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Thank you.

- The impact of evictions on Memphis, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by Cindy Ettingoff, CEO of Memphis Area Legal Services.

Thanks for being here.

- Absolutely.

Happy to be here.

- Steve Barlow, who's President, Neighborhood Preservation, Inc.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thank you for the opportunity.

- Dorcas Young Griffin, who's Director of Shelby County Community Services.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

Glad to be here tonight.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter for The Daily Memphian.

So we'll set some of this up, and I'm gonna say some things wrong, 'cause there's a confusing set of interrelated issues and policies and court rulings going on, which is not my forte, but we're gonna do our best, 'cause it's a very serious issue, about rental evictions.

There was a moratorium that was put in place during the pandemic.

I think at some point the federal government, one part of the federal government had a moratorium in place, and someone will correct me on this, and then the CDC issued, you know, "We can't throw people out of their apartments during a pandemic, because then they could be on the street and exposed."

Various parts of this were challenged.

The moratorium, the rental moratorium on evictions, ended in, is it March of this year?

- April.

April or May.

- April, based on that court ruling.

It continued in other areas, so I'm gonna look at you, okay?

- Yes.

- It's continued in other areas.

But at the same time, there was some money last year in one of the big aid programs to help rental assistance, and then a much bigger package that came out as part of the CARES Act in March of this year.

- Correct.

That is all correct.

So the money part is there.

I can kind of address the legal part of it.

- Yes.

- Because what happened was under the original bill, which President Trump signed, there was a moratorium.

Then, when that moratorium ended, the CDC issued its emergency order that should have extended the moratorium, and that moratorium has been extended multiple times.

However, in Shelby County, there was a lawsuit filed in federal district court here before Judge Norris.

It was called the Tiger Lily Case.

And in that case, the judge held that the CDC did not have the power to issue that moratorium, so it was unconstitutional.

So West Tennessee is the only place in the country where there has been a judicial ruling that the moratorium is unlawful.

So we don't have a moratorium.

- And so since, and I might go to you on this- - Okay.

- Since that ruling, thank you, how many people have been affected, and where are we going in terms of, let's quantify this in terms of the human and financial impact.

- So we have seen studies that show that there is over $80 million owed in rent for people all across Shelby County.

- Eighty million just in Shelby County?

- Just in Shelby County.

So what we can't tell you is how many people are struggling.

We know that a significant portion of the 80 million are people that are struggling to pay their bills, because we know what our poverty rate here is.

There are probably about 30,000 people that we've identified that probably will be eligible for the help that we have.

We have helped over 8,000 households just with rent and utilities since we started this program in March of this year.

- And the money to help, help is money, in this case.

- Help is money.

- Help is money, in this case.

- Help is money and it is supportive services, it is folks being in court with you.

We have awesome lawyers that are helping to represent tenants in court.

So it is the resource, but it's also the wraparound care to try to make sure that that person is stably housed not just for now, but for later.

- I think I read on the site, what is the site?

Is it Home901- - Home901.org, mm-hm.

- Okay.

And for people who are looking for some help- - Right.

- Or have somebody they know needs some help, there's assistance there.

The money is coming from the federal government, as we kinda talked about at the top.

- Correct, mm-hm.

- Am I right that in the month of June, it was about $5 million, I think I saw, four-point-nine million that was passed through to individuals?

- So I can tell you as of July 30th, we've passed through $15 million.

- Since March?

- Since March.

Just since March.

- Okay.

And the bulk of it is for rent, but a portion of it is going for utilities, in this case- - Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yes.

So we- - And- - Yeah, I'm sorry.

- No, no.

You're good.

- It's rent and utilities, and the utilities are for renters as well.

- Does any of that money go to landlords?

'Cause there was federal money for landlords.

- So it goes to landlords by virtue of us helping the tenant.

And we have really, and we can talk about this a lot tonight, but we've done a lot of outreach to landlords, because it's a dual benefit.

The tenant stays stably housed, but landlords are able to get the rent that's due to them.

- Yeah, and this gets to you, and I will get to you, Bill, I apologize.

