Pandemic evictions were halted, but metro Phoenix landlords still filed for almost 30,000
Jessica Boehm, Catherine Reagor and Ralph Chapoco for Arizona Republic
COVID-19 protections for renters did not help thousands in metro Phoenix who were eligible to remain in their homes during the pandemic.
Some Phoenix-area landlords, particularly those who own apartment complexes in lower-income neighborhoods, continued to file for evictions.
Landlords used aggressive fast-track methods to get renters out, even as tenants were protected by federal and state moratoriums for nonpayment.
Some landlords challenged tenants’ eviction-ban protections in court in the later months of the pandemic as 1-year leases expired.
And a few landlords filed to evict the same tenants multiple times, according to an Arizona Republic investigation.
Eviction filings were down about 55% between the end of March 2020, when the first eviction moratorium took effect, and the end of February 2021, compared with the same months one year prior.
But landlords in Maricopa County still filed for almost 30,000 evictions during those 11 months. Most filings cited nonpayment of rent, but some cited breaches of lease or the end of a lease, not lack of payment, as the cause of the eviction.
Some renters were able to come up with the rent they owed in time to prevent a constable from locking them out of their homes. Others staved off eviction by successfully proving to a judge they had been impacted by COVID-19.
Others were unsuccessful in fighting their evictions. The courts do not tally actual lockouts — when a renter is removed from a home after an eviction filing — but housing advocates say that number is in the thousands.
“It’s a big challenge for many tenants to navigate Arizona’s difficult eviction process,” said Pamela Bridge, director of advocacy and litigation at Community Legal Services. “Judges interpret the laws and eviction bans differently, landlords are challenging renters’ protection, and judgments haven’t stopped during the pandemic.”
Justices of the peace and constables across Maricopa County’s 26 justice courts navigated the pandemic eviction filings in different ways, meaning some renters faced different eviction outcomes despite their similar situations.
Tenants who were kicked out of their homes during the pandemic have struggled to find new places to live. Their evictions are public record, and with metro Phoenix’s rental market booming, landlords can choose from many other potential tenants.
Many landlords were caught in a bind when their tenants stopped paying but still had to pay their property mortgages every month. Many property owners were eligible to apply for federal programs to help compensate, and most filed few evictions.
A spokesperson for their industry group, the Arizona Multifamily Housing Association, said many Arizona landlords worked with their renters, accepting partial payments and reducing or eliminating some fees. Individual property owners, when asked about evictions, provided little or no comment.
The issue isn’t going away — and it will likely only get more difficult for metro Phoenix residents behind on rent. The last eviction moratorium is scheduled to end June 30, and the thousands of renters who were protected may soon find themselves in court.
“Both tenants and landlords have had major challenges during the pandemic, and both need help,” said Sheila Harris, housing advocate and founding director of the Arizona Housing Department. “There’s a lot of rental aid available now to do that.
“We have to remember the most effective way to prevent homelessness is to keep people in their homes, which is what the rental aid is for,” she said.
Sylvia Haysbert-Stevens' family move their belongings after being evicted from their El Mirage rental home on March 11, 2021, despite a moratorium preventing landlords from evicting tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Living the eviction nightmare
Sylvia Haysbert-Stevens thought she was protected from eviction from her El Mirage home under the federal CDC moratorium when her lease ended in January.
When her landlord filed to evict her, she submitted proof that she’d lost income because of COVID-19. A Maricopa County judge reviewed Stevens’ paperwork and told her landlord that she couldn’t be forced from her home while the CDC moratorium was in effect.
Stevens lost her job as a cooking teacher due to COVID-19 in March 2020 and has health issues, including lupus, that make the pandemic more dangerous for her.
Stevens, who is raising her 16-year-old daughter and 9-year-old granddaughter, began talking to her landlord in April 2020 about making her rent payments. She continued to pay using unemployment and help from relatives.
Last summer, when more rental aid became available, she filled out the required paperwork and received more than $10,000 to pay her landlord.
By the end of the year, that money ran out, and Stevens fell behind on rent again. Come the end of January, when her lease was up, her landlord wouldn’t renew the lease and filed for eviction when she didn’t leave.
Stevens thought the CDC moratorium would protect her from eviction, and the first judge who heard her case agreed.
In early March, her landlord, Abha Garg of Realty Executives, filed a challenge to the judge’s decision, saying the CDC eviction ban didn’t apply to Stevens. She argued Stevens’ lease was not being renewed because she was not “keeping up the yard and putting away the trash” — not because she owed $5,344 in rent, late fees, court costs and damages.
