As moratorium falls, evictions expected to grow in Chattanooga area

Standing in front of a judge in Hamilton County General Sessions Court, the single father of two teenage sons asked for more time.

"I would like to have a few days of leniency," the man said. "I have been in contact with the [Tennessee Housing Development Agency]. I do qualify [for rental assistance]. I would really appreciate it if I could work with THDA. I don't want to be evicted. I don't want to be homeless."

But he hadn't paid the $933 rent at his apartment complex in three months, and his landlord wasn't interested in waiting any longer, or in pursuing the federal funds that might have covered his back rent.

"You're going to have to be out in 10 days unless you appeal the judgment," Judge Christie Mahn Sell told him during the hearing Aug. 12. "Sometimes they just want to get someone out of the property. They want a paying tenant."

Until last month, an eviction moratorium protected some tenants who lost income due to the pandemic, but it has been declared unconstitutional - first on July 23 by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, already making it unenforceable in Tennessee, and now by the U.S. Supreme Court.

As those protections fall, the number of evictions will grow, predicted Ben Danford, a staff attorney with Legal Aid of East Tennessee. And while federal funds are available to pay back rent for qualified tenants, landlords will be less inclined to pursue that money without an eviction moratorium in place, he said.

"While the moratorium was in place, tenants and landlords had a little time where, if the tenant qualified, there wasn't anything to do other than try to get these government funds," Danford said.

The Tennessee Housing Development Agency received $384 million in funding from the U.S. Treasury to administer the emergency rent relief program in 91 of Tennessee's 95 counties. As of Aug. 4, the agency had distributed $14.7 million to 2,257 families.

Once the moratorium fell in Tennessee after the circuit court decision, landlords became far more inclined to evict, Sell said two weeks ago, following the first eviction docket she heard after the moratorium was declared unconstitutional here.

"I was shocked myself when I had so many landlords that just wanted the tenant out, and I think that's a really unintended consequence of the moratorium [decision]," she said.

To qualify for the eviction moratorium, tenants had to meet specific criteria, including income limits, and prove that the pandemic had affected their earnings. To qualify for the federal rent relief, both the tenant and the landlord must be willing to cooperate on the application.

"The application process is not simple. It can be daunting," Danford said. "You don't have to be best friends, but they do have to exchange information and cooperate."

Meanwhile, landlords are navigating a nearly impossible situation, said Robert Backer, president of the Greater Chattanooga Realtors association.

"No one asked for this pandemic or the economic hardships it brought," Backer said. "But I think it's also important to look at the financial obligations of landlords across the nation. Landlords themselves are now facing unique problems as property owners since they are often still paying lenders for their particular properties."

In many circumstances, landlords rely on rent to pay the bills on their properties, said National Association of Realtors 2021 President Charlie Oppler.

"About half of all housing providers are mom-and-pop operators, and without rental income, they cannot pay their own bills or maintain their properties," said Oppler, a broker-owner from New Jersey. "No housing provider wants to evict a tenant and considers it only as a last resort."

For people who couldn't make rent during the pandemic, the moratorium wasn't the only protection, Danford pointed out. From March 2020 until May 2021, the Tennessee Supreme Court had limited eviction hearings to only the most severe cases, much of the judicial system moved to online proceedings and courtrooms stood largely empty.

"At some point, the Tennessee General Sessions courts weren't doing evictions at all except in extreme circumstances," he said. "With the courts not holding evictions except in extreme circumstances, that was a huge amount of protection."

The number of evictions fell 48% in Hamilton County, from 2,542 in 2019 to 1,215 in 2020, according to data from the Sessions Court Clerk's Office.

But evictions still happened, Danford said, because evictions happen for a host of reasons beyond just non-payment of rent.

"While some tenants were protected from eviction as a result of the [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] moratorium, some tenants were not, so the idea that evictions haven't taken place for the past 18 months is based on a false premise," he said.

Ten days after he was ordered out of the apartment where he'd lived for two years, the man who appeared before Judge Sell moved in temporarily with his ex-wife. He had once worked selling furniture and launched a landscaping business with his 18-year-old son at the end of 2019.

"Life was good until the pandemic," said the man, who asked not to be identified in the newspaper, given his situation. "I've been late on rent, but I've always been able to catch up."

But then the engine in his truck went out, setting him back financially, and the apartment complex where he lived was sold to new owners in June - owners who were less inclined to work with him on late payments, he said. Now he's trying to figure out where he'll go next.

That will be harder to do now, Sell said.

"What's really hard is, once you have an eviction on your record, getting yourself a new place becomes very difficult," she said.

Danford is working with the city's office of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, trying to rally resources and identify ways to keep people who face eviction from ending up with nowhere to go, he said.

"The whole goal is to use all of our resources in a concerted effort to get people housed," he said.

In March, data from the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition showed a more than 80% increase in unsheltered individuals in Hamilton County, from 201 in 2020 to 364 in 2021.

Staff Writer Dave Flessner contributed to this story.

Contact Mary Fortune at mfortune@timesfreepress.com. Follow her on Twitter at @maryfortune.