SOUTH ROYALTON — From the backyard of their modest 850-square-foot home on Vermont Route 14, Chris McPhetres and Wendy Mahmood can look down upon a branch of the White River, verdant farm fields and woods.
The view is a lot less bucolic in the other direction. Plainly visible out front is the detritus packed onto the porch of a small 1938 schoolhouse, now a home that McPhetres has been renting out since 2008.
The two would like to evict their tenant, who they said hasn’t paid her $950/month rent since March and whose lease ran out at the end of August. But new renter stabilization rules that went into effect as a result of Covid are making it nearly impossible for them to do so.
Their five security cameras, which Mahmood monitors while working her day job for the state in Montpelier, show a steady stream of visitors, some from out of state. Police are regular visitors to the schoolhouse. The two tell of headlights shining on their bedroom ceiling late at night, and of cars blocking their driveway.
To get their money for the unpaid rent, the two could take advantage of new state programs designed to help renters and landlords. But if they take full payment of rent from the state, they must pledge not to evict the tenant, and that’s not something they’re willing to do. The two filed an eviction notice in August, though they said they haven’t received a response.
They’re willing to forgo the nearly $6,000 in unpaid rent in favor of having peace restored on their land.
“I just want her gone,” said McPhetres. “This is one property that will never be rented again.”
Despite repeated calls, the tenant could not be reached for comment.
Evictions blocked in Vermont and nationally
Mahmood and McPhetres make up a small subset of the Vermont landlords operating under rules created to counteract some of the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and economic shutdown.
The Legislature enacted a law in May that imposed a moratorium on evictions to help tenants stay in their homes. Congress approved a national eviction moratorium as well in March. Though that has expired, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control on Sept. 4 issued a new national eviction moratorium effective Sept. 1 through Dec. 31.
Officials took these measures because many areas of Vermont were lacking affordable housing long before Covid-19 reached the state last winter. The pandemic shutdowns made things worse by throwing thousands of people out of work.
In July, Vermont launched a pair of programs aimed at keeping Vermonters in their homes while compensating landlords for rent owed. One, through the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, provides up to six months of mortgage payments to mortgage servicers. The other is a $25 million Rental Housing Stabilization Program or RHSP, administered through the Vermont State Housing Authority, which manages federal rental assistance programs. Both programs used some of Vermont’s $1.25 billion share of the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security, or CARES, Act passed in March.
Under the Vermont RHSP, landlords receive full back rent for every month they were owed, but must delay filing for eviction after that. That was designed to delay a rush on the courts once evictions are allowed again, said Housing Commissioner Josh Hanford. In another scenario, the program allows evictions when the courts are available, but landlords can get only half of the back rent.
Ten weeks after it began, the RHSP had paid $5.4 million in back rent assistance to 2,291 Vermont households in all 14 Vermont counties, according to a Sept. 25 report from the state housing authority. That’s about $108,000 and 46 households per day, with landlords receiving an average $2,364, the report said. The housing authority has hired extra employees to process applications, which have shown no signs of slowing down, the report said.
The state this summer added another program for renters called Money to Move, which covers first and last month’s rent plus security deposit for people who are homeless.
Security camera footage
None of that helps people like McPhetres and Mahmood, who are not looking for money but for the departure of their tenant.
Mahmood said when she called a lawyer in June, the lawyer told her not to bother trying to evict.
Some tenants are taking advantage of the eviction moratorium, said Burlington lawyer Nadine Scibek, who isn’t working with McPhetres and Mahmood. She told of a tenant in Winooski who refused to leave a home as required after the landlord had a contract to sell the property. The prospective buyers even visited the tenant to ask him to leave, explaining they needed to move in, Scibek said. The tenant didn’t, Scibek said, and the sale didn’t go through.
“This is what I have been getting from some tenants lately: ‘I know you can’t evict me because of this eviction moratorium, and I’m going to sit here and not pay rent and save my money and move when all this is over,’” Scibek said. “He said, ‘If you want to pay me $15,000, I’ll move.’”
Vermont was seeing about 1,750 court-filed evictions each year before the Covid-related moratoriums — about 2% of the state’s estimated 76,000 rental households, said Jean Murray, a Vermont Legal Aid attorney who works with tenants. The number has slowed dramatically since the moratoriums began in March; Murray said between March and August, about 250 new eviction cases were filed — about a third the number normally filed in previous years.
The state program does contain a provision for eviction when criminal activity is happening in the rental. With their five security cameras trained on the property, Mahmood and McPhetres have been assiduously documenting all activity, and are now on a first-name basis with several members of the South Royalton Police Department, who are called to the rental property — by Mahmood and McPhetres, or by people in the rental — a few times a month.
The film shows there are dogs and visitors in the home, in violation of the now-expired lease. They’ve gotten to know some of the many cars they see on the security cameras and in person.
“A lot of the plates don’t go to the car they are on,” Mahmood said. “You’ll see a truck plate on a car, or the same plate on two to three cars over time.”
But that doesn’t mean the activity is criminal.
And even if it is, eviction hearings in the court are moving slowly. The two are now working with lawyer Angela Zaikowski, who also works for the Vermont Landlords Association. They hope she will help shepherd them through the eviction process. But the two have been warned not to expect too much. Zaikowski said she couldn’t give details about specific cases.
Scibek said in late September that the courts are issuing a few eviction orders; she estimated she’d seen a dozen since the pandemic began. State Housing Commissioner Josh Hanford said he gets two or three phone calls each week from landlords who want to evict their tenants and are stymied by the new rule.
“I have great sympathy for their situation,” Hanford said. He’s also talked to tenants.
“There are always two sides to some of these stories. That’s what the eviction process is for: for courts to decide what is due and who should be held accountable. That’s what is so hard about this eviction moratorium.”
Landlords still have the same bills
Vermont Legal Aid, which worked with the Vermont Landlords Association and the Vermont State Housing Authority on the rent stabilization program, is seeing more lockouts than usual these days — situations where the landlord changes the locks in a dispute with the tenant, said Wendy Morgan of Legal Aid.
“Landlords say, ‘I want to be able to evict this person,’ and my answer is, ‘I get it,’” Morgan said. “But you’re not going to be able to evict them until at least January, or until much later than that. So take the money, leave the tenant there for six months, and you’re not going to be further behind.”
The intractable problems faced by both landlords and tenants right now are the reason the state needs to make sure that, at the very least, landlords are being paid and renters can remain housed, Hanford said.
“Our only remedy right now is to ensure there is at least assistance available right now,” he said.
Vermont Legal Aid and the Landlords Association are working on a free mediation program to help resolve conflicts caused by the eviction ban, Morgan said.
As McPhetres, who works for the town highway department, sees it, the fault lies with the state for putting the kibosh on evictions. McPhetres said the state was pressured by groups that represent tenants and the low-income. He and Mahmood noted they don’t make a lot of money either.
“They’re hearing from the tenants, which I do understand,” McPhetres said. “But the landlords still have the same bills.”
Mahmood said she’s written to the governor’s office and hasn’t heard back. The two know what they would say if he did call.
“Ninety percent of the traffic here is between 10 p.m. and 4 in the morning,” McPhetres said of the shared driveway. “You live here for a week, and see how you enjoy it.”
