By Brenda Wintrode, Amy DiPierro, Ryan Little, Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi, Aneurin Canham-Clyne, Trisha Ahmed, Sean McGoey, Maya Pottiger and Sophia Brown

Yochebed Israel was just the kind of person Congress had in mind when it voted in March to temporarily ban many evictions across the country as the coronavirus spread.

First, the furnace in her Tampa, Florida, apartment broke, causing her electricity bill to climb above $460 a month for five months, she said. She fell behind on rent, forced to choose between keeping the lights on or paying the landlord.

Then she said she caught COVID-19 from her daughter in April, missing two months of work without full sick pay as a certified nursing assistant at a long-term care center. She had fluid in her lungs. She was tired all the time.

And then, in May, she came home to find an eviction order attached to her door.

“It makes me feel the anxiety of being homeless,” she said.

This project is a collaboration among the University of Maryland’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, Big Local News at Stanford University, the University of Arkansas and Boston University. It was supported by grants from the Pulitzer Center, the Scripps Howard Foundation and the Park Foundation.

The federal CARES Act, signed by President Donald Trump March 27, was supposed to protect Israel and people in up to 20 million other rental households from just that fate. It barred landlords whose properties got federal benefits from filing to evict tenants or charging them late fees and court fees for 120 days. Israel lives in a building with a mortgage backed by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, better known as Freddie Mac. The law should have covered her.

But a two-month investigation by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found that while the federal and state moratoriums dramatically decreased eviction filings in April and May, cracks in the federal law appeared immediately.

Confusion about the moratorium’s language, which played out in conflicting guidance from federal agencies and the courts, led to selective enforcement. Landlords were expected to determine for themselves if their property was covered by the CARES Act. Renters had virtually no legal help to fight back. And eviction filings in some cities dropped more steeply in white neighborhoods than minority neighborhoods during the federal moratorium.

Israel’s property manager, Tzadik Management, said through a spokesperson that it didn’t know the property in Hillsborough County, Florida, was secured by a federal loan.

It was a “simple miscommunication” between the management company and the ownership of three of the properties it manages, the spokesperson wrote. Court records show Tzadik has since asked the court to dismiss all 24 of the evictions, including Israel’s, that it filed during the federal moratorium.

Yochebed Israel, 59, poses for a portrait inside her Tampa, Florida, apartment on Monday, Aug. 17, 2020. Israel, a nursing assistant, found an eviction notice on her door in May after being unable to pay rent since she contracted COVID-19 from her daughter in April, and could not return to work. “There’s a lot of despair in this situation,” Israel said. “Not only are you sick from COVID-19, you miss work, you miss your job, you miss getting paid, you miss a lot of things that dominoes into this situation.” (Ivy Ceballo)

The Howard Center focused on eviction filings in 10 counties that are home to Memphis, Tennessee, Tulsa and Oklahoma City in Oklahoma, Atlanta and Savannah in Georgia, Tampa and St. Petersburg in Florida, New Orleans and Milwaukee — all areas hit hard by the coronavirus. Prior to the pandemic, at least 20% of renters in those counties spent half or more of their income on rent. All also had historic eviction filing rates well above the United States average.

The CARES Act eviction moratorium expired July 24, and the Senate left Washington three weeks later without an agreement with the House to extend it. The Trump administration signaled late Tuesday it will halt evictions for all renters affected by the pandemic through the end of the year as a public health measure to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The moratorium, which does not include money to help tenants in arrears, takes effect Friday, according to a draft in the Federal Register.

Emily Benfer, a law professor at Wake Forest University and chair of the American Bar Association’s COVID-19 Task Force Committee on Eviction, praised the administration’s action as a “tremendous intervention that promises to protect the health and safety of millions of renters.” But she also warned in an email Tuesday night that it is only a “half measure.”

“Without rental assistance to cover the mounting debt, it only delays eviction and its devastating consequences,” she wrote.

The CARES Act eviction moratorium only covered rentals with mortgages backed by federal programs such as the Federal Housing Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Federal National Mortgage Association, also known as Fannie Mae; properties that received Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, and people who got federal housing assistance, such as vouchers, to help pay the rent.

Eric Dunn, director of litigation for the National Housing Law Project, said Congress should have passed a blanket moratorium in the spring covering all evictions “for any reason.”