But Steve, there are people listening, as you can see, when in the national articles that are written about this eviction moratorium, you see it on, you know, comments on our site.

There's a landlord in any one of this case.

Now, sometimes, it becomes easy for people to say, "Oh, it's a big corporation based out of New York.

They can absorb this."

I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that people say, "Well, they can absorb this."

A lot of times, it's an individual, maybe owns a couple of houses, maybe owns a small apartment complex.

They have, maybe, a loan for this apartment or this home that they bought and they're renting, and they're not getting rental income.

There's another side to this.

I don't know anyone who wants to see people thrown out on the street.

That's not my point here.

But there are people saying, "Well, what about the landlords?"

And what is your take on that?

I'm putting you in an uncomfortable place-- - No, no.

- But what is your take on that side?

- No, it's not at all uncomfortable, though.

From the very beginning of all of the eviction prevention work that we've done in the city-county partnership.

It's a city and county federal appropriation that's being run through a joint program here.

From the very beginning of the conversation, we said, "This is not only about tenants.

It's about the Memphis and Shelby County economy."

Landlords have to have money to operate apartments and rental units effectively and safely, and to contribute to the economy in the ways that property owners do.

And so we're almost 99% payments to landlords of all the money out the door so far.

The Treasury- - In the sense that the check is written to the landlord and not to the tenant.

- The check goes to the landlord, yeah.

- Okay, keep going.

- And so the landlord will receive the direct payment and make some commitments to follow some of the program guidelines.

The federal government, in the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which is what started in March of this year, required that in some cases, when landlords refused payment, that the tenants be given direct payments.

And so that's when one of the ways in which direct payments began to arise.

One thing I wanted to clarify for you and for the audience is that there was sort of a natural throttle on evictions for a lot of 2020.

Most of 2020, the courts were closed, and so nobody could go to court to be evicted.

When the courts reopened, which I think that was about August, is that right?

- August 2nd was was the formal opening.

- Of 2020, there were only 3 days a week and three, no, two judges.

In other words, there was a lot less.

- There was distancing.

- Even the courtrooms could only have 50 people, and all that.

And so that throttled evictions for a long time, all the way until this month, when the courts reopened fully without limits on dockets.

And so that's sort of the progression of, and regardless of the federal eviction moratorium, the practicality in our community was that you couldn't do anything until August of last year, you couldn't do much until August of this year, and now it's wide open.

- We can run 1,200 cases a day.

- Twelve hundred cases?

- We can, yeah, yeah.

- Steve, why would a landlord hesitate to take a payment of back rent?

- I'll give you a couple of examples.

One example would be where the tenant has been a really bad tenant, and the landlord just really would prefer to have a new tenant.

Bad in the landlord's definition, whatever it is.

And so they've said, "We have decided "we would rather evict this person and get a new tenant "than continue with this old tenant because of problems we're having with them."

That's one thing.

Another is economic.

"We don't want to take less than 100% of everything we've spent on it."

The program offers almost everything, but doesn't pay attorney's fees and costs in court, and so there would be a bit of a haircut required by the landlord if they accept the program terms.

And one other thing would be, this is one that I didn't expect, and I'm beginning to understand it, but I never would have guessed, projected it, is that landlords have had the experience, and I've talked to a lot of them.

As Dorcas and Cindy said, we've spent a lot of time talking to big landlords and small landlords.

They've had the situation of not receiving payment for so long, for a lot of their units, that they would really rather start over than try to get all caught up on all of it, and so they would just really rather start fresh.

It's an interesting perspective that I can't fully understand, 'cause I'm not in that world, but there's certainly a change in the rental market that has resulted from the pandemic and the uncertainty about payment and the uncertainty about subsidies and the uncertainty about programs and the timing of programs, and they're just like, "I don't want to deal with any more programs.

"I'm gonna get everybody out.

I'm gonna start fresh.

"And I'm moving into the new post-pandemic era with a clean slate."

- So the obligation, then, can a tenant who is behind on their rent, and the landlord says, "No, I don't want to take it," can they get the money directly- - Yes.

