nothin GOP Attorneys Press To Restart Local… | New Haven Independent

GOP Attorneys Press To Restart Local Evictions, While National GOP Leaders Back Extending Moratorium

CT-N / Facebook / Wikipedia photos

Landlord attorneys and Republican State Reps. Cara Pavalock-D’Amato, Doug Dubitsky, and Craig Fishbein.

As President Trump and top U.S. Senate Republicans push to extend a recently expired federal eviction moratorium, three GOP state representatives pressed for Connecticut to end its statewide eviction pause early.

They did so in their latest filing in an ongoing federal suit against the governor.

The legal case in question is Auracle Homes LLC; FD Management LLC; Buckley Farms LLC; Orange Capitol LLC; 216 East Main Street Meriden LLC; BD Property Holdings LLC; Prime Management LLC; and Haberfeld Enterprises LLC v. Ned Lamont. Two of the plaintiff holding companies are co-owned by the New Haven-based rental property owners David Candelora and Ben Eastman.

On Wednesday, the landlords’ attorneys, Craig Fishbein, Doug Dubitsky, and Cara Pavalock‑D’Amato, filed an 11-page brief in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut.

In that document, they continued the argument they’ve made since first filing the suit in mid-June that the courts should immediately overturn the state’s eviction moratorium, which is currently slated to expire on Aug. 22 per Gov. Ned Lamont’s Executive Order 7DDD.

U.S. District of Connecticut Judge Victor Bolden (who is also a former top New Haven city government attorney) had given the landlords and their attorneys until Aug. 5 to respond to an amicus brief filed in mid-July by a host of statewide legal services organizations (including New Haven Legal Assistance Association) in defense of the state — and of keeping the eviction moratorium in place.

Virtually every retail store, restaurant, auto repair shop, hair & nail salon, dog kennel, insurance office, law firm, and medical practice in the state has figured out ways to safely keep business moving with revised procedures during the pandemic,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys write as they argue that Lamont has violated the landlords’ Constitutional rights to private contract, due process, and equal protection with the eviction moratorium.

Even Post Offices, Town Halls and state agencies have found ways to keep the wheels of government turning without putting their staffs or the public at risk. It defies credulity that the housing courts are inherently incapable of doing the same, even under revised procedures and a severely limited caseload.”

Fishbein, Dubitsky, and Pavalock‑D’Amato are not just attorneys. They’re also Republican state legislators in Connecticut’s House of Representatives. Fishbein represents Cheshire and Wallingford. Dubitsky represents Canterbury, Chaplin, Franklin, Hampton, Lebanon, Lisbon, Norwich, Scotland, and Sprague. Pavalock‑D’Amato represents Bristol.

In their professional capacities as lawyers in this case, they’ve presented an argument on behalf of their clients that runs seemingly counter to the public overtures made as of late by Republicans at the highest echelons of national office, as Congress and the White House remain deadlocked over a new Covid-19 relief bill.

Since the CARES Act’s federal eviction moratorium for tenants in federally insured homes and in public housing expired on July 25, Republicans like U.S. Senate Banking Chair Mike Crapo have called on the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Housing Agency to keep the moratorium and other renter protections in place. President Trump and his closest advisers in the White House have also broached the possibility of issuing an executive order extending the eviction moratorium without first going through Congress.

Connecticut still sits at the top of the Covid-19 Housing Policy Scorecard put together by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, in large part thanks to the state’s sustained prohibition of landlords issuing new notices to quit or enforcing an existing eviction order for nonpayment of rent. Connecticut has also set aside $10 million so far to help low-income tenants cover rent.

As much of the rest of the nation teeters towards a more immediate wave of evictions and as 25 percent of Connecticut residents report having missed last month’s rent or mortgage payment or fearing they won’t be able to make next month’s, the landlords’ attorneys do not stake their claim on the grounds that toppling the moratorium will result in thousands of people kicked out of their homes during a pandemic.

Instead, they argue that there must be a middle ground between the unconstitutional complete closure of the housing courts, and the crowded and chaotic cattle calls of the pre-COVID era.”

That middle ground,” the Republican legislators-cum-landlord attorneys contend, lies in reopening housing court, authorizing landlords to resume their pre-pandemic ability to move to evict tenants for not paying rent, and then allowing housing court judges to exercise their discretion on an individual case by cases basis. In some instances, a judge may rule to stay execution of eviction” — that is, pause the proceedings and let the tenant stay in their home. In others, the judge may order such other appropriate relief in appropriate cases” — that is, kick the tenant out and reclaim the property.

