Tenants' Rights

By Hannah Herner

On June 1, Contributor vendor Christina F. and her husband John were kicked out of the apartment they were renting by the week. This should never have happened because the courts closed during the pandemic. No eviction court dates should mean no one being ejected from their home.

Christina and John called Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and learned that what their landlord was doing was illegal — they had a right to stay there. But like many others, Christina and John eventually gave in to pressure from their landlord, who got the police involved. They decided to look for a new place where they wouldn’t be harassed.

As the courts open back up, the eviction cases will begin to move forward. In this issue, a judge and an attorney give the nitty gritty on how an eviction works and how the courts will be run as the pandemic continues. Christina and John worked together to write their own story of a high-stakes eviction. And we give details on the rights tenants with non-traditional leases have as well as give an update on the state of utility bills.

Delays for days

Nashville courts officially opened on June 1, but there are multiple factors delaying many of these eviction cases from being heard.

During the month of June, there will be no eviction trials at all, but there will be court dates with an opportunity for landlords and tenants to discuss. If both parties fail to come to an agreement, they can request a trial date for July or August, says General Sessions Presiding Judge Lynda Jones.

“The theory behind that was to allow people time to work out a catch up agreement if their landlord was going to do that, or allow them time to look for other housing if their landlord was not,” Jones says.

Having an eviction on the record can make it hard to find a new place to rent. An agreement can prevent that.

Some of these cases will be even further postponed because of the CARES Act. All properties that use federal funding, or federally-backed loans, will have to wait until July 25 to give a specially required 30 days notice of eviction. This means the courts will see an influx of those cases at the end of August. Landlords aren’t supposed to charge late fees on the money owed until after this July 25 date, either.

Landlords who don’t use federal money can get a trial date set a bit earlier, but they’ll have to turn in some paperwork at least 10 days before the trial, certifying that they are, in fact, not under the CARES Act protections. This new introduction could push some cases back, says Zac Oswald managing attorney for Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee.

“I honestly think there are going to be a lot of weird legal issues that spur out of the CARES Act,” he says.

Having this extra time plays into the hands of the tenant, Jones says.

“I expect July to be incredibly busy,” she says. “If we have, for example, 200 cases filed, but we only hear 50 cases or 100 cases a day, then obviously what are we going to do with the other hundred? I suspect we will become busier and have longer days in July and August. It’s not really a backlog so much as catching up now that we started filing the cases again. This should work to the benefit of the tenant. Time is always the tenant’s friend.”

Judges are considering appointing a special magistrate that will only deal with landlord/ tenant cases to start on July 1. This would be a lawyer from a local firm working pro bono for the city. That person would review all the eviction cases before they even get to the judge and make a recommendation of a trial and date, or a mediator instead.

How an eviction works

In Tennessee, the law requires that a landlord give 14 days eviction notice to a tenant. But most of the tenants in Nashville waived this right when they signed their lease — the law also says you can do that. Oswald says upwards of 97 percent of the leases he’s reviewed in Nashville have a clause that waives a tenant’s rights to 14 days eviction notice. This means a landlord can immediately skip to the first step of an eviction.

The first step in an eviction is to file a detainer warrant, which notifies the tenant of the court date for the eviction hearing. It’s delivered in person, or after a certain process it can just be taped on the tenant’s door. From the day it’s delivered, the court hearing can be as soon as six calendar days (not business days) afterwards.

Once in court, there’s no argument a tenant can make for their nonpayment of rent, unless the landlord didn’t do the proper paperwork pre-trial.

Once you get evicted, you have ten days before that judgement becomes final, so you have that long to move out. On the eleventh day, the landlord can file a Writ of Restitution, which means the sheriff can come out and help your landlord forcefully remove you from the property.

Something to be aware of is back rent, Oswald says. When eviction happens, the landlord is typically getting the property and the unpaid rent, too. If they don’t ask for it then, they still have six years to file a lawsuit to collect it — that’s how long a landlord has to file a breach of contract case.

See if your property is protected from evictions via the CARES Act at projects.propublica.org/covid

Legal Aid Society hosts phone-in free legal help clinics. Visit las.org or call 615-780-7131 for more information.

“The problem that we see most often in terms of lack of education is that tenants will withhold their rent because of conditions, and then their landlord will convict them for nonpayment of rent,” Oswald says. In some states you can withhold rent and be protected, but in Tennessee you can’t, he added.

Some landlords even try to get the rent for the rest of the lease, which would include the months after the eviction happens, Jones says. She recommends that tenants get a lawyer whenever possible to help level the playing field — the large apartment complexes always have them.

