Some 500,000 Ky renters are at cliff’s edge. Don’t shove them off in eviction crisis.

If Governor Beshear and the Kentucky Supreme Court don’t act, 149,000 Kentucky households face eviction in the next four months.

Kentucky home renters were already in crisis before the twin crises of a global pandemic and the crush of unemployment crashed on them earlier this year. A patchwork of outdated laws governs Kentucky’s fast, cruel, and unthinking eviction process. In eviction courts, 90 percent of landlords have lawyers while almost no home renters have assistance of counsel.

Fortunately, early action from Governor Beshear and the Kentucky Supreme Court protected the 500,000 households that rent their homes from eviction as the nation attempted to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Now, unfortunately, some Sheriffs (including Jefferson County’s) are saying they won’t abide Governor Beshear’s prohibition on setting people out. And, three landlords in northern Kentucky have challenged the legality of Beshear’s order. Meanwhile, on Aug. 1, the Kentucky Supreme Court started allowing landlords to prosecute any and all evictions.

Slowly but surely, landlord lobbying and lawsuits have eroded those initial protections and the ground around the feet of Kentucky’s home renters has fallen away. The ground that remains grows less stable with each passing week.

Home renters now find themselves standing at the edge of a cliff. The fall will be biologically dangerous, financially devastating, and completely avoidable.

Consider three facts when anticipating the coming catastrophe if elected officials don’t act.

First, the Kentucky Supreme Court opened evictions for nonpayment of rent on August 1 with almost no advance notice. Many landlords were not prepared to file evictions at the beginning of August.

Second, the unemployment insurance benefit that provided unemployed Kentuckians with an additional $600 each week expired on July 31. Rent will be due once again on September 1st and when it does, many thousands more Kentuckians won’t be able to pay rent.

Third, landlords who are currently prohibited from filing evictions for nonpayment of rent because they own CARES Act-protected properties will begin to be able to file those on Aug. 25.

Taken together, these three factors would mean absolute disaster for tens of thousands of Kentuckians if the Court finds Governor Beshear’s prohibition on set-outs unconstitutional, if the Kentucky Supreme Court and Governor Beshear don’t suspend eviction filings and/or prohibit law enforcement from serving summons on Kentucky’s homerenters.

Everyone involved in the eviction process needs more time:

• The Governor needs more time to process the backlog of unemployment insurance benefits.

• The courts need more time to develop eviction processes that are uniform, safe, and fair. What is happening right now across Kentucky’s 120 counties is neither uniform, nor safe, nor fair. Evictions should be rare in normal times, they must be rare in a pandemic.

• Local governments and agencies need more time to spin up programs to distribute the rental assistance funding in the CARES Act they have yet to receive from the federal government.

• Landlords need more time to apply for rental assistance in the few areas (including Louisville) that have received the rental assistance funding in the CARES Act. Only 13 landlords have received assistance from the $22,000,000 Louisville has earmarked for rental assistance.

• Congress needs more time to pass additional coronavirus aid. Senator McConnell can and must extend the unemployment benefits and eviction protections in the original CARES Act. The unemployment rate for Americans making less than $14/hour is 20 percent; for those making $14-$20/hour, it’s 16 percent.

• Home renters need more time to get back to work, get those unemployment benefits, get the rental assistance available to them, or find another safe place to live.

More than 500,000 households in Kentucky rent their homes. Many of those households are at the edge of a cliff, looking down. If they fall over the edge, it won’t be caused by some Act of God, a sad, inevitable fact of life.

Kentucky home renters won’t fall off the cliff: they’ll be shoved.

Shoved by Sen. McConnell’s refusal to pass further coronavirus aid. Shoved by landlords’ successful efforts to erode the protections in place for homerenters. Shoved by elected officials’ refusal to replace existing unfair eviction systems with processes that appropriate for the pandemic.

Kentuckians deserve systems founded on the dignity of every person, systems that prize the right to life above the right to property, and systems that recognize the urgent biological and economic imperative that everyone be allowed to remain #HealthyAtHome right now, whether home is rented or owned.

Ben Carter is a Senior Litigation and Advocacy Counsel at the Kentucky Equal Justice Center.