- And go ahead and pay it and be legally able to stay, even though the landlord doesn't want that?

- Okay, there's two questions there.

Okay, so the money will go directly to the tenant if the landlord declines.

We have to have a clear declination on that.

So if the landlord declines it, then the money goes to the tenant for the tenant to obtain other housing, though.

Because the notion, the goal of the program is, first and foremost, to have people housed.

And so if the landlord is not interested, and in addition to the reasons that Steve talked about, there were some landlords who have said, "I can rent this for more.

"So I'm gonna get rid of these people.

"I'm tired of them, I have other issues with them, but I'm going to relet this property at a greater rate."

So, you know, if you have a landlord who's not interested in accepting the payment on behalf of that tenant and allowing the tenant to remain, then the tenant can receive that money and obtain housing for themselves, assuming there's housing available, which in Memphis is an issue, too.

- Okay.

Okay.

We are, from what I have heard, in Shelby County, the percentage of people who rent here versus homeownership is very high, isn't it?

- It absolutely is.

We have more renters that homeowners, absolutely.

Now, percentage-wise, you got me on the spot.

I can't tell you what the breakdown is, but we absolutely do.

And I think one of the things that NPI, Steve, his crew, and even Memphis Area Legal Services has schooled me on is just the condition of the stock of housing that we have available.

Even if we can get money to people, where we put them, where we're keeping them.

We don't have enough safe, affordable, quality housing here, and that is a difficulty.

As much money as will be poured into this rent assistance program, we still have a real challenge with where people are living day to day.

And if they are evicted, as she mentioned, we can write you a check, and I can write you a check for $15,000, but where do you go?

And so that's the difficulty, for sure.

- We have that going on right now.

There's a situation where there is a property where the landlord, the owner, is bankrupt, and he's just gone, "I'm done with it."

He's walked away from it.

The property manager has disappeared.

But there are 30 people who have nowhere to go, and we cannot find them a place to go.

We've been frantically searching.

So the market is just low in terms of available housing.

- I want to go back to what you said, and I'm not challenging anything you said, but I'm kinda of stunned by what you said.

- Mm-hm.

- That, 'cause this is my middle-class white privilege, that if someone wrote me a check for $15,000, I feel like I could find a place to live.

- So that's assuming that your credit is good.

I can give you a check, but what's your credit score?

That's assuming that you don't have charges, in that you've paid your debt for, but they're still on your record, and you can't get into these apartments.

It's just, and again, the number of units that you have that are safe, that you would want to live in, are just not, they're not available.

And so I think that's a real conversation.

Even as we are talking about stabilizing people, I'm excited about the opportunity to talk about what can we do across this whole continuum of housing stability for Memphians.

'Cause we gotta fix that, right?

It's at the root of everything that we talk about that are the big issues.

Education, if you're not stably housed, how do you have kids that are educated?

You talk about COVID.

If we want to get our hands around this pandemic, how can we do that if people are not safely and stably housed?

And violent crime.

You've gotta deal with our housing stock.

- And $15,000, to be clear, is for a 12-month period?

- Right, that would be for a 12-month period.

And I mean, I'm throwing out the number, 'cause we can go back and pay for things that you owe since March of 2020, up to 12 months.

So absolutely.

- So on several levels, good and bad and in between, the rental market and what it means here is still in a period of profound change.

- Yes.

- [chuckles] Yes, I think we're, yes, yes.

- And some of that exacerbates problems that have existed for a long time, but some of it is also just really a new path for it, and people saying, "There's gotta be a better way "as a landlord to do this than to do it the way we've been doing it."

Agree or disagree?

[chuckles] - The market has changed dramatically in the past two years.

I would say about, maybe two, maybe three.

The empty houses that used to be nothing but needing to be demolished, and there was nobody coming to buy them, there was nobody gonna fix them up, have turned into attractive assets for rental investors in pretty much every neighborhood in Memphis now.

In almost any neighborhood in Memphis, you can acquire an empty house, spend whatever you have to to get it habitable, and rent it for somewhere in the $550 to $750 range, low end for a house.