I don’t understand how I got evicted during a pandemic.
In court documents, Garg said she had incurred HOA fines because of Stevens’ failure to comply with trash and yard upkeep rules.
“I took great care of that house and wasn’t told about any HOA issues for months afterwards,” Stevens said. “Ask my neighbors.”
Hassayampa Justice of the Peace Miles Keegan, a different judge than the one who presided over her first hearing, found Stevens didn’t qualify for the CDC eviction moratorium because her lease had ended.
A constable locked her out of the El Mirage home on March 11.
“I don’t understand how I got evicted during a pandemic,” said Stevens, who moved to Arizona from Sacramento, California, in 2019 to find a new job and a home she could afford to buy. “A judge approved my CDC application. So how can another judge overturn it a month later when the ban is still on?”
Housing advocates who have reviewed her case say she should have been protected and are helping her fight the eviction and additional costs.
Stevens is trying to find a place to rent so her daughter and granddaughter can come back and live with her. She put them on a late-night flight to stay with an older daughter in California the day she was evicted.
She’s been living in an extended stay hotel that costs her $2,400 a month, about $800 more than she paid to rent the four-bedroom El Mirage home.
“I can’t afford any of the houses I am looking at, and I don’t want to bring back my girls until I have a real home for them,” said Stevens. “I have been turned down to rent several homes that cost much more than I was paying.”
The attorney for Stevens’ former landlord, Denise Holliday of Hull, Holliday & Holliday, said the “eviction went to trial and was ruled upon. The court determined that the tenant was guilty of illegal holding over after the lease was not renewed.”
She said the court also ruled that the CDC order did not apply based upon the directions of the Arizona Supreme Court Administrative Orders.
Eviction bans
Gov. Doug Ducey enacted a statewide eviction moratorium at the end of March 2020. Congress also enacted a moratorium on rentals with federally-backed loans through the CARES Act in late March 2020 that lasted through most of the summer.
And the CDC ordered a nationwide eviction halt in September that is in effect through June 30.
All of these moratoriums included significant caveats, however, and thousands of metro Phoenix landlords took advantage of them.
The eviction moratoriums prevented landlords from filing for eviction — they only stopped the actual lockout.
To qualify, renters must file paperwork with the court or constable showing they’ve been impacted by COVID-19. If they do not, landlords can move forward with eviction.
Romeka Thompson’s wages as a food server dropped during the pandemic, and she fell behind on rent for her south Phoenix home. Her landlord filed to evict her in August.
She filled out the CDC paperwork and was able to stay in the home after Arizona’s moratorium ended. But when Thompson applied last fall for rental aid, a requirement of the CDC eviction ban, she was told no more funds were available. Her landlord wanted to sell the home, and Thompson had to move out earlier this year.
“I don’t know where to go or what to do,” she said. “My kids and I are not going to get new housing easily, especially with a fresh eviction.”
Some renters faced eviction either because their financial struggles weren’t covered by the moratorium or they weren’t aware that they had to file the paperwork. Only about 1% of renters facing eviction had legal representation during the pandemic.
Others faced eviction for reasons unrelated to rent. For example, a landlord could still seek eviction if a tenant’s lease was up or if renters did not follow the rules in their leases about guests, pets or other restrictions.
Maricopa County does not track the number of people who were locked out of their homes by constables, but The Republic reviewed hundreds of cases in which this occurred during the pandemic.
Arizona ranks low for tenant eviction protection during the pandemic, getting half a star out of five on a national ranking from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. The group found evictions were still being filed in the state for nonpayment of rent and other nonemergency reasons.
“Both Gov. Ducey’s 2020 eviction moratorium and the subsequent CDC eviction moratorium do not restrict property owners’ access to the court system,” Arizona Multifamily Association President and CEO Courtney Gilstrap LeVinus said in a statement.
The AMA and other landlord groups across the country have questioned the constitutionality of the eviction moratoriums since last summer, arguing that landlords should not have to provide free housing when they must continue paying their own mortgages and maintenance costs.
Recently, federal judges in other states have ruled that the CDC eviction moratorium is unconstitutional, but it remains in effect in Arizona.
The AMA said these rulings show “the moratorium remains an open question legally, even as it continues to exert extreme financial pressure on Arizona property owners of all sizes, including mom and pop property owners.”
Landlords refuse to renew leases
Many metro Phoenix landlords, like Stevens’, successfully evicted their tenants when their leases were up, The Republic found. Some are letting tenants stay with month-to-month leases but at much higher rents.
