RALEIGH—Legal Aid of North Carolina is suing state and county court officials to stop the issuance of eviction orders that violate both the nationwide eviction moratorium issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Governor Cooper’s executive order affirming the CDC moratorium.

We filed the suit November 9 in Wake County Superior Court.

Links

• Legal Aid NC’s lawsuit
• CDC eviction moratorium
• Gov. Cooper’s executive order

Legal Aid is asking the court to stop Archie Smith, clerk of superior court for Durham County, from ordering county sheriffs to evict tenants who are protected by the CDC moratorium and the Governor’s Executive Order. We are also asking the court to order McKinley Wooten, director of the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), and Nicole Brinkley, assistant counsel for the AOC, to direct all clerks of county courts to stop issuing writs of possession in such cases until a judge orders that a writ be issued.

The CDC moratorium temporarily prohibits the eviction of tenants who cannot pay their rent. To qualify for the moratorium’s protection, a tenant must submit to their landlord a declaration in which the tenant swears—under penalty of perjury—that they are protected by the moratorium. The agency issued the moratorium to keep people in their homes, thereby slowing the spread of COVID-19. The moratorium took effect September 4 and remains in effect through December 31.

Amidst widespread confusion about and noncompliance with the CDC moratorium, Governor Cooper issued Executive Order 171 on October 28. The executive order affirms that the moratorium applies to all residential tenants in the state and mandates that a landlord cannot request a writ of possession to evict a tenant who has submitted a declaration.

Nevertheless, the Administrative Office of the Courts directed clerks of county courts to issue writs of possession when the tenant has submitted a declaration to their landlord. This directive is contrary to both the CDC Order and the Governor’s executive order. Many clerks have followed the AOC’s directive, including Archie Smith in Durham, and have caused low-income residents who should be safe from eviction to become homeless.

Legal Aid filed the lawsuit on behalf of Durham residents facing eviction and a nonprofit advocacy group, Action NC. If the Durham residents are evicted, the tenants—a mother, her 3-year-old child and the child’s father—will become homeless, which will put them at increased risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19, all through no fault of their own. The mother and father lost their jobs during the pandemic.

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About
Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity. Learn more at legalaidnc.org.

Media contact
Sean Driscoll, director of public relations, 919-856-2132, seand@legalaidnc.org

RALEIGH—Up to 40 million U.S. renters may face eviction by the end of the year due to the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. People of color, including Black and Hispanic tenants, represent 80% of people potentially facing eviction once federal rental protections end, according to research from the Aspen Institute and the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project.

While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a temporary moratorium halting the eviction of tenants who cannot pay rent through the end of the year, the moratorium requires that tenants must still file a federal declaration form to be eligible for the eviction protection. Additionally, tenants are obligated to navigate varying state laws and local legal proceedings.

Legal Aid of North Carolina today announced a $300,000 grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation which will enable Legal Aid to provide free or low-cost legal assistance and representation for North Carolinians disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and at risk of eviction.

“Lack of legal representation for low-income people is a glaring equity gap,” said Rulon Washington, community outreach manager with the Wells Fargo Foundation. “We believe supporting efforts to provide low-income renters at risk with legal assistance is an important step in helping the most vulnerable people stay housed.”

Harvard researchers found an estimated 90% of landlords have legal representation, while only 10% of tenants do, putting them at a significant disadvantage. However, two-thirds of tenants with legal representation are more likely to avoid an eviction judgment and remain in their home.

“Simply having a lawyer by their side can make all the difference between a tenant staying in their home or being out on the street,” said Yolanda Taylor, managing attorney of Legal Aid’s Wilson office. “Increasing the ability of tenants to access free legal help is critical during this crisis, and support from all sectors is vital to ensuring that such help is available. Ensuring housing stability is one way that institutions can contribute to the restorative economics of those who have faced systemic barriers to economic opportunity. By working together, we can make sure that struggling families stay where they belong—at home, safe and sound. We appreciate Wells Fargo’s recognition of the importance of this work.”

As part of its $175 million response to COVID-19, the Wells Fargo Foundation has made more than 1,200 grants in support of national and local nonprofits to help keep people housed.

The Wells Fargo Foundation efforts to address the housing affordability crisis in response to COVID-19 includes expanding the capacity of housing counselors to respond to renters and homeowners, supporting nonprofits that provide affordable rental homes and services, and funding for legal assistance organizations to provide legal counsel and representation for renters at-risk of eviction. These efforts are part of the Wells Fargo Foundation’s $1 billion philanthropic commitment to address housing affordability solutions by 2025 by investing in strategies to advance housing stability, increasing supply of affordable homes; expanding homeownership opportunities for people of color; and driving transformation and innovation in local communities.

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About Legal Aid of North Carolina

Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity. Learn more at legalaidnc.org. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

About Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.97 trillion in assets. Wells Fargo’s vision is to satisfy our customers’ financial needs and help them succeed financially. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, investment and mortgage products and services, as well as consumer and commercial finance, through 7,300 locations, more than 13,000 ATMs, the internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 31 countries and territories to support customers who conduct business in the global economy. With approximately 266,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 30 on Fortune’s 2020 rankings of America’s largest corporations. News, insights and perspectives from Wells Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo Stories.

Additional information may be found at www.wellsfargo.com | Twitter: @WellsFargo.

Media contact

Sean Driscoll, Director of Public Relations, Legal Aid of North Carolina, 919-856-2132, seand@legalaidnc.org

RALEIGH—The Wells Fargo Foundation announced on September 24 that it had donated $5.4 million to 15 organizations around the country, including Legal Aid of North Carolina, to provide legal help to COVID-affected renters who are facing eviction.