It was not like that when I first started doing blight abatement work in the city of Memphis.

There were neighborhoods where nobody was ever gonna buy, we didn't think would ever buy those houses.

So the vacant stock has changed, the rents are going up, and the enforcement side of this is another part of the conversation, and part of why NPI has been so involved in this particular program, 'cause we've always been real interested in proactive work to assure quality, affordable housing in the community.

And on the enforcement side, it's a huge challenge to regulate quality interior environment of rental homes.

There are tons of constitutional issues, practical issues, cost issues.

And one of the most exciting things about this program, for me, that we've done last year, when we called it the Eviction Settlement Program, and this year, with the Memphis and Shelby County Emergency Rental Assistance Program, is that we're really thinking about, the very beginning, all the stuff that Dorcas mentioned about social-service wraparound needs.

We're talking about being in the court all the time.

We're talking with code enforcement, we have code enforcement involved.

We have landlords committing to keep property in a code-approved condition, and if not, they lose certain things.

So we really are going full spectrum with this program, and that was our intention from the beginning.

It's been both city and county mayors, and Council and Commission.

Everybody has been really proud of what we conceived of and what we've been able to do so far.

We still have a long way to go, and it's not perfect, but I think we have a very intelligent response to the current housing market through this program.

- (Dorcas) Agreed.

- One thing you talked about, and we've had you on before talking around, I think, after the '08 crisis and some of the fallout of the foreclosure crisis and so on that decimated a whole lot of particularly black and brown communities in Memphis.

A lot of those vacant houses came from that '08-'09 disaster?

- Yeah.

- Those, and we've got Steve Lockwood, who was formerly head of the Frayser Community Development Corporation.

I remember, well, I don't want to put Lockwood on the spot, but some people would talk about, well, it's been nice to have the investors come in, because we don't have the blighted buildings, we don't have the blighted homes, we don't have the empty homes.

And I'm sure someone out there is thinking, well, it's one or the other.

I mean, if you don't want it blighted, and I don't think anybody at this table wants blighted houses in Memphis anywhere, but then somebody's gonna invest in it, and then they wanna make some money.

What's the, do I put you on the spot with this?

- (Dorcas) You put me on the spot.

- What is that balancing act of rebuilding neighborhoods that were decimated for whatever reason.

And we know occupied homes, there's less crime.

It's better.

It's better.

You all can articulate this better than I can.

- We can argue that, so I do not have my magic wand, right?

I will tell you- - You get one!

[taps desk] [panelists laugh] - I got one in my office!

My batteries are low.

I will say, for me, I don't know what the balance is, but I know that the people that are here have to be able to afford living in in the places that are brought back to beauty.

And I think that's where we're challenged is we still have people that are making, we have many people that are coming in and are making less than $23,000 a year with five kids in the home.

Like, how do you live off of that?

How do you pay rent and make sure that they eat and get transportation?

And so I don't, I don't know, my magic wand says, let's do all the things, but let's also make sure that it's affordable for the people that live here, so.

- But are local developers more aware of the limits, the financial limits, of the Memphis market, than out-of-state or out-of-country investors?

- Yes, but I'm not sure they care.

There's another component to this that's kind of an overreaching component.

For us in particular, for Memphis Area Legal Services, we look at the passage of wealth in the community, because for many of our clients, the only wealth they ever have is the house that they got from Grandma, or that Grandma left and then we're trying to clean up the title so they can have it.

In a lot of those cases, we were attempting to renegotiate the mortgages on those so that we can get it to something where they can actually afford it.

But in the interim, they're sort of stuck in this mode of "What can I do to the house, "'cause it's not really my house?

How do I afford this?"

But that's a bigger-picture issue, though, just in terms of, are we losing these homes?

Are people who really should be able to afford them, and ultimately, if we can refinance them, if we can get that taken care of, are they just losing them because the value of them is increasing so much that the mortgage lenders are not interested in refinancing, and then those houses are being sold?

So we're seeing a lot of that as well.

