mvfairhousing.com.

We will share further updates as they become available. Thank you and be well.

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