OKLAHOMA CITY – Eviction from a house or apartment can impoverish a family, ruin a tenant’s credit and lead to homelessness, and is often costly for landlords, too, state legislators were told recently.
The Princeton University Eviction Lab, using 2016 data, calculated that among cities across the nation with the highest eviction rates, Tulsa ranked 11th and Oklahoma City placed 20th, said Katie Dilks, executive director of the Oklahoma Access to Justice Foundation. Midwest City, Del City and Lake Aluma also ranked high for evictions, she said.
“This is a statewide issue,” Dilks said. “This practice was well-entrenched” in Oklahoma prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
Eviction is a cause of poverty, said Ryan Gentzler, director of Open Justice Oklahoma. That’s one of the reasons why homelessness continues to increase in Oklahoma and Tulsa counties, said Becky Gligo, housing policy director for the City of Tulsa.
Gentzler told members of the state House Committee on Business and Commerce that a little over 44,600 eviction applications were filed statewide last year; reasons cited were breaking a lease, alleged criminal activity in the residence, and non-payment of rent or the mortgage, he said. Of those eviction filings, 25,342 of them were approved, Gentzler said. Eviction filings this year “are rising as fast as courts reopen,” he said.
More than 580 residents of southwest Oklahoma were evicted in the last seven months, since mid-March, records compiled by Open Justice Oklahoma reflect. Those included 477 in Comanche County, 98 in Stephens County, four each in Kiowa, Cotton and Greer counties, two each in Jackson, Tillman and Jefferson counties, and one in Harmon County.
HOUSING COSTS STRAIN BUDGETS FOR MANY TODAY
Middle-class Oklahomans who earn up to 120% of the state’s median income, such as teachers and police officers, are among the people who are being evicted from their homes, Gligo said.
More than 40% of Oklahomans are “cost-burdened” by their housing, she said: more than one-third of their take-home pay is consumed by a mortgage or rent payment. A little more than half of the families in Tulsa rely on public assistance to meet their basic needs, she said.
Oklahoma needs up to 18,000 additional affordable housing units, Gligo said, adding, “Affordability is relative.”
“At the rate we’re evicting people, we cannot build houses fast enough,” said Michael Figgins, executive director of Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma.
An estimated 500,000 Oklahomans may be at risk of losing their homes during the next six months, resulting in a “potential rental shortfall” of more than $200 million for landlords, Dilks told the legislators.
Among adult Oklahomans, 47% believe “they are likely to be evicted or foreclosed upon in the next two months,” Gentzler said. “The current situation is a ticking time bomb.”
Federal CARES funds Oklahoma received for rental assistance were helpful, “but we know there will be economic crises rippling out of this for years to come,” Dilks said.
Ginny Bass Carl, executive director of Community CARES Partners, announced that $10 million in CARES funds Oklahoma received for rental assistance originally was scheduled to expire September 15, but the deadline has been extended to December 17.
Since May the Homeless Prevention Initiative has helped 1,548 individuals to stay in their homes, said Amanda Faith, director of the Homeless Prevention Initiative in the Restore Hope Ministries. “We have spent just over $1 million – which shattered our spending record – and that’s triple our yearly budget for rent assistance.”
Many Oklahomans have not received a federal stimulus check nor have they received any unemployment benefits, Faith said.
“A medical crisis, one missed paycheck, one car repair, a few days of missed work because of a sick child, and our clients are on the verge,” she said. And the coronavirus “has certainly amplified these issues.”
SOME LANDLORDS ARE ABUSIVE
Faith told the legislators about “troubling trends we see” daily. The Initiative’s clients “have had their utilities shut off as punishment” by landlords, pressured by landlords to “turn over their stimulus checks,” and harassed by landlords “to the point of tears,” she said.
One client whose daughter has brain cancer was evicted; a client whose water heater caught fire was evicted after she relocated elsewhere while repairs were made; a woman with four young children was evicted after her refrigerator caught fire; and another woman evicted from her residence is now living in a car, Faith related.
A relatively small group of “serial evictors” have accounted for more than 60% of all eviction filings in Oklahoma since the beginning of 2019, Gentzler said. During that same 21-month period, more than 1,000 renters across the state have had four or more “often spurious” eviction proceedings filed against them by their landlords, he said.
“It’s infuriating” that landlords are allowed to be abusive to their tenants, Faith lamented.
Eviction “is not an effective tool for recovering rent that’s owed,” Dilks said. Instead, rental assistance and income stability programs are effective, she said.
LANDLORDS, TOO, ‘ARE STRUGGLING’
Rep. Scott Fetgatter, R-Okmulgee, said he has been contacted by “a lot” of landlords in recent months, “and they are struggling, too.” Many are retirees who rely on rental payments for their financial support, but some of them haven’t received a check from their tenants for six months, he said.
Tracy Streich, managing partner and lead broker with Renters Place, a Tulsa property management company, said that 80% of all single-family rentals in the U.S. are owned by “Mom and Pop operations” who have four or fewer single-family homes. “And they need help,” he said, echoing Fetgatter.
In defense of landlords, Streich said eviction is “a trigger to get renters to pay.” Landlords, too, have bills to pay, he reminded the legislators.
“Our members are not looking for eviction,” said Keri Cooper, executive director of the Tulsa Apartment Association. “It’s costly.”
Eviction is “a last resort” for most landlords, because it’s expensive for landlords and tenants alike, said Kimberly Guinn, a real estate agent and property manager in Tulsa.
Tenants who are evicted tend to “leave food in the refrigerator and don’t clean the floors,” she said. A landlord’s typical expenses include touch-up painting, shampooing the carpet, repairing any damages, and legal fees incurred to affect the ouster, she noted.
“We will send our tenants a list of agencies that can help them if they are struggling with their rent or food,” Guinn said. “They don’t want to move, they don’t want to be evicted, and they don’t want it on their credit reports.”
The bad actors tend to be out-of-state entities rather than Oklahoma landlords “who are invested in our communities,” Dilks said.
“There’s a small group of out-of-state actors who prefer eviction over mediation,” Gligo said.
“There are companies in Oklahoma that are in the business of evictions,” said Jeff Jaynes, executive director of Restore Hope Ministries. “That’s their source of income.”
Figgins said some of the problems associated with eviction could be resolved with legislative solutions. For example: How much rent would have to be in arrears before an eviction proceeding should be filed?
Rep. Meloyde Blancett, D-Tulsa, concurred. It would be preferable to have “a consistent policy” governing the timing of lockouts and the amount of rent due before an eviction proceeding could be initiated, “instead of having them all over the board.”