We thank the foundation for supporting our housing work at this critical time. Legal help can make all the difference between tenants staying in their homes or being out on the street. Support from all sectors is crucial in the fight against eviction.

Read the Wells Fargo press release to learn more.

​Legal Aid clients threatened with eviction after appearing in exposé about skyrocketing rents in mobile home parks owned by Time Out Communities

IN THE NEWS

Media coverage of the eviction crisis caused by Time Out Communities Precarious spot for mobile home owners as investors swoop in Associated Press – September 15, 2019 The Unexpected Cost of Hurricane Florence for Some in N.C. The Weather Channel – July 31, 2019 Residents slapped with eviction notices after AP story Associated Press – July 11, 2019 Mobile home residents hit with soaring rent after hurricanes Associated Press – July 9, 2019 After Matthew And Florence, A Mobile Park Ownership Company Is Hiking Rents And Issuing Evictions WUNC – May 6, 2019 Residents Upset After Lot Fees Double Spectrum News – April 16, 2019 Trailer park residents plead for help The Robesonian – April 15, 2019 Law firm offering help to improperly evicted tenants The Robesonian – March 27, 2019 Mobile home park buyouts, chicken farms concern commissioners The Robesonian – November 5, 2018

Update, Sept. 16, 2019: The Associated Press quoted Legal Aid NC attorney Nicole Mueller in a September 15 article about investors buying up mobile home parks around the country. Read the article.

Update, Aug. 1, 2019: One of our clients featured in the Associated Press articles discussed below appeared on The Weather Channel’s Weather Underground program July 31 to describe her struggle with Time Out Communities. Watch the segment.

LUMBERTON • July 18, 2019—Minutes before the Robeson County Courthouse closed on July 9, a representative from Time Out Communities, a Florida company that owns more than 20 mobile home parks in Robeson County, filed eviction proceedings against two of its tenants.

While evictions of tenants living in Time Out parks are nothing new—in fact, they are increasingly common—the timing of these two evictions is notable.

Only hours earlier, the Associated Press had published an article about skyrocketing rents in Time Out parks—an article in which both tenants were prominently featured.

“I interpret it as just way too coincidental that they would be doing that,” Nicole Mueller, our attorney who represents the two tenants, told the Associated Press for its follow-up article on July 11. “To me it seems retaliatory that they were giving these clients more time to pay or to figure out other situations … until they saw this news story.”

Our two clients, James Lesane and Shirley Pittman, are longtime residents of parks owned by Time Out Communities. Both are elderly and survive entirely on disability benefits. Neither can afford the $465 a month that Time Out is now charging for lot rent, which covers only the plots of land on which their mobile homes sit.

For Lesane, the new lot rent is more than triple the $150 a month he used to pay. The increase is only slightly less steep for Pittman, who previously paid $210 a month. After the new rents took effect, both continued to pay their old rents—all they could afford—while looking for new places to live.

The arrangement seemed to be working—Time Out allowed both tenants to remain in their homes—until the Associated Press article came out.

The company claims that the eyebrow-raising timing of the eviction filings was indeed a coincidence. Time Out told the Associated Press that it had “begun working on the paperwork for both eviction notices prior to the article’s publication” and that “many other eviction notices were filed on the same day.”

Whatever the company’s motivations, the end result for Lesane and Pittman is the same grim reality: the real possibility of impending homelessness. For now, the tenants are in an anxious holding pattern while they await their July 24 eviction hearings in small claims court.

Thankfully, they will not be alone. By their side that day will be Nicole Mueller, their Legal Aid lawyer. Mueller is an attorney with our Disaster Relief Project. She and two of her fellow disaster-relief lawyers, Katashia Cooper and Emma Smiley, joined by colleagues in our Pembroke office, have handled about 100 Time Out cases since last spring. The NC Justice Center is also representing Time Out tenants.

There are plenty of cases to go around. Mass evictions of Time Out tenants have become routine, as the company has bought up nearly two dozen parks in the county over the last few years, subjecting an increasing number of tenants to its remorseless business model.

According to its website, Time Out now owns 21 mobile home parks in Robeson County, 19 of which are in Lumberton and one each of which are in Fairmont and Shannon. Relying on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Associated Press reports that Time Out’s properties contain 1,200 mobile home lots.

Attracted by the lowered property values caused by Hurricane Matthew, the company swooped into the area in 2017 and began buying up properties by the bushel, only to jack up the lot rents to an unaffordable level for the existing tenants, resulting in an eviction crisis.

Possibly due to the breakneck pace at which Time Out is filing them, not all of the company’s evictions are legal.

“That’s where we come in,” wrote Candace Harke, managing attorney of our Pembroke office, in an op-ed in The Robesonian from March.

“Companies have the right to profit, but they absolutely do not have the right to break the law,” she wrote.

From Harke’s op-ed:

In several cases, a court has ruled that tenants did not receive proper notice of lease termination — a step that landlords must take before initiating eviction proceedings — and did not receive that notice within the timeframe required by state law.

Tenants are also facing habitability issues — paying inflated rents for homes that are run-down and in need of repair, dangerously so in some cases — and are being offered complex rent-to-own contracts with unclear terms that many residents do not understand.

Tenants who are facing eviction or have other housing problems can apply for our help by calling our statewide toll-free Helpline at 1-866-219-LANC (5262) or by submitting an online application.