PHOENIX — Tenant advocates and court officials were gearing up Friday for what some fear will be a wave of evictions and others predict will be just a growing trickle after a U.S. Supreme Court action allowing lockouts to resume.
The high court’s conservative majority late Thursday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a temporary ban placed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The action ends protections for about 3.5 million people in the United States who say they faced eviction in the next two months, according to U.S. Census Bureau data from early August.
“We are incredibly disappointed in the Supreme Court ruling and ask Congress and Gov. (Doug) Ducey to take action to prevent what will likely be tragic outcomes for thousands of Arizona families,” said Cynthia Zwick, executive director of the nonprofit organization Wildfire that is helping distribute government rental assistance in Arizona.
“Lives are literally at risk as the pandemic continues to surge and families lose their homes, especially during this time of extreme heat,” she said, referring to Phoenix’s triple-digit temperatures.
Wildfire is encouraging tenants to keep applying for rental aid and “work with their landlords to develop plans for making payments until the assistance is available,” she said.
But some local officials around the U.S. say the court’s action is unlikely to set off the flood of evictions some advocates predict.
Scott Davis, spokesman for the Maricopa County Justice Courts that handle the bulk of Arizona’s evictions, said he does not expect anything dramatic overnight. He said how things play out will depend on how landlords and their attorneys decide to handle cases and that the courts were prepared for whatever happens.
“We know that eviction case filings over the last 17 months are down about 50 percent from pre-pandemic,” Davis said. “Will filings bounce back to 100 percent of the norm? Will they exceed the norm to make up for filings which landlords withheld during the pandemic? Some believe there will be a large flood of case activity; others believe it will be just a light sprinkle, which builds gradually over time. Again, it’s up to landlords.”
Davis emphasized no one can be evicted immediately without due process, and the cases could take weeks to be carried out in the courts.
The Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin said Friday that landlords rarely evict anyone who is only a few hundred dollars behind on rent. It said the average eviction judgment for unpaid rent in Wisconsin is more than $2,600.
“Contrary to dire predictions by tenant advocates, there will NOT be a ‘tsunami’ of eviction filings in Wisconsin or in most parts of the country,” the landlord trade association said. “There will NOT be 11 million people suddenly made homeless.”
The court’s action does not affect the temporary bans on evictions placed by a handful of states, including California.
The Treasury Department and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge on Friday sent a letter to all governors, mayors and county officials, urging them to implement their own eviction bans, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
