Andy Beshear put a temporary halt to evictions. Never again, GOP senators pledge.
A handful of Republican state senators, including a couple of landlords, are sponsoring a bill to protect the right of Kentucky landlords to evict their tenants in future pandemics or other emergencies.
Simultaneously, a bill advancing through the House would strip Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration of its authority to temporarily suspend utility service disconnections to Kentucky homes and waive late fees during emergencies.
Senate Bill 264 would prohibit the governor from issuing an executive order placing a temporary moratorium on evictions during a formal state of emergency, as Beshear did last year during the worst of the economic shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The governor said he did not want to see evictions due to mass unemployment while Kentuckians were supposed to be sheltering in their homes. Beshear rescinded his order Aug. 24, although some federal restrictions on evictions remain in place through March 31 as ordered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Senate bill, filed Monday, would prevent Beshear or any other governor from interfering with evictions in the future, said state Sen. Tom Buford, R-Nicholasville, one of the sponsors.
“The bill would allow individuals to evict those who are not paying rent or who have violated their contract,” said Buford, who owns rental properties.
“Maybe they’re parking cars in the front yard. Maybe they’re breaking windows, taking the appliances and the cabinets out and selling them,” he said. “One time, I had a place for rent and the guys moved out and I went over there and the kitchen cabinets, the doors, the bathroom vanity, the carpets were gone. You know, the drywall was still there.”
Buford said he has two tenants who have fallen far behind in their rents, but in his case, he doesn’t plan to pursue the debt or evict them.
“Probably between the two of them, they owe me $12,000,” Buford said.
“They’ll never be able to make that up,” he said. “My hope would be that when all of this is over, they’ll be able to resume paying their rent. Sometimes you’ve just got to suck it up. Luckily, I don’t have mortgages on my property. I do have taxes and insurance and maintenance, of course.”
The bill’s lead sponsor is state Sen. Stephen West, R-Paris, an attorney and farmer who owns rental property around Bourbon County, according to his personal financial disclosure. West did not immediately return a call seeking comment Wednesday.
Last November, 37 percent of Kentucky respondents who lived in a rental household told the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey that they were behind on rent. The numbers were even worse for Kentuckians who reported being out of work and who had only a high school diploma or less for their educations.
Beshear has responded to the crisis with several waves of eviction relief, including a large $297 million package he announced earlier this month to help Kentucky tenants with overdue rent and utility bills.
Advocates for the poor are urging lawmakers to oppose the Senate bill.
“It’s hard to see how making more people homeless, or itinerant, would help beat the pandemic,” said Rich Seckel, director of of the Kentucky Equal Justice Center.
The current legal status of evictions in Kentucky is a muddled mess, said Ben Carter, an attorney for the Kentucky Equal Justice Center who handles housing cases. Although the CDC’s partial protections against eviction are still technically in place through next month, there are plenty of loopholes, Carter said, including one that allows landlords to move against tenants when a lease expires.
Still, more than 3,200 Kentuckians have used the Kentucky Equal Justice Center’s home renter declaration site to review their rights and send the required notice to their landlords, Carter said.
Because of social-distancing rules being enforced by the courts, when eviction hearings are held in Kentucky, tenants are being directed to Zoom sessions, sometimes confusing people who don’t have adequate access to computer technology or the Internet.
Earlier this month, the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting published an account of Louisville tenants who have sued because they said the Zoom number for their eviction hearings was changed by the courts without proper notice, causing them to be absent and resulting in a default judgment for their landlords.
