Renters cheer, landlords fume at last-minute extension of Florida’s eviction moratorium

When Florida Gov. Ron De Santis announced he was extending the state’s moratorium on evictions and mortgage foreclosures for another month at 8:40 p.m. Tuesday night — only three and a half hours before the existing moratorium was due to expire — the reaction was swift and polarizing.

Advocates for rent relief, including the attendees at a Florida Housing Justice Alliance press conference taking place in front of the Miami-Dade County Courthouse, burst into cheers and applause.

“It’s not the full change we need, but it’s a hard-won victory,” said Alana Greer, director and co-founder of the Community Justice Project, one of the speakers at the demonstration. “People were really relieved and their first reaction is ‘we needed this’ and we fought for this. It’s just frustrating that it took so long.”

But some landlords and the lawyers who represent them — stuck with tenants who illegally stopped paying rent since Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s suspension of eviction proceedings on March 12 — seethed with exasperation.

“I had three-day notices ready with process servers last night that I can’t serve now,” said Mark A. Levy, a partner at the law firm of Brinkley Morgan, who represents clients in Broward and Palm Beach counties. “Some of these landlords are in a bad situation right now, because they have no legal recourse. These last-minute decisions cause a lot of disruption.”

Levy noted that the number of landlords who have hired him to evict unresponsive tenants has not grown since the moratorium went into effect. That’s a sign that most landlords have been able to work things out with tenants impacted by the coronavirus shut down, he said.

Armando Alfonso, a Miami attorney who represents more than 80 landlords, said the number of evictions he has been working on has actually gone down, from 30 on June 1 to only eight as of July 1, another indicator that renters are working out payment plans with their landlords.

But some tenants are using the moratorium as an excuse to not pay their rent since April 1, he said.

“There’s a significant number of people who are taking advantage of the system,” Alfonso said. “It’s incredibly irresponsible of the governor to come out at the last minute and say people will have to pay the rents later, which we know is never going to happen.”

Alfonso said he has a client who wants to take his home in South Dade out of the rental market and list it for sale. But the current tenants, who were previously paying $3,000 a month, stopped paying their monthly rent and refuse to move out.

“They told him to work it out with the municipality,” Alfonso said. “A lot of landlords have mortgages and taxes and maintenance on these properties and they’re not getting any relief. You’re talking $10,000 in out-of-pocket costs for a landlord who rents out a $2,500 unit and hasn’t been getting paid. If you’re going to do this, you should include moratoriums on mortgages and work with municipalities so they can implement a moratorium on taxes.”

A last-minute call

Why did DeSantis wait so close to the 12:01 a.m. deadline to announce the extension? His director of communications, Helen Aguirre Ferre, did not elaborate on the timing.

“These are difficult times due to COVID-19,” Ferre wrote in an email to the Herald. “The moratorium extension on evictions and mortgage foreclosures affects both tenants and landlords. Governor DeSantis believes that extending the moratorium on evictions and mortgage foreclosures is the right decision in these difficult times.”

De Santis made a similar last-minute call on June 1, when he extended the 45-day moratorium for another month, just seven hours before it was due to expire.

The governor first announced the moratorium on April 2, citing high unemployment rates due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The moratorium was originally expected to last 45 days.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis extended the state’s moratorium on rents and mortgage foreclosures through Aug. 1 just hours before the moratorium was due to expire.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis extended the state’s moratorium on rents and mortgage foreclosures through Aug. 1 just hours before the moratorium was due to expire.

A total of 1,143 evictions have been filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court since March 12, the day Mayor Gimenez said Miami-Dade County Police would not carry out evictions while the county is under an emergency declaration due to the coronavirus. A spokesperson for the mayor confirmed the police ban on evictions remains in place.

The moratorium does not include housing protected by the Federal CARES Act approved by Congress on March 27. That law placed a 120-day moratorium on evictions or late fees on tenants of buildings that receive any kind of government subsidy or are federally backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

But no one knows if any of the evictions filed during the moratorium will ever make their way through the court system.

“I think it will be up to the individual judge to decide, but I can certainly see some judges taking issue with the filing of any eviction papers during the moratorium period,” said Matthew Kramer, an attorney at Weinberg Wheeler Hudgins Gunn & Dial who specializes in real estate. “The reality is, if you’re aggressive in evicting tenants who can’t pay, it’s going to be difficult to find tenants to re-let those units in the current economy. From a business standpoint, it may be best for landlords to work with existing tenants.”

Rent demonstration

Just around the time DeSantis extended the moratorium on Tuesday night, about 15 people gathered on the steps of the Miami-Dade County Courthouse for a Florida Housing Justice Alliance press conference to demand that government officials protect families from losing their homes amid the COVID-induced economic crisis.

Trenise Bryant, 52, Chair of the Board of Miami Workers Center speaks during a demonstration hosted by the Florida Housing Justice Alliance to protest against the premature end of the eviction moratorium in downtown Miami, Florida, on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.
Trenise Bryant, 52, Chair of the Board of Miami Workers Center speaks during a demonstration hosted by the Florida Housing Justice Alliance to protest against the premature end of the eviction moratorium in downtown Miami, Florida, on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.

Projectors shined slogans reading “No COVID displacement” and “Raise children not rent” onto the front of the courthouse. At one point an organizer poured 1,141 Monopoly homes on the courthouse’s steps to represent what they estimate are the number of evictions that would occur if the governor allowed the state’s eviction and foreclosure moratorium to lapse.

“They think it’s just like a game of Monopoly that they’re playing over there in Tallahassee,” said Adrian Madriz, 32, the housing organizer for the Miami Workers Center. “It’s not a game. These are real people.”

The demonstration showed support for people like Sabrina Poesume, a 62-year-old domestic worker who was laid off in early April. Her husband, Genrene Boue, was the breadwinner, but diabetes complications have confined him to the hospital since February.

Boue’s illness didn’t stop an eviction notice from appearing on the family doorstep — even after news came that part of his leg needed to be amputated. Between the medical bills, the lack of income and the eviction, Poesume fears losing her North Miami home. She pays $800 a month.

“I don’t know where I’m going to find the money,” Poesume said through a translator.

Other people at the demonstration spoke about the importance of staying current on rent by any means necessary. Niklaus Salvator was fired from his job as a breakfast attendant at the Clevelander Hotel on March 20, when all hotels in the county were ordered to close to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Niklaus Salvator, 28, poses for a portrait for the Miami Herald after speaking during a demonstration hosted by the Florida Housing Justice Alliance to protest the premature end of the eviction moratorium in front of the Miami-Dade County Courthouse in Downtown Miami, Florida on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.
Niklaus Salvator, 28, poses for a portrait for the Miami Herald after speaking during a demonstration hosted by the Florida Housing Justice Alliance to protest the premature end of the eviction moratorium in front of the Miami-Dade County Courthouse in Downtown Miami, Florida on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.

Salvator, 28, had just moved to Miami four months earlier and lives in a three-bedroom townhouse on NW Sixth Avenue and 11th Street in Overtown with two roommates.

But despite losing his income — he was earning $400 a week plus tips — Salvator has managed to stay afloat, dipping into his savings, taking odd labor jobs through a temp agency and collecting $238 a week in unemployment in order to continue paying his monthly share of the rent: $800.

“Gov. De Santis wanted to make people sweat,” Salvator said about the last-minute reprieve. “He’s trying to come off as a hero. But this moratorium thing is still stupid, because all the back rent these people are going to have to pay is going to cripple the economy. You have to take into account these landlords who put all their money into these properties and don’t have any other income. I see on both sides on this thing.”