“I think a lot of people sign leases and don’t even know what they’re signing,” Jones says. “Perhaps they feel trapped, like ‘if I don’t take this I’m not getting anything.’”

The best solution is prevention. Legal Aid Society is hosting call-in legal help clinics to answer questions about evictions, and any other cases. But at the end of the day, a lease is a contract, and that contract rules in court.

Needlink Gives More to Pay Bills During Pandemic

Usually, the bulk of the money local nonprofit organization Needlink gives out goes to electric bills. But the effects of COVID-19 have shifted that.

“We’re getting a lot more rent [requests] than we’re used to, and the rent is a lot larger balances, as you can imagine,” says Sarah Moore, program director for Needlink.

The organization typically only helps with rent for income-based properties, but during the pandemic, they have been helping with any type of rent. A person can typically get funds once a year, but people affected by COVID-19 have been able to get help more than once in the past few months.

An increase in funding via the United Way’s COVID-19 fund has allowed Needlink to expand their support to a broader group of people in need. While the organization previously had to prioritize the needs of disabled individuals, parents of young children, and the elderly, they now can offer assistance to other folks as well.

“I’ve seen a shift,” Moore says. “Our normal clientele is a lot of people on disability, a lot of people who are in and out of homelessness, single moms with a lot of kids. I feel like I’ve been seeing a lot more single 20, 30 year olds that have never had to ask for help, never done any government assistance. [They’re] just out of a job.”

The percentage of applicants that get the funds they need from Needlink these days is up to 55 percent from a typical percentage of around 40. Moore says in the past they’ve denied people due to a lack of funding, but now it is usually due to not having sufficient information, or because they’re working to meet a client halfway when there’s a large past due balance, if they’re over the limit of what the organization can give.

The amount a person can get depends on the case. The typical rule is $200 per person. Needlink has increased this limit to $300 during the pandemic, but if the applicant has documentation that their employment has been affected by COVID-19, Needlink is able to do much more than that.

To Help: Donate on needlink.org or sign up for Project Help at newspower.com with NES.

For Help with Bills:

• Rooftop

• Martha O’Bryan (37206, 37216)

• Catholic Charities (37209, 37208, 37218, 37228 and 37203)

• Salvation Army

• Safe Haven

“Especially if you haven’t had to do it before, it’s really hard to ask for help,” Moore says. “That’s what these places are there for. That’s what we’re there for. We want to help.”

Applications are available online at Needlink.org, or paper applications can be picked up outside of the organization’s location at 1600 56th Ave North. Applicants will need a copy of photo ID, and income documentation (which could be a food stamp or Section 8 letter). Those who lost income due to COVID-19 should include a letter from their employer

Needlink can also be reached at 615-269-6835, though mailing or completing an online application is preferred.

NES and Metro Water not Disconnecting for Late Payment

Both Nashville Electric Services and Metro Water Services stopped cutting off utilities for nonpayment during the pandemic.

NES had already stopped disconnecting for nonpayment and waived late fees after the March 4 tornado. They then extended it because of COVID-19.

“We understand that many customers are still navigating through uncertain economic times, and NES wants to help. We’ve again extended disconnections and waived late fees, this time through July 31,” the company shared in an email.

Metro Water is looking at the end of June to begin billing as normal, though it may change, keeping in mind the city’s phased plan to reopen businesses, says Sonia Allman, spokesperson for Metro Water. They’ve been waiving late fees and disconnections since the pandemic hit. Once things get back to normal, customers will be eligible for disconnection when they owe $50 or more and the balance is over 45 days old.

Both organizations are offering payment plans by which customers can take the money they owe and divide it out over the next 12 months to pay it off. For NES, anyone with past due balances will be automatically enrolled.

“Beginning July 1, NES will evenly distribute past-due balances into 12 monthly payments. These charges will appear on each monthly bill, and customers who keep up with their payments going forward are assured service,” the statement reads.

Allman says Metro Water always likes to work with customers to prevent having to send out workers to turn off their water. The pandemic-prompted deferred payment plan is now part of that.

“For customers that were financially strapped, it gave them the ability to use the money they had available to pay other things,” Allman says.

By Christina and John F.

Even if there’s no official lease contract, a tenant still has protections from being evicted.

The law says that when a landlord takes rent, it becomes a month-to-month tenancy, which renews on the day the rent is paid each month. This is known as an oral lease agreement. The same is true for a weekly rent situation.

