Thomas Breen photo
Ornes outside his (for now) apartment: “We’re struggling.”
Connecticut has a pandemic eviction moratorium in place.
That’s not helping Willis Ornes, who lost his job and now faces losing his home.
Willis Ornes lives at the Quinnipiac Gardens apartment complex. He lost his job due to Covid-19 this spring, then fell more than six months behind on rent.
His is now one of 31 New Haven households newly facing eviction during the current coronavirus surge — thanks to an explicit exception built into the governor’s statewide moratorium.
Ornes, his wife, their two daughters, and their pet Siberian Husky Mishka live in a three-bedroom apartment on the back side of the 71-unit rental complex in Quinnipiac Meadows / Bishop Woods.
On Nov. 20, their landlord, Quinnipiac Gardens Inc. — an affiliate of the local Pike International real estate operation — sued to evict them for “serious non-payment of rent.”
That’s one of a handful of exceptions baked into Gov. Ned Lamont’s statewide eviction moratorium.
The latest version of the moratorium prohibits landlords from filing new eviction cases until Jan. 1, 2021 except — among other reasons —if a tenant owes six months or more of back rent due on or after March 1.
Quinnpiac Gardens.
“It’s hard, and it’s depressing,” Ornes said earlier this week about the prospect of losing his apartment during the pandemic.
“Where else are we gonna go but to a shelter? This is the first time ever we’ve been this down low.”
He said he has fallen so far behind on rent — $7,500 in total between May and November, according to state court records — because Ornes lost his job as a bread delivery driver for Apicella’s Bakery towards the beginning of the pandemic.
Ornes, a 46-year-old New York City native, spent most of his youth in Puerto Rico. He has lived in Connecticut since he was 19.
Ornes said he’s been able to pick up work here and there over the past seven months as a mechanic and tow-truck driver.
But the time and cost associated with his family’s health issues, including his wife’s recent open-heart surgery, have often taken priority over making rent each month. Meanwhile, he’s still looking for full-time work, trying to land rental help through 2 – 1‑1, seeking to negotiate a repayment plan with his landlord, and working with his wife to help their kids through online school, all now with an eviction suit hanging over their heads.
“Everybody’s depressed,” he said. “We’re struggling.”
Ornes’s case represents not a loophole, but rather an explicitly sanctioned outcome of a moratorium that carves out specific exceptions for rent-related evictions during the ongoing public health crisis.
According to the Independent’s review of state housing court records filed after Oct. 1 — when the most recent version of the moratorium went into effect — a total of 31 New Haven renters have been sued for eviction.
Seventeen of those new eviction cases are for so-called “serious nonpayment of rent,” an exception that was not included in versions of the statewide moratorium in place between April 10 and October. The rest are for other exceptions for permissible eviction filings — including if a tenant did not pay rent due on or before Feb. 29, if a landlord intends to use the dwelling unit as their principal residence, or if a renter presents a “serious nuisance” by, for example, wrecking an apartment or selling illegal drugs.
Shelley White.
“The moratorium has kind of morphed into, ‘Who’s worthy of being put out on the street and who’s not worthy of being protected?’” said New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) Director of Litigation Shelley White.
She said the stated purpose of the governor’s eviction moratorium is to protect public health by preventing renters from losing their homes, going to shelters, or shacking up with relatives at a time when living on the street or in dense, congregate setting might increase their risk of contracting Covid.
“I don’t see the reason for that to be an exception for a moratorium based on public health concerns,” she said about the “serious nonpayment of rent” clause.
“What we have now is a public health crisis, and making exceptions for people to be put out on the street is not the way to do this.”
Connecticut Fair Housing Center Executive Director Erin Kemple agreed.
“It’s really not working,” she said about the moratorium as it currently exists.
Since Sept. 1, when the state restarted allowing landlords to file eviction cases for nonpayment of rent before March 1, Kemple said, Connecticut has seen 1,000 new evictions filed and 800 requests for execution. Sept. 1 was also the start date for when marshals could begin physically removing renters and their belongings for tenants who had already gone to court and lost their eviction cases prior to the start of the pandemic.