- Let's switch and focus on houses.

And I get, I think that's the bulk of renters live in homes, am I right?

No, they're in apartments.

- Uh-huh.

- Okay.

There have been a huge wave, I had somebody in town recently who hadn't been a Memphis in a while and they said, "I can't believe, everywhere I turned, it seemed like there were apartments under construction."

Midtown, downtown, all over the city, out east.

Is that a different dynamic, from your point of view?

I mean, are there more rental assistance and market rate and sort of jiggering that happens with that to get people into apartments when you're not dealing with an individual, you're dealing with an apartment complex, particularly one that might have some local incentives or tax breaks associated with it?

- So I hope I answer this question right.

So we have an unprecedented, we've been using that word a lot.

We have an unprecedented amount of money and flexibility to help people.

So even me mentioning the $15,000, look, that was unheard of before 2020, right?

So we could help get someone into one of these new apartments, some of the beautiful ones that I see, and we could maybe get them stably there for four months.

But then the second part, how do they afford to live there later?

So landlords are not very willing, if you don't have a source of income that can afford these payments after we've helped, it's very difficult to get them to agree to let people stay there, and we just, I mean, it's just bigger than just that one-time help.

We have to have some conversations about people's income.

We just have to have some larger conversations if we're going to get a lot of these families stably housed, not just housed today.

- We have just three minutes left.

All this would seem to go back to you, Steve.

I mean, all this seems to play into or talking around the issue of gentrification, right?

And gentrification, some people define it as, oh, it's the improvement of a neighborhood.

Other people, it's the pushing out of people who can no longer afford it, without any acknowledgement that, we don't care where they're going, we just want this neighborhood.

I mean, you can see it on the edge of Cooper-Young, for instance, you can see a kind of gentrification happening in other, and abandoned homes being totally rebuilt in the way you're talking about and totally priced differently.

I mean, you've dealt with this stuff for a long time.

Again, it's that balancing act.

I mean, we're probably guilty at The Daily Memphian of celebrating every new, big, fancy, billion-, million-dollar project without necessarily focusing on some of these ramifications you're talking about.

- Yeah, I was gonna say, if our friends say everywhere they turn, they see new apartment buildings, they're not turning on the streets where the low-income tenants applying for help live.

There are not nearly enough new multi-family or single-family developments for the demand for quality, affordable housing that exists in our community.

The Low-Income Housing Coalition estimates that we're about 30,000 units shy of what we need of quality, affordable housing in our county.

So that's the first thing, is all of the new development, or virtually all of the new development, with a few exceptions, is for 80% and above the area median income, which means middle-class housing.

We're talking about often 50% and below of the area median income.

In terms of gentrification, it's defined as average incomes in a particular geographic area increasing over time.

That's a good thing, if the people aren't being displaced.

So what we have to do is find ways to provide quality, affordable housing without displacing people who want to stay.

- We will do more on this.

I wanna take a minute, though, and I didn't mention this to you, Steve, so I hope you don't mind, that Neighborhood Preservation, Inc. was formed in no small part by George Cates, who died six weeks ago, and I think probably everybody at this table knew George.

I knew George.

He got me onto the Overton Park Conservancy Board.

I happen to also have been friends with his son Andy and Staley.

But I got to know George as a friend on the Overton Park Conservancy Board, which is a huge mark that he left.

Also with Neighborhood Preservation, Inc. And you worked really closely with him.

- Yeah.

- What are your thoughts?

We don't have a lot of time, but... - I miss him terribly.

He was a close personal friend.

He was a generous supporter of us.

He made connections.

He loved Memphis, and he would do anything to promote everybody in Memphis to have the kind of opportunity that he had in his life.

- Yeah.

We will leave it there.

Thank you all.

A lot more to talk about, and we'd love to have you all back another time to talk about this.

That is all the time we have this week, though.

Join us again next week.

You can get the full podcast of the show wherever you get your podcasts, or on the Daily Memphian site, or you can get video of the show, if you missed any, at WKNO.org, or look for us on YouTube.

Thanks, and we'll see you next week.

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