The ban on deportation has ended. Here’s how a city gets federal money: NPR

In a courthouse in Memphis, Tenn., A full case file means tenants are crammed into eviction court – as much as social distancing allows, then a bit more. When each tenant is summoned for his file, Judge Phyllis Gardner asks this question: “Are you interested in the rental assistance program?”

For tenants who show up on their court date, the judges here routinely extend cases weeks into the future and almost push them down the hallway to Room 134, where Memphis area legal lawyers help tenants initiate applications for rental assistance.

One of these lawyers, Freda Turner, stands up in the courtroom to talk about the program.

“If you apply and are approved, we’ll pay up to 12 months of your previous rent plus one month of future rent,” she explains. “We will bring you back to zero and you will have a fresh start. “

A stable home is the idea behind the US Treasury Department’s $ 46 billion Emergency rental assistance program. Appropriate by Congress for distribution by states and towns, federal aid means that even tenants with significant rental debt have the option of staying in their homes.

This help has become even more urgent since the Supreme Court’s decision to block the CDC’s latest extension of its temporary stop on deportations.

Here in Tennessee, there hasn’t been any eviction protection from the CDC for over a month, due to a Federal Court decision end of July by the Sixth Circuit. This makes Memphis a harbinger of what the rest of the country is currently facing.

For Judge Gardner, the CDC order delayed the inevitable, while in Memphis they began to resolve cases. “We were able to fix the issues, give these people and these owners some closure so they can move on,” she says.

The most recent extension of the CDC’s ban was intended to give states and communities more time to help tenants facing eviction, but it has been slow. By the end of July, nationwide, just over $ 5 billion of the $ 25 billion allocated in the program’s first round had been spent, although Treasury officials note that the program lasts for three years. The White House was urging national and local elected officials to act more aggressively to distribute the funds.

But in Memphis and Shelby County, the money is flowing: As of July 31, they had given out more than half of their $ 28 million.

Kyla Savage is among those who have already been approved for assistance. She fell behind on rent in July after the car she drove for Lyft broke down. She said she was surprised at the court’s efforts to direct people to rent assistance.

“I wasn’t expecting this, but it felt good to know that they were disclosing this information, because a lot of people don’t know. I didn’t. My sister did. spoke and I’m ‘I’m grateful she did it,’ says Savage.

Still, she is nervous about the coming months as she searches for work to cover the rent for herself and her three children.

“I hope to find something before it’s too late. I don’t want to end up in [court], and I really don’t want to end up on the streets, me and my kids. So I try, “she said.

Memphis uses settlements to reach more people

The program in Memphis is called Home901, and it is jointly managed by the City of Memphis and the County of Shelby.

Dorcas Young Griffin is director of the Shelby County office that oversees the program. She says one of the keys to her success has been identifying places with 10 or more tenants in arrears with rent and using block settlements to speed up the cash withdrawal process.

A comprehensive settlement can cover a large number of people living in the same apartment complex, for example.

These were people who “weren’t necessarily kicked out, but they didn’t pay. So you knew they were people who needed help,” Young Griffin says. Mass settlements are “useful for us because we know that instead of settling and stabilizing one person, we could do a hundred at a time.”

For tenants, this could mean they can avoid court altogether. For owners, this means they can get one big check, rather than several small ones.

Webb Brewer is General Counsel for Neighborhood Preservation Inc., a nonprofit organization deeply involved in the Emergency Rental Assistance program here. He says the idea of ​​bulk settlements arose last year when some tenant lawyers were negotiating with some of the landlord’s lawyers.

“We said, well, why don’t you put together a list of all the people who are defaulting or late,” says Brewer. “Share this with us and see if we can make a deal that would take care of a lot of people at once.”

He says it has been very effective in helping a lot of people, and will be even more so in the future.

The terms of mass agreements are the same as those of individual agreements. “But we don’t pay like these attorney fees, court costs, other charges like that,” Brewer adds. “And we demand certain conditions which I think are somewhat unique to our program of maintaining ownership and complying with the local housing code,” as well as that landlords bring their books of account to show that ‘there is a zero balance on the rent on the day of payment.

“In other words, they can’t take our money and then go back and try to get the rest of the tenants. And they can’t do a new eviction until 45 days after the last month that we have. paid, “says the brewer.

Josh kahane is a lawyer who is active in organizing block settlements on behalf of landlords. He is a partner at Glankler Brown, a Memphis law firm that represents approximately 200 multi-family owners and property managers. Kahane filed a complaint, Tiger Lily vs. HUD, which resulted in the blocking of the CDC ban in Tennessee.

“For most of my clients, I have tried to push them both on the following item: it will help you recover some of the rent arrears that are out there, and also in the world we are currently facing, evictions. massive are probably not in anyone’s best interest, ”he says.

Kahane practices in six other states that were still under the CDC’s ban – and where, he says, disbursement programs aren’t performing as well.

Direct assistance to tenants is possible if landlords do not accept the money

Homeowners are not required to accept federal money and they can travel to evict people if they wish.

Turner, the legal aid attorney, says that when landlords don’t take the funds, a tenant who is approved for rent assistance can receive funding directly.

But in this case, the tenant will have to find new accommodation – and affordable accommodation is hard to find. “The rental market is extraordinarily tight,” says Turner. “We have a lot of investors from other states who find our real estate more affordable. Renting is getting difficult.”

One of the people Turner helps in Room 134 is Willie Adams. He was working as a delivery guy for a restaurant when he fell seriously ill with COVID-19 last summer. Worried about being more exposed, he stopped making deliveries and is now seven months behind on rent.

“I work for tips, so my income has been reduced. I only earn a quarter of the money I made before the virus started and before I got sick,” said Adams, 58.

It takes her a week to complete her rental assistance request, after securing help from a tech-savvy friend, locating her landlord, and making another trip to room 134.

He says he’ll feel a lot better once he knows the money gets to him. With millions of Americans behind on rent, this is a sentiment shared by many.

NPR National Desk producer Liz Baker contributed to this report.