COVID-19 Crisis

 

Question:  We had a resident that we entered into a stipulated judgment agreement with on March 6, 2020.  This was prior to tenants having the ability to claim financial hardship or having the Moratorium in place. They paid 2 payments but stopped paying the terms of the agreement as well as not paying their current rent payments. Are they protected under the financial hardship provisions of the Moratorium? Are we required to send them the Declaration of Financial Hardship? Can we file an Affidavit of Non-compliance due to the resident not complying with the stipulated agreement? 

 

 

 

By Jamie Goldberg | The Oregonian/OregonLive

 

Democrats in the Oregon Senate remain divided on a proposal that would extend the state’s residential eviction moratorium. That leaves Oregonians who have struggled with their rent during the pandemic in a state of uncertainty less than four weeks before the current moratorium expires on Dec. 31.

Members of the Oregon House have been circulating a proposal that would extend the eviction moratorium through the end of June for renters facing financial hardship and create a new fund for landlords whose tenants have fallen behind on rent.

Question:  We have a couple living in a nice RV in our park on a month-to-month rental agreement.  They have been here for about two years, are retired, and have never had trouble paying the rent.  To make a long story short, we refused their rent earlier this year in January, February and March until we resolved a dispute with them regarding their dogs.  When we asked them to pay that rent, they refused because by then the statewide COVID-19 eviction moratorium had gone into effect.  Can we evict them for not paying pre-COVID rent that they still owe?

 

Question: Do the state and federal eviction moratoriums apply to RV tenants?  What about short-term guests who are not technically “tenants?”

 

 

In the continuing fight to slow the spread of COVID, the White House has just announced an Order barring nonpayment of rent evictions against most tenants through December 31, 2020. 

It has been issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”). The text can be found here.  

 

This new moratorium is just one of many throughout the country. The federal government passed the CARES Act, which was intended to protect renters in apartments and single-family homes financed with a federally backed mortgage (e.g. Fannie and Freddie, etc.). It has since expired, which, in part, is why the CDC Order was enacted. 

 

However, the CDC order is much broader than the CARES Act, and applies to all renters of residential housing.[1] However, to obtain this protection, tenants will have to attest, under oath, to a substantial loss of household income; the inability to pay full rent; to having exercised their best efforts to obtain all available government assistance for rent or housing; that eviction would require them to live in close quarters with others; and attesting that an eviction would likely leave them homeless or otherwise, etc.

 

 

 

Who bought a planner for 2020?  Doesn’t that seem like the most useless purchase now?

Fear, failure, and uncertainty have been words we have heard, seen, and felt this year.  2020 has certainly thrown us a curve ball, and if you are like the most of us, you had no plan or procedure on how to deal with a global pandemic.  I have been instructing emergency preparedness for over 15 years, and Covid19 has never been in my research or curriculum.  It will be from now on.  I have always dedicated time to address the necessity of proper PPE.  You can bet that will be even more emphasized now. And what about technology and the ability to quickly pivot to a remote workforce? Did this fit into a pre-2020 emergency plan?  Probably not, but now that piece is vital.

Question: We were awarded a stipulated payment agreement  prior to the moratorium going into effect. The resident has defaulted on their agreement but has tried to make partial payments. If the courts were open, we could file a notice of noncompliance and move forward with an eviction. But the way I understand our current landscape is,  if we take a partial payment that’s not equal to his stipulated payment agreement,  it gets thrown out and we would have to start the process all over again.   It would be great if we could accept the payments and if by the time the moratorium was over and the resident was still behind on then we could file on the defaulted agreement.

 

 

You just found out that a resident tested positive for COVID-19. You can’t get into fair housing trouble if you notify all the residents on her floor about it so they can take extra precautions to avoid exposure. True or false?

This month at Manufactured Housing Communities of Oregon (MHCO), we look at how to avoid fair housing trouble while dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. For months now, the nation has been confronting the public health emergency caused by the new coronavirus. By April, all 50 states had reported cases of COVID-19 to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), though different parts of the country experienced different levels of COVID-19 activity. According to the CDC, U.S. COVID-19 cases include:

• People who were infected while traveling, before returning to the United States;
• People who were infected after having close contact with someone known to be infected with the virus; and
• People who were infected but don’t know how or where they were infected.

 

 

 

Question:  We have residents in our RV park who seem to be blatantly violating the governor’s COVID-19 emergency stay-at-home order.  Some residents have outside family members or guests come by regularly, while a few other residents get together on their spaces to just “hang out” in the evenings. This has caused some concern in the park, so what can or should we do?