Interest in covid rent aid up in Allegheny, Westmoreland counties as eviction ban limps on

The Monday after a nationwide eviction moratorium expired, there were 1,200 voicemails to sift through at Action Housing , the nonprofit administering $80 million in emergency rent relief for Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.

Workers fielded another 1,000 phone calls that day, Aug. 2, said Action’s general counsel, Kyle Webster.

They had a spike in applications over the July 31 weekend when the moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expired, leaving tenants who haven’t made rent or utility payments during the corona­virus pandemic at risk of losing their homes.

Many agencies administering the federal relief funds across the state experienced a deluge that weekend, said Phyllis Chamberlain, executive director of the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania. It’s an indicator there still are renters who need help, but maybe not everyone knows the money exists.

“There’s still a lot of need out there, and only a small percentage of the emergency rental assistance money has been paid out so far,” she said.

A new moratorium instituted Aug. 3 by the CDC applies to counties experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission of the coronavirus, which now includes Allegheny and Westmoreland. That ban is set to expire Oct. 3.

The agency’s previous moratorium expired July 31 after the Biden administration indicated that any type of ban may clash with a U.S. Supreme Court decision, according to news reports. The White House previously said extending the moratorium would require an act of Congress but changed course when some constitutional scholars believed the CDC’s action could be OK in the court’s eyes.

Supreme Court justices in June opted 5-4 to leave the moratorium in place. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that he voted that way because the ban was scheduled to expire soon and to allow the distribution of relief funds. However, he believed Congress would need to act for any extension or additional moratorium from the CDC to be valid.

Bruce Antkowiak, a law professor at Saint Vincent College in Unity, said he expects the new moratorium to be the subject of legal challenges that could result in it falling apart.

“If Congress acts in the interim, the outcome changes,” he said.

The National Real Estate Investors Association in a statement asked the Supreme Court to “immediately strike down this act of blatant unconstitutionality.”

“How many more small business owners will go belly-­up before this never-ending moratorium actually expires?” said association COO Charles Tassell.

On Friday, a federal judge declined to put the moratorium on hold in a challenge by Alabama landlords, though she said she believes it is illegal, according to the Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich said her “hands are tied” by an appellate ruling the last time courts considered the evictions moratorium. Her decision is likely to be appealed again to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

Pa. cases pending

There are about 6,700 pending landlord-tenant cases in Pennsylvania as of July 31, according to Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts statistics. Approximately 3,000 of them were filed in the last few weeks. The rest were filed at least one month ago or longer.

In Westmoreland County , there are 104 cases awaiting action. Allegheny County has about 1,600 pending.

Chamberlain suggested courts and agencies doling out the relief money share information to prevent an eviction of a person who has applied for help or to assist others who don’t know about the program. There have been 5,000 landlord-tenant filings in Pittsburgh since March 2020, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.

“We definitely see that this new eviction moratorium will help a lot of people,” but not everyone knows about it and the rent relief program, Chamberlain said.

About a quarter of all renter households in Pennsylvania were behind on their payments, according to a U.S. Census survey from June 23 to July 5. That’s about 403,000 households. Approximately 27% of renter households had little to no confidence that they would make the next month’s rent on time.

In Westmoreland County, Union Mission of Latrobe has distributed $1.8 million to renters and another $340,000 in assistance is awaiting final approval, said executive director Dan Carney. The county received nearly $13 million.

In July, the group received 360 new applications. So far in August, they’ve fielded 137, bringing the total applications to 1,186, he said. There were more phone calls and emails around the time the moratorium expired, but it wasn’t anything they weren’t already accustomed to on a daily basis, Carney said.

“We didn’t feel it any more than normal,” he said.

Organizations like Union Mission and Action-Housing didn’t have a lot of time to figure out how they would process applications and dole out the funding. Action-Housing has given out 26% of its money; Union Mission is sitting at 16%.

“I don’t see it as their fault,” Chamberlain said. “With any program, it takes some time for people to actually know about it.”

It is unclear if the money will help reduce evictions, but it has definitely made an impact, she said.

Action-Housing has helped nearly 4,000 households and they’ve gotten almost 13,000 applications, Webster said. About half of the $21 million given out so far was distributed in July. They’ve been working with various nonprofits and community groups, as well as advertising and outreach, to find the renters who need help.

“We built out a process that we knew would kind of be a ramping up process,” he said.

They’re projecting to be out of money in December.