“What we got was a moratorium for nonpayment of rent from some housing, which is complicated and difficult to figure out,” he said.

Eviction filings ticked back up in all 10 counties analyzed by the Howard Center in June and July — a pattern evident in 14 of 17 other cities tracked by researchers at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.

BY EMMA GRAZADO

Eviction filings dropped dramatically in April and May when state and federal eviction moratoriums were put in place. But as the moratoriums have been lifted, filings have ticked back up in all of the counties analyzed by the Howard Center.

Sources: Howard Center collection of court records, Howard Center analysis of New York Times COVID data, Emily Benfer/Wake Forest, Eviction Lab and U.S. Census.

Landlords and property managers in four of the 10 counties examined by the Howard Center filed at least 101 evictions that violated the federal moratorium, a review of court and other public records found. Courts or plaintiffs since moved to dismiss all of them.

The total is conservative because court data in some counties lacked key details needed to confirm CARES Act violations. In other cases, the Howard Center could not verify information contained in court records.

The CARES Act placed the burden on landlords not to evict tenants in covered properties. In an effort to reinforce that, high courts in Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee ordered landlords to sign affidavits saying their property was not covered by the federal law. But even in Georgia and Oklahoma, the Howard Center found wrongful eviction filings kept happening.

Massachusetts and several other states, plus Washington, D.C., have passed statutes temporarily halting evictions, giving Massachusetts tenants some of the strongest protections in the country. But even there, the state Attorney General’s Office said there have been at least 50 eviction cases filed in state court that violated the federal moratorium. The office said all of the cases have now been withdrawn.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said in an interview her hope “would be that they would follow both the letter of the law and spirit of the law, which is really to make sure that people aren’t made homeless’’ during the crisis.

But figuring out the letter of the law has not been easy.

The role of federal housing subsidies, such as Section 8 vouchers, is an example. The CARES Act said a landlord could not evict tenants from properties where a landlord accepts subsidies for any portion of the property. But a Department of Housing and Urban Development FAQ said the agency “does not have the authority to extend jurisdiction over unassisted tenants.”

BY JENNA COHEN AND EMMA GRAZADO

Impact on tenants

All of this confusion increased stress for tenants already under pressure from disappearing jobs — the national unemployment rate soared to a record 14.7% in April and was 10.2% in July. The consequences tenants continue to face from the mere filing of an eviction are real.

Renters often had no way of knowing whether their apartment was covered by the CARES Act, an “inherent drawback” of the law, according to Dunn. The only way to know is to search online databases, some of which only a mortgage holder can access.

Challenging a landlord’s assertion that a property isn’t subject to the CARES Act can be difficult even when a tenant has a lawyer, Dunn said. It’s almost impossible if they don’t.

A Howard Center analysis shows that the vast majority of tenants facing eviction had no legal help.

Yet tenants bear the burden of wrongful filings, even if cases were dismissed by the court.

“Once an eviction is filed, it immediately results in a scarlet E for a tenant or a renter,” Benfer said. “It plummets credit scores and creates barriers to future housing opportunities.”

Emily Benfer is a law professor at Wake Forest University and chair of the American Bar Association’s COVID-19 Task Force Committee on Eviction. She has called for a broader ban on evictions and more help for tenants who have lost jobs and can’t afford their rent. (Photo courtesy of Emily Benfer)

A New Orleans court dismissed an eviction filing in June against 35-year-old Ernest George because his landlord accepted Section 8 vouchers from other tenants on the property, according to his lawyer. For the ironworker and his family, legal representation and the CARES Act eviction moratorium provided a safety net.

“We’ve been making it. It just got harder and harder when the COVID-19 thing came, and I didn’t get my unemployment right away,” George said.

But unless his case is wiped from court records, the filing could damage George’s credit and could make it harder for him to rent in the future.

Landlord-tenant laws in many of the states examined by the Howard Center favor landlords, who often are legally represented in eviction proceedings. The process from start to finish can take as little as five days in Louisiana, said Hannah Adams, a lawyer with Southeast Louisiana Legal Services.

“Once this ball gets rolling, tenants have almost no time to try to work it out,” she said.

