I'm not a lawyer but I'm a landlord who has had to do more evictions in the past than I would have liked. Here is how I see all this:
To be clear on the current eviction moratorium - tenants do have to sign a single page legal document and submit it to the landlord/property manager.
eg
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/declaration-form.pdf
They are legally stating they are unable to pay because of covid and have tried everything including applying for any support.
If this is not submitted they are not protected against eviction (
but no courts are processing right now). Also if they are later taken to court and found it was untrue then they have the criminal side to deal with as well as eviction and debt potentially.
So things are going to get very ugly at some point.
+1 on the fact that tenants must sign the form declaring the hardship - which is (per the form) "under penalty of perjury". Some evictions can go forward (like lease violations). Here's one FAQ page that was produced for renters in Georgia, which affirms that evictions can still happen depending on the circumstances:
https://legalfaq.org/covid/ga
For the statement that "no courts are processing right now", that likely varies from state to state and perhaps even county to county. For instance, in Georgia, here's one court system's home page:
https://gwinnettcourts.com/
Basically, one can e-file various types of documents, and my understanding is that most cases get handled via Zoom (or Webex, etc) calls.
I have talked to one landlord who did an eviction in November (2020), against a tenant for non-payment of rent where the tenant had not filled out the covid declaration form.
1 of 11 not paying rent since August. We were able to secure rent payments from our county and the CARES act. That ended in December however. We can’t evict or terminate the lease even though she is month to month. Trying to get her to pay while not making her mad since that could cause her to trash the place. Hoping that if there is a continuation of the eviction moratorium that there will be some money for landlords again.
Are you saying that you can't ask someone to leave when their lease is up? That just doesn't seem right (which doesn't mean it is not true!). Can the Government really force individuals to modify contracts after they have been agreed to?
-ERD50
The way I read NgineER's post, the tenant already stopped paying rent for some time (due to covid). So using the "staying past end of lease" reason to evict the tenant very likely would be thrown out by a judge since it would be a backdoor way of evicting them because they aren't paying rent.
HOWEVER, that doesn't mean in general that "you can't ask someone to leave when their lease is up". If you have some reason other than non-payment due to covid for wanting them to leave (e.g., you're re-purposing the house, the tenant is already trashing the place and you have pictures from a recent visit to prove it, etc), then the landlord should be able to evict.
Oregon landlord here. Our eviction freeze is a bit more rigorous than the Feds. We are lucky to own all our property, so no mortgages, and mostly are in small apartments as rentals. However. We have a tenant who is working but has paid two half months worth of rent from May through now, so 8 months of missing rent currently. Can't evict her till June 30, and that assumes the Oregon eviction moratorium isn't extended again. Probably will be a pretty good backlog in the court system then, so add some more months..
We do need to keep up the property tax payments, fire and liability insurance, water and sewer bills, outside lighting and maintenance.
Know what though? I wouldn't want to trade places with my tenant, and when I think of the businesses that are forced to close or the employees who are trying to make it on a whole bunch of nothing I feel very very fortunate.
Yup. Kind of like support animals getting a pass in Oregon or asserting that your taxes are true and correct. Except the IRS can make you prove your assertion and landlords need to accept statements as true. The vast majority of our tenants do their very best to meet the terms of our contract. This tenant just isn't paying and the state believes most in that position simply can't and that it would be wrong to have them sleeping on the sidewalk vs. having a landlord be a bit lower income.
West-coast states like Oregon and California are notorious for having laws that are very tenant-friendly, so I'm not surprised that Oregon has an eviction freeze that is "more rigorous than the Feds". And it may well be that under Oregon law, "landlords need to accept statements as true."
But for the federal covid hardship declaration, I expect that there could be some things a landlord could do to verify whether a tenant is working or not. E.g. - on the rental application I use, the tenant had to provide contact information for his job and sign a statement that automatically authorized me to contact his work to verify employment. If I were to re-verify employment NOW and get something like an affidavit from a boss or other affirmation from the employer that the tenant is in fact working, but the tenant still signed the form indicating "under penalty of perjury" that they are *not* working, I expect that the tenant would be in hot water in court. If the tenant got tongue-tied in court trying to explain to the judge the evidence of continued employment, the judge could very likely still allow the eviction.
But to reiterate, that's what I think would happen in my state working under the federal covid laws. Oregon may have other hoops to jump through to get the tenant evicted under their covid rules.