Whether the moratorium protected against lease-end evictions largely depended on which judge heard the case.
Ducey’s moratorium did not explicitly address lease-end evictions. But at the end of March 2020, the Maricopa County Justice Courts “determined the intent of the (governor’s) order was that people not be made homeless during the pandemic,” and made it a “best practice” to stop lease-end evictions if the tenant could show a COVID-19 impact, court spokesperson Scott Davis said.
But justices of the peace did not have to follow that best practice, and some didn’t, The Republic found.
A renter at an apartment complex in Tempe had planned to move out when his lease ended on July 31 but then lost his job and tried to claim the CDC protection to stay in his home after the lease expired.
He showed the constable trying to lock him out proof that he lost his job at Charleston’s when the restaurant’s Tempe location closed last summer. He also said he has diabetes.
“These are trying times for everyone, and in no way do I want to get out of paying. It’s the hope that after this devastating situation for many people alike, that we can use that time to get back on our feet,” the renter wrote in court documents.
The constable decided not to evict the man, but the landlord appealed the decision to the court.
Kyrene Justice of the Peace Sharron Sauls ruled in the landlord’s favor, writing that the landlord was allowed to continue with the eviction because “an intention to terminate tenancy” wasn’t protected by any moratorium.
The judge’s decision came on Sept. 10, just days after the CDC moratorium took effect.
We are seeing a lot more evictions for nonrenewal of leases, and more landlords going month to month with tenants for higher rents. Rents are going up, and more landlords feel they can find new tenants to pay more.
The CDC moratorium also does not directly address lease-end evictions, but Davis said some judges have allowed tenants to stay after their lease expires if they can prove they've been impacted by COVID-19.
Landlords seeking end-of-lease evictions also are supposed to show that they’re ending the lease for a reason other than because their tenant hasn’t been paying their rent, Davis said.
But again, this is just a best practice and some judges had different interpretations of the order — hence the conflicting rulings from the two judges who heard Stevens’ case.
Bridge said several national housing law projects say the CDC ban should protect all tenants hurt by COVID-19, but judges are handling the situations differently.
“We are seeing a lot more evictions for nonrenewal of leases, and more landlords going month to month with tenants for higher rents,” Bridge said. “Rents are going up, and more landlords feel they can find new tenants to pay more.”
Fast-tracking evictions
Valley landlords also successfully evicted people by filing for evictions for issues not related to the rent they haven’t paid.
All of the eviction moratoriums only protected against eviction filed because a tenant was behind on rent. They still allowed landlords to evict if a renter broke other rules outlined in their lease.
Maricopa County court records show landlords filed these types of evictions at a higher rate than usual during the pandemic.
Despite overall evictions dropping by 55%, immediate evictions increased by 90% between late March 2020 and February 2021 compared with one year prior.
An immediate eviction, which allows a landlord to file a lawsuit immediately instead of giving five to 10 days notice, is usually reserved for police or public safety issues — for example, if a tenant was arrested at the rental property.
But The Republic found some immediate evictions filed for less serious issues.
One landlord filed an immediate eviction because there was a fire on a renter’s patio. In court documents, the renter denied any involvement with the fire, but the court ruled in the landlord’s favor and the tenant and his family were evicted.
One landlord filed an immediate eviction after finding that a washer and dryer unit were missing during an inspection.
Both renters also owed rent at the time of their immediate evictions.
There were 454 immediate evictions filed between March 2020 and February 2021, compared with 239 one year earlier.
There were likely hundreds of other evictions filed for other lease breaches, but Maricopa County Justice Courts do not track those cases.
The Republic found evictions filed during the pandemic because of unauthorized guests, barking dogs, “excessive foot traffic,” children ding-dong-ditching their neighbors and other mundane reasons.
During the pandemic ... keeping the peace at home became more important than ever, given the close quarters under which many communities were living.
In almost all of these cases, the renter also owed rent.
Chris Groninger, a consumer advocate and chief strategy officer with the nonprofit Arizona Bar Foundation, said the foundation’s Legal Information Hotline received “numerous calls from tenants who successfully defended an eviction action due to non-payment of rent using the CDC order only to then have an eviction filed for cause related to ‘excessive foot traffic’ or some other supposed violation of the lease.”
LeVinus said looking at breach-of-lease evictions as a “loophole” to get around eviction moratoriums is “a gross mischaracterization, perhaps due to a lack of understanding of the challenges of rental property management and the law.”
She said issues like a barking dog, loud music or other “nuisance behaviors” may seem trivial, but a neighbor is usually demanding the situation be remedied.
