Landlords skirt COVID-19 eviction bans, using intimidation and tricks to boot tenants on reddit

4 min readNov 20, 2020

Cash-strapped renters nationwide say their landlords tried to skirt COVID-19 eviction moratoriums by changing locks, removing trash containers so waste piled up and — in one case — attempting to unbolt the front door right off an apartment.

They told state attorneys general that they were kicked out of their homes after landlords accused them of violating tenant rules, like smoking cigarettes inside their units or failing to take the hitches off of their mobile homes.

Like Heidi Stach, who lost her job due to the pandemic and fell behind on rent, they assumed they were protected. But Stach says her landlord found an end-run to Wisconsin’s eviction ban: Instead of starting a court process, he sent her a notice to vacate this summer because he was not renewing her lease.

That type of informal or “extrajudicial” eviction is a work-around to the patchwork of emergency state and federal rules created this year to prevent landlords from ejecting tenants into unstable or crowded living arrangements during the health emergency.

What once was a fringe concern has become a quiet scourge across the nation, said Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project, feeding housing instability concerns among the millions who have missed rent payments.

“Since the pandemic started, and courts froze their dockets or had moratoriums, we’ve seen a huge spike in tactics from landlords to get people out,” Dunn said, “including changing locks, cutting off utility service, refusing to make repairs, making threats, providing misinformation and any other creative way to accuse someone of a lease violation that fits an exception in the moratorium.”Tricks and intimidation behind the scenes add to more overt efforts by landlords to legally evict tenants. With statewide bans largely expired and federal protection from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moratorium nearing its final days, tenant advocates like Dunn fear things will only get worse.

USA TODAY reviewed hundreds of complaints about landlords filed through the summer by consumers with attorneys general in seven states, including Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Washington state and Wisconsin.

Landlords, they told the state agencies, hiked rents even as the tenants lost their jobs and missed utility bill payments. They skipped out on basic maintenance and let conditions deteriorate, leaving renters a choice between leaving on their own or living with mold outbreaks or infestations of bed bugs, roaches and maggots.

While the complaints offer a window into the problem, tenants often found their efforts to enlist state help went nowhere since wrongful evictions typically must be fought in court.

Tasha Tavenner said she and her four children camped in the woods after she lost her job, fell behind on rent and then watched as two men tried to pull the door off the front of her apartment.
From elderly residents on Social Security to single mothers struggling with unemployment, some reported that they were pushed into homelessness, where they could not take basic steps to protect themselves from the virus.

That threat was a driving force behind the moratoriums, and a group of epidemiologists found this month that the measures have helped stem COVID-19’s spread, particularly in poorer neighborhoods where court-ordered eviction is more prevalent.

Landlords skirt COVID-19 eviction bans, using intimidation and tricks to boot tenants on reddit

Written by ai khai