“Everybody keeps saying we’re going to face an eviction crisis,” Kemple said. “Well, we’re already facing an eviction crisis.”
Kemple also pointed to two recently published studies (which can be read here and here) that examine the relationship between evictions, eviction moratoriums, and Covid. They argue that the stress, depression, displacement, doubling up, reduced access to primary medical care, and shared use of public facilities associated with evictions are all drivers of contracting and spreading Covid.
“It’s not just a question of economics,” she said. “It’s also a question of ensuring that people are not infected.”
Landlords and some attorneys have argued throughout the pandemic that an eviction moratorium threatens the viability of their businesses. They say it puts a financial burden on smaller landlords who still have to pay for repairs, mortgage, water and sewer, and other essential services without a guarantee of rental income.
Gubernatorial spokesperson Max Reiss told the Independent that the governor’s office crafted the moratorium as it currently exists in an attempt to strike a “delicate balance of trying to provide protections for as many people as you reasonably can, while also recognizing that [landlords] are looking to still receive some level of payment and some expectation of payment.”
He noted that Connecticut is a regional leader on having an eviction moratorium still in place. Rhode Island never adopted one, and New York and Massachusetts have subsequently dropped theirs.
“We need to balance the interests of smaller landlords, struggling tenants, and those tenants who can make rent and depend on the services landlords can provide,” he said.
Pike International principal Shmully Hecht declined to comment for this article.
Tenants Facing Evictions: “Just A Lot Of Stress”
Ridgeview Condos on Donna Drive.
In addition to Ornes, the Independent spoke for this story with two other New Haven renters currently facing ongoing eviction lawsuits during the pandemic. Both declined to have their picture taken or share their name publicly, out of a sense of embarrassment that they were caught up in such a process. One said she didn’t want her adult children to find out; the other said she didn’t want her new colleagues to know.
Both, however, agreed to share their stories — about how they ended up with eviction suits against them, and how challenging it’s been to make rent during the ongoing crisis.
One tenant, a 50-year-old renter at Ridgeview Condominums on Donna Drive, said that she started falling far behind on rent this spring after the elderly client she worked for as a live-in certified nursing assistant (CNA) died of Covid-19.
She said she had taken care of this client for seven years. When her client died, she found herself out of a job — and with significantly less income.
Her landlord filed a “serious nonpayment of rent” eviction suit against her on Nov. 4. In the complaint, the landlord alleged that the tenant owed a total of $4,650 for back rent owed between between May and October. The suit also states that the tenant paid only part of her rent in January, and none of it in February.
The renter said she recently landed a new, lower-paying, in-home nursing job in East Hartford. She spends most of her time up at her client’s place, but keeps nearly all of her belongings at her New Haven apartment and returns whenever she has free time.
“I wouldn’t have no home,” she said when asked what she would do if she was evicted. “It’s hurtful. We the nurses out here, and we’re losing our shit.”
She said she applied for state help through the Temporary Rental Housing Assistance Program (TRHAP), but to no avail.
“Just a lot of stress,” she said. “I’ve been going through a lot.”
Quinnipiac Gardens.
Another Quinnipiac Gardens renter, a 33-year-old mother of three children, is currently fighting an ongoing eviction case first filed by Pike on March 31. The suit alleges that she failed to pay rent due in February and March. Per the governor’s various executive orders and pauses on eviction hearings at state court, her case has been delayed for months. Her next online court date is slated for Dec. 10.
For most of the pandemic, the renter said, she’s been out of work. Then, recently, she landed a job at a local picture-frame manufacturing facility.
“I haven’t been able to get a lot of hours,” she said, not least of which because her nephew came to visit the family — and he later tested positive for Covid.
That meant that she and three children had to get tested, wait for the results, and quarantine for 14 days.
“It is stressful and kind of depressing, because I do have kids and it’s hard with the rent and all that,” she said.
If evicted, she said, “the only option would be to look to the shelter.”
She said she too applied for state rental assistance through TRHAP. But once the state found out that she had a pending eviction case filed against her, she was disqualified for help through that program.
