Housing advocacy groups have joined lawmakers in pressuring the Arizona governor to extend his coronavirus-related moratorium on evictions
PHOENIX – Arizona housing advocacy groups have teamed up with lawmakers to pressure Gov. Doug Ducey to extend his coronavirus-related moratorium on evictions, which expires next week and will allow authorities to begin eliminating hundreds tenants in a state that is a national hot spot for both infections and scorching summer weather.
“It’s so hot in Arizona that you can’t live outside if you lose your home,” said Meghan Heddings, executive director of Family Housing Resources in Tucson, which is among groups advocating for an extension. “And of course we are still in the midst of a pandemic.”
States from Nevada to Virginia have also recently lifted or are about to end rent and foreclosure moratoriums designed to help people overcome the pandemic and its economic consequences. Pennsylvania recently announced that it will extend its moratorium until the end of August, while Boston will maintain its ban on most public housing evictions until the end of the year.
Arizona’s 120-day order ending July 22 was supposed to ensure that people would not lose their homes if they received COVID-19 or lost their jobs during the pandemic’s restrictions. But advocates say it is too early to end the ban because most of the government money set aside to help pay for rents and mortgages has yet to be distributed.
Meanwhile, virus cases in Arizona continue to rise, with 3,257 new infections and 97 more deaths reported on Wednesday. Arizona leads the United States in new confirmed cases per capita in the past two weeks.
Unless the Republican governor extends or modifies his eviction moratorium, court officials can compel people to temporarily stop paying rent after becoming ill with COVID-19 or losing their jobs due to the pandemic. It is unknown how many people facing eviction have already moved voluntarily.
Ducey has said he does not intend to extend the order.
Family Housing Resources and more than a dozen other groups noted in a letter to Ducey last week that the Arizona Department of Housing has a backlog of people trying to get rental assistance. About $ 4 million of $ 5 million allocated in March to help people struggling with the virus have yet to be distributed.
Some are still struggling to get their first unemployment checks. After July, those checks will lose the additional $ 600 in federal money provided each week to help during the pandemic, lowering the average weekly check to $ 240 or less.
“We have to have more time to prevent this from becoming a catastrophe,” said Stacy Butler, director of the Innovation for Justice Program at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers School of Law.
The owners are also suffering.
Ann Gregory of Gregory Real Estate Management sued Ducey this month, asking a court to allow the eviction of a family in a rental house in Surprise for more than $ 4,000 in unpaid rent. The lawsuit says Ducey’s executive order exceeds her authority and does not compensate the owners for their losses.
Tenants are still legally required to pay all they owe from the time they began to withhold payments, with some people now three or four months late.
Data on eviction cases is difficult to obtain because the pandemic has severely limited Arizona’s courts of law. A court spokesman says that the 26 courts of justice in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, are operating, but that most hearings are held virtually.
The University of Arizona Innovation for Justice Program has been analyzing eviction figures from the nonprofit and nonprofit expert group, the Aspen Institute, which predicts that 20% of American tenants, including 577,733 in Arizona, they will be at risk of eviction in late September.
The program’s researchers also rely on a recent state-by-state analysis of possible future evictions by international consulting firm Stout Risius Ross. The firm says that more than 42% of Arizona tenants may not be able to pay their housing costs, and as many as 365,000 tenant homes are at high risk of eviction.
State lawmakers and members of the Arizona congressional delegation have also written to Ducey.
US Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick told the governor in a June 10 letter that lifting the ban on coronavirus-related evictions could be “a recipe for disaster and massive homelessness” and called for maintaining the moratorium until end of the year.
“Arizona is home to some of the most popular cities, and with more than 100,000 COVID-19 cases, we must immediately extend the rent moratorium,” wrote Kirkpatrick, who represents southern Arizona, including Tucson. . “We cannot create an epidemic of homeless people in addition to a global health and economic crisis.”
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