A key Congressional panel released a report last month which they say shows that four corporate landlords used “abusive tactics” to evict financially strapped tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What You Need To Know

  • A key Congressional panel released a report last month which they say shows that four corporate landlords used “abusive tactics” to evict financially strapped tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic

  • The report from the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis show findings from a year-long investigation into the evicition filing practices of four major corporate landlords

  • The report found that the companies filed nearly three times as many eviction cases as previously reported, totaling nearly 15,000, despite the federal eviction moratorium and the availability of $46 billion in federal rental assistance

  • The panel made a number of other recommendations, including that corporate watchdogs like the FTC and CFPB should take action to make sure tenants are not misled about emergency protections and introducing guardrails for tenants of large corporate landlords, including mandating that states and localities should provide assistance directly to tenants

The report from the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis show findings from a year-long investigation into the evicition filing practices from Pretium Partners, which operates under an umbrella of companies Progress Residential, Front Yard Residential, (Pretium), Invitation Homes, Ventron Management (Ventron), and The Siegel Group (Siegel), during the first 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report found that the companies filed nearly three times as many eviction cases as previously reported, totaling nearly 15,000, despite the federal eviction moratorium and the availability of $46 billion in federal rental assistance.

“Rather than working with cost-burdened tenants, abiding by applicable eviction moratoriums, and accepting federal rental assistance, these companies — with properties across 28 states — expedited evictions above all else,” Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis Chairman James Clyburn, D-S.C., said in a statement.

The subcommittee’s report showed that Ventron, Invitation Homes, Siegel and Pretium had policies that allowed for filing eviction cases while a tenant had filed for assitance and was waiting for aid. The report pointed to internal Siegel data which showed that 89 tenants were evicted despite pending applications for rental assistance.

Further, the report found that Invitation Homes and Pretium "determined not to accept rental assistance offers or to participate in rental assistance programs that they deemed insufficiently generous."

Along with participating in rent relief programs, the report further shows, Ventron, Invitation Homes, and Pretium had practices and/or policies of filing eviction against tenants who had pending applications of rental relief.

"Taken together, the Select Subcommittee’s findings show that these large corporate landlords aggressively filed to evict tenants as the nation faced an unprecedented health and economic crisis posed by the coronavirus pandemic despite the enactment of eviction moratoriums by Congress and CDC, continuing the pace even after Congress provided tens of billions of dollars of rental assistance to pay tenants’ back rent," the report reads. "There are also strong indications that these four companies did not file eviction actions under financial duress, but rather did so while they were either experiencing record profits, making large investments in expansion, or obtaining significant government support."

During the investigation, the subcommittee’s report did rule that the companies’ policies and practices of not accepting rental aid are not unlawful in most states. But they argued their actions put many tenants on the brink of losing their homes without having a contingency plan.

The coronavirus crisis subcommittee said that Pretium, Invitation Homes, Ventron, and Siegel misrepresented its eviction filing data with such reporting of 5,413 from March 2020 through July 2021. They argue the corporations, in fact, filed 14,744 evictions during that period.

A study on evictions from the University of Cincinnati suggests that most evictions in Hamilton County, Ohio, come from agencies and landlords known for providing low-income housing.

Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Evicted” and Sociologist at Princeton University, said the scope of informal evictions reaches further than formal evictions. The report points out that even though tenants haven’t been ordered to leave their homes, the eviction case itself is public record and can create barriers to getting housing in the future.

The report alleged that Siegel used deceptive and "potentially unlawful practices" to prevent their tenants from understanding their protections under federal eviction moratoriums.

"In one instance, the Siegel executive directed a regional and property manager to bring a tenant a copy of the court order on a Friday 'after 5pm so the courts and constable office are closed and she cannot call to verify anything' and to 'see if she vacates over the weekend,' further illustrating that Siegel was seeking to deceive tenants into the belief that they were no longer protected by the CDC moratorium,' the report reads. "These directives likely violated FTC and CFPB guidance and CFPB’s regulation requiring that landlords’ agents give tenants affirmative notice of the CDC moratorium’s protections and may constitute unlawfully deceptive business practices."

They also said that a Siegel executive "appears to have employed harassment tactics" to force tenants out of their apartments, including an executive directing "subordinates to use harassment tactics to force a tenant to leave, including by placing a pretextual call to child protective services."

Other tactics they said Siegel employed was "replacing the air conditioning unit in a San Antonio, Texas, apartment," where temperatures in May can reach highs of 87º, "with 'a nonworking AC,'" as well as "calling 'Child Protective Services to come out' if children were present in the apartment, threatening to call 'animal control to come pick up her abandoned pet' if the tenant was not present in the apartment, and having security 'knock[] on her door at least twice at night.'"

Siegel received a $2.32 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan in early August 2020, the report said, while employing intimidating practices and making baseless claims to Child Protective Services. In addition, the report claims their balance sheet shows a less than $1,000 decline in revenues in the second quarter of revenues, "the most economically disruptive period of the pandemic."

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis referred Siegel Group (Siegel) to Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for “unlawfully” attempting to remove tenants by telling them they were not protected by law against evictions when eviction moratoriums were in effect. The subcommittee reached out to Texas Department of Family and Protective Services regarding the finding that "that a Siegel executive directed managers responsible for a Texas apartment building to use baseless reports to Child Protective Services as a means of coercing tenants to leave its property."

The panel made a number of other recommendations, including that corporate watchdogs like the FTC and CFPB should take action to make sure tenants are not misled about emergency protections and introducing guardrails for tenants of large corporate landlords, including mandating that states and localities should provide assistance directly to tenants.