No tenants the Independent spoke to for this article had heard of the city’s Covid rental support fund.
“It is really hard,” she said. “I feel that a lot of people who really don’t need the help, they do get it. But people who really need it, people with kids, they don’t try to help them enough.”
What would help her through this trying time? Some kind of rental assistance, she said. Something that would help her and her family pay of their debts and stay in their apartment.
A review of court records for other New Haven tenants facing newly filed evictions reveals similar stories of job loss and struggles to secure state aid.
Another Donna Drive tenant facing a Nov. 4 eviction lawsuit for nonpayment of rent wrote in his legal reply to his landlord’s complaint, “I am waiting to here [sic] from the TRHAP Program and Life Support program.”
One renter on Admiral Street in Dixwell and two others at Quinnipiac Gardens filed declaration forms for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s temporary halt in evictions, which is explicitly designed to prevent the further spread of Covid-19.
Those forms require residents to declare, under penalty of perjury, that — among other stipulations — they have used best efforts to obtain all government assistance for rent or housing; they expect to earn no more than $99,000 in annual income this year (or no more than $198,000 on a joint tax return); they are unable to pay their rent in full due to a substantial loss of household income; and, if evicted, they would likely become homeless.
Housing Advocates: “We Need Rental Assistance”
Erin Kemple.
When asked what action city, state, and federal government need to take next to support renters facing evictions even during the current moratorium, housing attorneys Kemple and White both pointed towards rental assistance.
Kemple criticized the “serious nonpayment of rent” exception because, she said, people who have been laid off since the start of the pandemic or have not been able to secure adequate new work are bound to be far behind on rent.
“Most people we have been in contact with spent their stimulus check or unemployment on food for kids, have spent their time setting up for Zoom school, and that kind of thing,” she said.
Kemple said that the TRHAP program — which is currently accepting applications for assistance — does not have enough money set aside and requires too much paperwork for determining qualified recipients. The governor has set aside $40 million so far towards the program, which provides up to $4,000 to landlords on behalf of approved tenants.
She called on the state to buy up rental debt owed to landlords at something like 60 cents on the dollar. That’s significantly more than the 5 to 10 percent that landlords are often able to collect on rent arrearage from tenants well behind on rent.
She said Connecticut also needs “a rental assistance program that is much more robust, and much less paperwork and jumping through hoops in order to get it, in order to get people through the next couple of months where we’re continuing to see a surge in infections.”
White agreed. She said that, even after the state started moving through its lengthy backlog of applications for TRHAP this fall, she still does not have any clients who have completed the process and actually received financial help.
The reason why people are falling so behind on rent right now, White said, is relatively clear — people have lost their jobs and lost income because of a pandemic that was not within their control.
“We need rental assistance,” she said, “not a moratorium that has big holes.”
When asked about upping rental assistance or buying rental debt, Reiss said the state continues to look for ways to protect renters, and that the state’s CARES Act Covid-19 funding is already nearly all committed to a variety of necessities, including paying for Covid-19 testing, personal protective equipment, and education.
Connecticut currently has a rating of 2.8 out of 5 on Princeton’s Eviction Lab Covid-19 housing policy scorecard. “Orders in Connecticut constitute some of the strongest protections for renters during the pandemic,” that scorecard reads. “However, without further action on rental debt, Connecticut could still see a surge of evictions soon after the state of emergency expires.”
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The way these fine people are being treated is shameful and disgusting!
In Paris, France it is a LAW that no one can be evicted between November 1 and April 1
And, the State should reimburse the landlords for the rents that they are not getting because of COVID.
Where would the State get the money? From the Federal Government, that's where. It's our money!
Instead of a gazillion dollar contract to build a submarine in CT, how about a half a billion to our State Government to cover the costs of supporting people's lives instead of making stuff that kills people (mostly innocent ones).
We don't need submarines!
And, those good, highly skilled workers at Electric Boat should not be making things that kill other working class people in other countries. Retrain them to make things that support life and local workers instead of outsourcing so many jobs to foreign countries!
Disaster capitalism has to stop!
Landlords and tenants should not be victimized by COVID.