So if you pay monthly, your landlord must give 30 days written notice before they plan to evict you, or 10 days notice for a weekly oral lease agreement.

If you are staying at a hotel and paying nightly for less than 30 days, it’s still considered transient lodging, and you’re not entitled to full eviction proceedings — they can just kick you out. But if you were staying in that hotel for more than 30 consecutive days, it is no longer considered transient lodging and the hotel owner in effect becomes your landlord. They should go through the proper court proceedings like any other landlord, beginning with a notice of eviction.

With an eviction case, a person cannot be forced to leave until 10 days after the ruling in court. This means that during the time the courts were closed, even those staying at a hotel for more than 30 days, or paying weekly or monthly rent without a written lease agreement should have been able to stay.

These laws were not followed in vendor Christina’s case.

As many things are going on in the world around us — COVID-19, racial tensions, the economy, and of course politics — a few things are slipping by. In my case in particular, evictions. OK so for me it’s more like slightly not so “legal” evictions, plus a few kickers to boot.

A little background first. Hi my name is Christina, vendor 3821, nice to meet you. As you may have guessed, I sell The Contributor and have for about five years now out in the Madison area at Goodwill. I used to be security at Vanderbilt University and courtesy officer for an apartment complex until my husband’s health took a downturn. Just an example of the fact that there are many ways to end up in hard times.

My husband was involved in a construction accident 17 years ago where he ended up in the hospital with heart failure. We knew that he may have lung problems in the future from the chemicals he inhaled in an old apartment when we were in our 20s. Still, he was well enough to be a house husband and clean, cook, do the bills, etc. That was until about six years ago when he started having to go to the ER. After being admitted to Vanderbilt and then later to Skyline for emergency surgery, he was released but had to be on oxygen and we realized how bad it was. He couldn’t cover it up anymore.

The next time he would end up in Skyline would show exactly how bad he was. He went in for another surgery and ended up in a coma. After a 12-day stay he was released on four liters of oxygen constantly with less than 40 percent lung function.

His diagnosis is, desquamative interstitial pneumonia, chronic respiratory failure with hypoxia, type 2 diabetes with hypoglycemia, essential hypertension, edema, GERD, neuropathy, PTSD and depression. Basically he can not walk more than 20 feet, he has to be on a home high-flow concentrator or his oxygen level will drop and his heart rate will pick up and to our understanding, he will have a stroke.

So why am I explaining all this? To show exactly how bad our predicament is and how some concepts are wrong.

During the past five years of this, we lived in a pay by the week “efficiency apartment” in Goodlettsville. The manager seemed nice. We moved in at the beginning of October 2015 and by December that year I was out of work (at this time I was doing day labor) and he let us slide a little on the rent and he brought up working for The Contributor. We were broke with no food so Dec. 24 that year I went and stood at Rivergate Mall with a sign to get enough money to eat and get Downtown after Christmas to train to sell The Contributor.

As the years went by and my husband ended up in the hospital, or there were bad weeks or months, we fell behind well over $4,000 dollars in rent before he got his SSI. Still, they let us stay and after my husband got his SSI and back pay, we were down to $3,000 in unpaid rent. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but this was not an easy feat with just me selling the paper and my husband’s SSI, considering the room/ apartment we lived in was $280 dollars a week.

A quick note: During this time we both knew we could not continue paying that high of rent so we did apply with MDHA and Section 8.

Then, in March of this year, the safer-athome order went into place. With my husband’s lung condition, diabetes and heart problems I could not take any chances on going out so we were left with his SSI check, subscriptions through The Contributor online, Venmo and The Contributor’s grocery cards only.

I went to the manager of the “apartments” I lived in when it became obvious the safer-athome order would not be lifted and tried to explain we needed to keep part of my husband’s SSI check instead of handing it over. He didn’t even let me get to say that it was only part of his check, or that we would be giving them the majority of our stimulus check over to the “apartments.” He just started yelling that we could not live there for free. He went into that he had to pay for utilities and cable. He then went on to say we would be better off at the homeless shelter. Had we not seen the news about them opening up at the fairgrounds? The odd part about this was I had seen the news and utility bills, cable bills, and evictions were all on hold. So figuring he had just had a bad day, I was polite, said I’m sorry and goodbye. The only explanation I did say was due to my husband’s health, he could not stay at the shelter because of his need for an aid and his need for a concentrator.