Click here to read the full Aug. 5 response.

Housing Court: Ready To Reopen? Or Far Too Dangerous?

Thomas Breen file photo

121 Elm St., home to New Haven’s housing court.

The landlords attorneys’ response offers a detailed rebuttal to the case made by legal services organizations in support of maintaining the eviction moratorium through at least Aug. 22.

In that mid-July amicus brief, the legal aid attorneys discussed a wide range of concerns, from the hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents who have filed for unemployment during the pandemic to the end of federal financial support for individuals from the CARES Act; from the disproportionate impact the virus has had on Black and Hispanic communities so far to how those same demographics are disproportionately renters; from heightened risk of catching Covid-19 presented by living in shelters, on the streets, and in dense housing to the spur that new evictions will likely give to families living in such dangerous congregate settings; and from the crowded and chaotic setting that housing courts presented before the pandemic to how that same setting amidst a contagious respiratory disease pandemic could lead to widespread suffering for all tenants, landlords, court staff, attorneys, and judges alike.

If evictions resume, the operation of the housing courts themselves will pose a threat to public health,” the legal aid attorneys content. When the State epidemiologist estimates that there are ten COVID infections for every confirmed case, there is no telling how many people present for the morning housing court calendar call could be positive for the virus.”

They argue that housing court is also not ready to conduct housing court remotely, as the Judicial Branch does not have adequate technology in place and many of the pro se tenant-defendants do not have reliable access to the Internet or to Internet-accessible devices.

Processing large numbers of evictions in the housing courts almost assuredly will spark new outbreaks in Connecticut’s towns and cities,” they write.

Click here to read their amicus brief in full. 

In their newly filed response, the landlords’ attorneys argue that housing court can and must resume — at least in some capacity, so as to avoid a monumental backlog of cases piling up.

The legal attorneys erect a straw man they passionately pray the Court not to topple,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers write, that being the full and unconditional return of all housing court procedures, including in-person morning housing court calendar calls, to pre-COVID ways. Neither the Plaintiffs, nor common sense, argue for such thoughtless abandonment of safe and deliberate court operations.”

Instead, the plaintiffs would like to see the courts reopen for at least some cases, to be heard and adjudicated at the discretion of housing court judges.

Keeping the courts closed to all cases, regardless o findividual situation, only exacerbates the crisis by piling up huge numbers of cases that will overwhelm the courts, drastically delay proper adjudication, and put the Plaintiffs at heightened risk of foreclosure and bankruptcy.”

While the legal aid attorneys cite the 2008 foreclosure crisis as providing an example for the type of widespread hardship that renters might experience this time around if the courts were to strike down the eviction moratorium, the landlords’ attorneys cite that same crisis instead as providing an example of courts backed up for years with undecided cases — much as might be the case for landlords and tenants if the eviction moratorium is left in place.

The longer the Defendant’s moratorium is allowed to remain in effect, the greater the backlog of cases to adjudicate, and the larger the surge will be when the levy eventually breaches,” they write. Like the foreclosure crisis of the early 2000s, it will necessarily take years for the courts to work through such a backlog. However, unlike the mega-banks involved in the foreclosure crisis, small landlords like the Plaintiffs will be crushed, and ruined if compelled to suffer so long with little or no income to pay their mortgages, their insurance and building maintenance, not to mention feeding their families.”

The plaintiffs insist that their clients are not the bad guys in this case. In fact, they argue, quite the contrary. They write that the landlords in this case are the good guys here, investing their money and risking their livelihoods to provide clean and reasonably priced housing, in decent neighborhoods to those who seek it, regardless of race, religion, national origin or sexual orientation.”

The legal aid attorneys eschew any language of good or bad guys, and focus instead on the undue hardship that resuming evictions will almost certainly have on people who can least afford the extra hurt — and on the ameliorative impact of the moratorium itself.

The eviction moratorium has had at least two positive effects,” they conclude. First, it prevents people who have lost their jobs from the further destabilization of losing their homes and all the costs and harmful effects that would follow. Second, it reduces the exposure to the virus that dislocation would otherwise cause, whether through: (1) the actual move itself; (2) entering homeless shelters that lack the ability to house all their residents in a safe manner during a pandemic, and either exposing or being exposed to the coronavirus in that setting; or (3) combining households with others who may be at risk of contracting COVID-19 by virtue of their status as an essential worker or otherwise.

In this manner, the moratorium has helped prevent the racialized health effects of the pandemic from getting even worse.”

By the publication time of this article, Judge Bolden has not yet set a date for a subsequent court hearing or indicated when he will rule on the case.

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