Evictions restart, putting Charlotte renters at risk
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Evictions have resumed in Mecklenburg County after being on hold in some cases for more than a year. Meanwhile, thousands of renters are still awaiting rental assistance.
What’s happening: The Supreme Court threw out the latest federal eviction moratorium last week, putting hundreds of thousands of renters nationally at risk.
And there’s a backlog of more than 2,600 eviction cases that were filed in Mecklenburg County while the moratoriums were in place.
- Mecklenburg County Clerk of Superior Court Elisa Chinn-Gary tells me that her office started hearing cases last week. They are prioritizing them based on when they were filed.
- She anticipates that it will take through the end of September to work through the existing cases. New filings will be scheduled in October.
Why it matters: The economic impact of COVID-19 led tens of thousands of renters to fall behind on rent in Mecklenburg County.
- Eviction moratoriums at the state and federal level had prevented those tenants from being evicted in some cases.
The other side: Landlords say the eviction moratorium has hurt them financially. The Greater Charlotte Apartment Association sent a letter to North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby asking him to require Chinn-Gary’s office to hear cases more quickly, the Observer reported.
Meanwhile, there are 5,000 applicants in the pipeline for RAMP CLT, the rental assistance money from the city and county, according to DreamKey spokesperson Noelle Bell.
- DreamKey administers the funding that flowed to the local government from the federal stimulus packages.
- The nonprofit says it still has $2.7 million of the $21.3 million from the city to distribute. It has another $5.2 million left from Mecklenburg County’s second allocation to the program this year.
The number of applicants for the rental assistance program has varied in recent months as the expiration of the moratoriums neared. In February, 4,400 people applied for the assistance, but that dropped to 1,500 in May.
- In August, there were 2,700 applicants.
Housing advocates in Charlotte and nationwide have argued that the aid is not flowing to tenants fast enough. Only a fraction of the $46 billion the federal government has designated for emergency rental assistance has been disbursed by state and local governments.
Apryl Lewis, a housing justice organizer with Action NC, fears that there will be multiple tent cities popping up in Charlotte, because people won’t have anywhere else to go.
- “I’m pretty sure we’re going to lose a lot of lives this winter,” she says.