Three days went by with nothing. Then the manager, his son and the maintenance guy came banging on our door. After I answered the door the manager informed me we were being “ejected” right then, and we needed to get everything out. I calmly explained to him that I would call Legal Aid, that evictions had been frozen, and that I was sorry but I had to worry about my husband’s health first then I politely said goodbye and closed the door.

I immediately (while freaking out) called Legal Aid. After explaining our predicament they had an attorney call me back. About 30 minutes later an attorney called me, went over everything and explained no they could not “eject” me that would be going by the “transient guest” law, which only counts if someone has only stayed under 30 consecutive days. He continued to explain that the “apartments” would have to go through Tennessee’s eviction process.

So I calmed down some and around an hour after I got off the phone with Legal Aid the manager, his son and the maintenance guy showed back up. The manager said he was sorry that he “jumped the gun.”

The aftermath of all this weighing on mine and my husband’s heads we decided that even if the “apartments” would allow us to pay and stay, we could not trust them. We came to the conclusion the best route would be save our money and look for someplace else to live.

The letter on the door we got from the manager a few weeks later confirmed our idea was best. It stated that we had three days to move out. This was still during the safer-at-home order and the state’s freeze on evictions. If we did not move out in this time period, we would be sued and they would take our money. Like this was more important than a person’s life. It also stated we could fight the eviction in court.

Time went on and nothing else happened. The manager was actually cordial even. The morning of June 1 everything changed, though. At a little after 8 a.m. there was a banging on the door so I answered it. I went outside to find a Goodlettsville police officer, the “apartment” manager, his son and the maintenance guy. I spoke with the officer and he informed me that the manager had the right to “eject” me, that this was a hotel even though the sign even said “efficiency apartments.” I explained to the officer what Legal Aid had told me and my husband’s medical condition, as well that shelters would not take him and that evicting him could literally kill him. The officer said he was sorry but we had to be out by 7 p.m. that night.

I immediately went in and called Legal Aid again, this time though they were so backlogged I would not hear back from them for another day.

After I had an emotional breakdown and a good cry, me and my husband went about trying to figure out what to do. I texted a customer who had become a very good friend and who had helped us out many times with rides for groceries, medical stuff, taking me to see my husband in the hospital, and often being there for me to break down and cry when I would get stressed — I could go on and on. (BTW thank you SO MUCH Cindy!!!!)

Me and my husband thought it would be quick to find some place to live. This turned out to not be true, every “by the week” hotel was either way too expensive, full, or not open. By 4 p.m. we had finally found a by the day room that was open, at $70 a day. I ran and rented the room, and started moving everything. I was able to get two more days to get all of our stuff out of the old place, and ended up putting most of our stuff in a storage unit I had to rent.

We only paid for three days at the hotel to begin with, figuring we could find another place quick. We thought certainly with my husband’s health there had to be some emergency help or place we could go. That was not the case. We are not over 62 (we are 44) and neither of us are mentally ill, which as far as we could find are the only emergency housing options for couples. There are actually NONE at all for those physically ill under 62 in good mental health for emergencies. So that day I made over 75 phone calls trying to find anything at all.

The day after we were “ejected” Legal Aid did call back. They apologized for the long wait, but they had taken it before a committee and determined what the “apartments” had done was illegal. This is what me and my husband had figured, but those who argue with the police lately do not come out well.

Thirteen days after being “ejected”, at the time of writing this, this is where we are: All of the housing options based on income have a six month or longer waiting list and even the ones we can’t really afford do not have any openings until mid July.

The only help we have had is from some of my customers, who paid for a few days at the hotel (thank you very, very much) and The Contributor, who paid us up till the end of the month (thank you very, very much too). They are the only agency who could help. My husband’s TennCare does have a case worker who calls and goes over things every week, but that’s it.

You would figure there is help for the terminally ill no matter what the age, but that is not so. Very, very few event seem empathetic, including the police in some cases.

We are still looking for some place that we can call our own, that is safe for my husband’s medical needs, and affordable. We have started a GoFundMe for anyone who is interested, or just interested in our story as we are posting updates on there. We are looking for any recommendations on housing, mostly if anyone knows of a place.

We would also like to thank Cindy, who without we would not have known what to do more times than we can think. For those who want to help people, sometimes it’s not money, just sit and listen and care that helps more than anyone would ever think. I would also like to thank Gerald for always helping, Phil and Cindy for all their help in so many ways, my church family, Bob and Betty, Dolly, and all my other regulars.

We would like to also thank The Contributor, the only agency that would help. Not just with money but the only one who would call me back with lists of places to try, and would help me look.