Housing advocates warn of looming housing crisis
Even as local landlords accepted millions in loans from the federal government meant to help covid-impacted businesses pay their workers, some continued eviction proceedings against tenants also hurt by the economic crisis, according to a new local housing report and lending data.
“We were already subsidizing these particular complexes and for them to also not show mercy upon these tenants, is somewhat unconscionable in a situation like this.” – Willie Jordan, executive director of the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing Opportunity Council.
Housing advocates say they see a double standard as the city proposes spending more than $35 million in federal relief funds, in part to blunt a predicted wave of evictions, which could disproportionately harm people of color.
“These large corporations have benefited already from government funding,” said Willie Jordan, executive director of the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing Opportunity Council. “We were already subsidizing these particular complexes and for them to also not show mercy upon these tenants, is somewhat unconscionable in a situation like this.
“They recognize it is an emergency,” he added. “Why wouldn’t they recognize the needs of those tenants as well?”
An attorney for the St. Louis Apartment Association countered that some landlords have gone months without rent, while still having to pay regular business overhead.
“For basically over a year, the landlords … had no ability to collect rent from tenants,” said association attorney Michelle White. “A business that has no income is being unfair to their customer that has their obligation to pay rent temporarily suspended? It’s not the landlord’s choice to not be able to evict, which would stop the bleed of somebody owing money.”
Much of the federal money St. Louis may use to help beleaguered renters would go to landlords to bring the rent current, according to a housing council spokesman.
The “Stop Gap” report from the Housing Council showed that many of the zip codes with the highest concentrations of eviction requests filed also have the highest concentrations of people of color. They include some areas of the city with the lowest household incomes but Jordan noted that some middle-income tenants of color also are facing potential eviction.
In the St. Louis area, one of the largest residential landlords, which got the largest real estate-related loan locally under the federal Payroll Protection Program, also has been the top landlord in the metropolitan area to file court papers seeking to evict tenants during the pandemic, records show.
Sansone Group, which manages about 8,000 residential units in Missouri and elsewhere in the Midwest according to its website, topped the list of “bulk filers,” filing court requests for 273 evictions between March 2020 and January 2021, according to a report released last week [6/11] by the Housing Opportunity Council.
The company did not respond to calls from The American seeking comment. [will keep trying]
Moratoria imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local governments block landlords from physically removing tenants but don’t forestall the initial court filing phase, which housing advocates say puts a stain on the tenant’s rental record.
In April 2020, Sansone Group was approved for a PPP loan of $3.04 million, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration which administers the $800 billion-dollar program.
It was listed as the largest loan issued locally to “lessors of other real estate property,” and was more than double the size of any of the local loans in any of the residential real estate leasing categories, according to FederalPay.org, which hosts data from the SBA on loan amounts and recipients.
https://www.federalpay.org/paycheck-protection-program
The loan, issued by the Royal Banks of Missouri, has not yet been fully repaid or forgiven, according to FederalPay.org.
St. Louis-based Kohner Properties received a $509,900 PPP loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration in April, 2020 to help protect 75 jobs, according to FederalPay.org. The loan was repaid or forgiven.
Kohner filed paperwork seeking 93 evictions through January, according to the housing council.
A spokesman for the company could not be reached for comment.
Smart Rentals, listed on FederalPay.org as a Maplewood-based residential property manager, received a paycheck protection loan of $29,400 through Enterprise Bank & Trust to protect two jobs. The loan, which was approved in April 2020, is listed as ongoing.
Smart Rentals sought 51 evictions through January, according to the housing council.
A spokesman for the company could not be reached for comment.
The housing council report also includes information on local landlords who together filed more than 1,000 eviction cases through early 2021.
Barb Westre, co-owner with her husband Brad of BBW Homes, said her firm did not seek PPP funding and only filed for evictions “as a last-ditch effort.”
“We have a lot of people [who are] behind and we hope their assistance comes through,” said Westre, whose company manages 625 units and is listed in the housing council report as filing 168 eviction cases through January. “We don’t jump into filing.”
A federal moratorium on evictions imposed by the CDC is set to expire at the end of this month, as is a separate moratorium from St. Louis County.
That, the housing council said, is going to set off an “evictions crisis,” which the agency also sees as a “fair housing crisis,” because of the potential impact to groups protected under the federal Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin, disability, or family status during renting, buying, or selling a home and other housing-related activities.
The law prohibits actions that create barriers to accessing housing due to discriminatory reasons.
In the early days of the pandemic, initial stimulus proposals did not contain specific provisions for rental assistance.
The Emergency Rental Assistance 1 program, enacted on Dec. 27, 2020 provided up to $25 billion under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021. A second program, ERA2 provides up to $21.55 billion under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, enacted on March 11, 2021.
Now, association attorney White noted, tenants can apply for government assistance.
In addition, White said “our association at least, has offered all sorts of resources, including rent abatement, rent reduction, lease reduction, and lease cancellation without penalty.
“We had law days where we had lawyers on-site, and the tenants could ask lawyers any questions about what the moratorium meant, what their options were for their lease, if there was a way to renegotiate, etc.”
“And we had very few avail themselves to any of these resources.”
Glenn Burleigh, a spokesman for the housing council, said he doesn’t see early lease termination as “a good example of working with tenants,” who may have no where to go.
“The whole point of the eviction moratorium has been to keep people in their homes, not being forced onto the streets into a tight housing market and potentially spreading COVID, while the pandemic has been ongoing,” he said.
White said she has “no way of knowing that there’s going to be a housing crisis based on a failure to pay rent,” adding, “that’s purely speculative.”
T. J. Pearson, an attorney with the housing council, noted that more than 5,000 eviction cases were filed in the first 10 months of the pandemic, adding: “There has not been a stop.”
Karen Robinson-Jacob is The St. Louis American / Type Investigations business reporter and Report for America corps member.