“During the pandemic — when people began to work from home at unprecedented levels or were home 24/7 under quarantine — keeping the peace at home became more important than ever, given the close quarters under which many communities were living,” LeVinus said.
Eviction fate depended on landlord, judge and constable
The number of eviction filings dropped during the pandemic, suggesting that the moratoriums did prevent many landlords from filing.
From late March 2019 to February 2020, 64,636 evictions were filed in Maricopa County. During the same months during the pandemic, 29,214 Valley evictions were filed.
Whether a renter ended up in court during the pandemic largely depended on the landlord.
Some landlords were more aggressive with evictions than others. Several of Arizona’s landlords filed few evictions during the past year, while others continued filing at a steady pace.
A landlord with two affordable West Valley apartment complexes filed for almost 632 evictions on renters during the pandemic.
Nearly 3,000 Maricopa County tenants had more than one eviction filed against them during the pandemic.
The landlord of a single-family home in Surprise filed for eviction on his tenant every month of the first 11 months of the pandemic, according to The Republic’s investigation.
If a landlord decided to pursue eviction, the renter’s fate often depended on which judge or constable was involved in their eviction and how each interpreted the eviction moratoriums.
Justices of the peace, who preside over the justice courts, are elected and do not have to have a law degree or legal background. The Arizona Supreme Court issued many administrative orders during the pandemic to provide guidance to justices of the peace on how to handle the eviction moratoriums, but the justices had some leeway for their own interpretation.
In many eviction cases, constables — who are responsible for physically locking renters out of their rentals after an eviction judgment — must decide whether tenants are eligible to stay in their homes under the bans.
“We have discretion like all other peace officers everywhere,” said Mike Branham, the lead constable for Maricopa County. “However, what that usually means is there has to be some reason to be able to exercise an extension of time given to somebody.”
There are a range of possible justifications for delaying a lockout, including logistics. Branham gave an example of a family needing to move in the middle of summer but needs assistance to move their belongings. In that case, “that is a proper use of our discretion and we will come back and make sure that is accomplished in 12 hours,” Branham said.
Public health emergencies are another such instance, when it is against the public interest to evict a tenant into the community for fear that person will infect others. This is especially true during the coronavirus pandemic.
Not only that, the moratorium was established to provide a reprieve to people negatively impacted economically because of the virus. However, a series of actions must be taken for a tenant to claim hardship and remain in their homes — and that does not always happen.
“Most frequently, it is that most people have not actually gone and found out what steps have to actually be followed in order to obtain either a postponement under the governor’s order when that was still in effect, or the CDC order, which has now been extended,” Branham said.
Little eviction oversight before and during pandemic
Before the pandemic and renter crisis, Arizona’s eviction process was criticized for not including accurate documents, not providing renters enough information and giving landlords and their attorneys an unfair advantage.
Phoenix-area residents were more than twice as likely to lose a home to eviction or foreclosure than the typical U.S. resident before COVID-19, and the rate of housing loss is expected to climb significantly because of the pandemic, as well as rising home prices and rents, according to a 2020 report by New America, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
LeVinus discounted that criticism.
“The process in place now has been crafted over many years and modified many times over the decades – always with bipartisan political support and with many of those same critics having a seat at the table during the legislative process,” she said.
Groninger said providing legal assistance to all tenants facing eviction is the best way to ensure fairness in the court process.
“The scales of justice are only balanced when both sides have equal access to legal representation,” she said.
Only 320 renters in the nearly 30,000 eviction cases filed during the first 11 months of the pandemic had legal representation, The Republic found. New America found a similarly small number of renters had legal representation before the pandemic as well.
Stevens tried to find an attorney, but nonprofit legal groups are inundated by calls and, like most struggling renters, she couldn’t afford to pay for representation.
Eviction Lab found that other states did much more than Arizona to make sure renters were protected during the pandemic. For example, Minnesota and Washington halted all eviction filings.
Maricopa County justice courts don’t know how many people were actually forced from their homes because of eviction during the pandemic, nor does the court system know how many people staved off eviction with the CDC protection but could be at risk when the moratorium ends.
Maricopa County tracks how many writs are issued by judges — the legal action that allows a constable to lock someone out of their home — but it does not track how many lockouts constables actually conduct.
During the eviction moratoriums, constables made the final call as to whether someone qualified for protection against eviction.
They would handwrite whether they locked someone out on the writ and then file the document with the court, but the only way for the public to know if the lockout occurred would be to request the more than 8,000 writs and read the constables' handwritten notes.