A Congressional investigation has revealed that four corporate landlord companies evicted roughly three times more renters during the pandemic than was previously reported. Investigators found that at least one of the companies engaged in deceptive practices and "harassment" in order to "bluff" around 15,000 renters out of apartments that they had the legal right to occupy.
At the time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had initiated an eviction moratorium, a rule that allowed renters to avoid eviction if they could prove they'd suffered an "adverse impact as a result of the pandemic" In the years following, the number of complaints against rental corporations has mounted, along with reporting about their contribution to the current housing crisis.
"As countless Americans acted admirably to support their communities during the coronavirus crisis, the four landlord companies...evicted aggressively to pad their profits," Democratic Representative for South Carolina and the House Majority Whip, James Clyburn, said in a statement.
Clyburn chairs the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, the panel that carried out the investigation into the companies with high eviction-filing rates. The investigation covered the first 16 months of the pandemic for four companies with properties in 28 states: Premium Partners
While Ventron Management did not reply to requests for comment from NPR, the other three companies stated that they had complied with the CDC moratorium.
The investigation report alleges that at least one of the companies engaged in deceptive practices against renters. The Siegel Group was accused of tricking tenants into thinking that the CDC moratorium had ended, despite its extension on appeal.
"Those protections were in place in order to safeguard our public health, and they were willfully undermining that effort," says Peter Hepburn, a research fellow with the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. "I think that is reprehensible."
Along with deception, Siegel also allegedly used a combination of aggressive tactics, ranging from inconveniences to terrorizing tenants. This included having security knock on a tenant's door "at least twice a night", while replacing the tenant's working air conditioning with a non-functional unit. The company also called Child Protective Services against this tenant.
The report notes that some of the tactics Siegel used may have been illegal and that those actions have been reported to the appropriate authorities for further investigation.
Even the companies that haven't been accused of harassment still engaged in questionable practices. The companies attempted to evict tenants after only one month of missed rent, including tenants who were waiting to receive emergency rental aid.
"Too often we tend to place the blame on the resident," the executive director of the eviction-tracking non-profit Private Equity Stakeholder Project, Jim Baker, told NPR. "But what we saw, and the subcommittee showed, was really a pattern of actions. These large companies were taking multiple steps to sort of force those folks out of their homes."
Pretium Partners has also been accused by Baker's group of filing a much higher number of evictions in predominantly Black neighborhoods during the pandemic.
According to Baker, the companies "made an economic calculation that they could raise rents for new residents, rather than enabling current residents to be able to stay in their homes."
Unfortunately, Hepburn says that these four landlord companies are just the "tip of the iceberg" when it comes to tenant abuses during the pandemic.
"These firms are buying up a lot of housing, and they're particularly buying up housing in places that have relatively weak tenant protections, places where eviction is easier, faster and cheaper," says Hepburn. "And I don't think that that is coincidental."
Evictions also aren't the only problem plaguing tenants. Katie Goldstein, the director of the housing project Center for Popular Democracy, says that services are also being cut while monthly fees are increasing. There are laws in some states that give tenants some limited protections, like the right to a lawyer in eviction court, but Goldstein says that more protections are needed to limit rent hikes.
"What we really need is for tenants to be able to experience stability, and not have situations where corporate landlords can double or triple the rent, depending on what the market looks like in that area," Goldstein told NPR.
