An update from eviction court

This year has been a whirlwind for Jesse Tree, as we know it has for you. Since March, our organization has continued to pivot with the changes in our world. Through moving our Housing Crisis Line and case management team to remote, to navigating office operations and safety during a pandemic, to meeting increased demands for our resources, to working with IHFA's Housing Preservation Program. This month our team was thrown another curve ball: the eviction moratorium.

In case you missed it, on September 4th the Center for Disease and Prevention (CDC) temporarily halted some residential eviction hearings for inability to pay rent through December 31st. What this means: most tenants cannot be legally evicted through the court process for their inability to pay rent, but they still owe their rent. Essentially, this means evictions are delayed.

For many tenants in our community back rent continues to pile up, and what many do not realize is that landlords can separately bring suit against tenants in small claims court. Back rent is treated as consumer debt and tenants' wages - which are already barely enough to pay the bills - can be garnished.

From our experience with the moratorium so far, tenants are still falling behind and eviction hearings are still going forward. However, in many cases the moratorium is helping tenants stay in their homes for now. To be eligible for the moratorium, tenants need to meet a number of requirements. If those are met, tenants sign a self declaration form to submit to their landlord and potentially the court. Those forms are available on our website (shout out to ACLU and Legal Aid for helping develop them!). We are still pulling public court records each week and reaching out to landlords, their attorneys, and tenants, to ask if they're willing to work with our team so that we can intervene with rental assistance and supportive services. We are also assisting eligible tenants in filling out the self declaration form to provide to their landlords and the court.

We continue to pay rent for as many families as possible to keep them current, while providing them with supportive services. We are now able to assist more tenants than ever before with community support, including a generous grant from the J.A. & Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation. We also continue to pool our funding with IHFA's state-funded Housing Preservation Program. Unfortunately that program will also end on December 31st, the same day the eviction moratorium ends, and we are very concerned about a wave of evictions come January 1st.

Nonetheless, case management coupled with rental assistance has been our bread and butter for 20 years and is one thing that hasn't changed much during the pandemic. We will continue to expand our efforts to scale it to provide a hand up to as many families as we can during these trying times.

Let's continue keeping the traumatic, life-altering experience of eviction and homelessness from happening to our neighbors, and to our community.