Impact on communities of color

Evictions hit minority communities harder even before the pandemic. George’s majority Black neighborhood in Orleans Parish had an eviction rate five times higher than the national average in 2017, according to a study last year of New Orleans eviction data.

The federal and state moratoriums haven’t closed the gap. The Howard Center found that eviction filings declined more in white neighborhoods than in nonwhite neighborhoods in the Memphis, Atlanta, Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg areas after the federal and state moratoriums were imposed.

In all of the counties that we examined, evictions disproportionately affected renters in majority nonwhite neighborhoods. For example, in Hillsborough County, Florida, only 16% of rental properties were located in majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods yet 27% of evictions occurred in these neighborhoods.

Impact on landlords

When landlords don’t receive rent, it ripples into the local economy. From the landscaper to the pool cleaner to the plumber, people lose business and income, said Florida property manager Dave Sigler.

“It’s important that these rents get paid,” he said. “Not just to keep the owners having their houses, but it keeps the whole economy going on such a larger scale.”

Landlords did not receive direct assistance from the CARES Act, but their federally backed mortgages were protected from foreclosure. The law provided up to 90 days of forbearance for multifamily properties and as much as a year for properties with four or fewer units.

“I hate filing evictions, I hate putting people out of their homes,” said Paul Howard, whose Florida Landlord Network provides eviction services and tenant screening to landlords throughout the state. “It’s not why I bought rental property.”

To prevent evictions in Memphis, local nonprofits and city officials created a $1.9 million Eviction Settlement Fund for those affected by COVID-19. The funds were not made available until mid-July, and advocates are concerned it won’t be enough.

“We’ve had over 1,000 cases. If each of those settled for $3,000, well, how does it look to you?” said Cindy Ettingoff, CEO of Memphis Area Legal Services.

BY EMMA GRAZADO

Many states across the country have stopped eviction proceedings and instituted other protections for renters since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The map below examines which states have some statewide eviction protections as of Aug. 14, 2020.

What’s next?

Housing experts had warned that the scope of evictions would start to show in September; landlords were supposed to wait 30 days after the federal moratorium expired to file evictions. Trump’s decision to extend and broaden the eviction moratorium could put off that reckoning until January — at least for some.

Ashley Fitzgibbon and her six children sit on the front steps of their Oklahoma City rental home. Fitzgibbon lost her income when the state shut down at the end of March. The property she rents was not protected by the CARES Act. She has received four eviction notices since May and has paid her rent by borrowing money and doing odd jobs. (Clockwise: Judah, 10, Griffin, 8, M’kenna Lou Ann, 6, Rorke, 5, Adaley Joy, 9, Jayden Grace, 12) (Alyssa Sperazza)

Ashley Fitzgibbon could be one of them.

The Oklahoma City single mother of six said she thought she was “finally getting it together” before she lost her house cleaning and babysitting jobs at the end of March.

“It was just like such a hard hit,” she said.

Fitzgibbon’s rental house was not covered by the CARES Act and Oklahoma never instituted a statewide eviction moratorium. When the courts reopened in May, her property manager served her with a summons and has done so every month through August.

So far, the 35-year-old has managed to get the cases dismissed by borrowing money, adding a third housemate to the two she already has in the five-bedroom rental house and working odd jobs such as dog sitting to make rent each month.

“I’m so incredibly thankful that there were people that, like, had that safety net, and it sucks that I wasn’t one of them,” Fitzgibbon said.

She’s made the tough decision to sell her 2016 Ford Expedition. The proceeds, she said, will give her a financial buffer through the rest of the year.

And besides, she said she wasn’t using it much anyway. She doesn’t have the money for gas.

Clara Longo de Freitas, Arya Hodjat, Julia Lerner and Victoria Daniels from the University of Maryland; Abby Zimmardi and Mary Hennigan from the University of Arkansas, and Noemi Arellano-Summer, Anoushka Dalmia and Nick McCool from Boston University contributed reporting for this story. Roxanne Ready provided data analysis. DiPierro and Big Local News data analyst Justin Mayo reported for Stanford University. Wintrode, Perez, Canham-Clyne and Ahmed reported for the University of Maryland, and McGoey, Pottiger and Howard Center Data Editor Sean Mussenden gathered and analyzed data for Maryland. Lead photo by Ivy Ceballo.