Rent was due Monday for the third time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and data from local property management companies suggest as many as 1 in 5 Thurston County residents missed payments for June.
About 15% of tenants missed payments as of June 4, said Zach Kosturos, president of Prime Locations, which manages more than 1,500 apartment units in Thurston County. The same percentage of Thurston County residents are unemployed as of April. (Numbers for May are not yet available.)
Kosturos says 13-17% of tenants have missed payments since the pandemic began, while Hometown Property management's rates approached 20%. Before the pandemic, the rate was closer to half of 1 percent for Prime Locations' tenants.
Data on default rates from nonprofit affordable housing providers was not yet available.
Kirsten York at the Community Action Council of Lewis, Mason, and Thurston County says she's received over 410 calls about rental relief in the past two months, a 400% increase over normal times. CAC is operating a special COVID-19 relief fund, established by the United Way of Thurston County and Community Foundation of South Puget Sound, to support those who have lost income due to COVID-19. They've already allocated over $100,000.
While the fund is open for "any crisis need," 90% of approved applicants have been those seeking rental assistance or money for utility bills, York said. (The remainder are for mortgage payments.)
Anyone who makes less than 200% of the federal poverty line is eligible; that level is $25,520 for a single person and $52,400 for a family of four. This higher-than-usual threshold is meant to include those who normally would not qualify for CAC's rental assistance programs, but due to an abrupt loss of income find themselves unable to pay rent.
"There is still money available," York said. "We're getting additional funds from United Way, so we'll keep folks on our pre-qualified list and serve them as more money comes in."
Rental relief
For renters, who make up the majority of households in Olympia, a federal stimulus check might cover one month: the average rent for an apartment in Thurston County is $1,205. But as the economic fallout from COVID-19 drags on, a clear need for rental relief is emerging, as both tenant and landlord organizations, who rarely see eye to eye, call for the state to step in and plug the hole.
"We had a really significant affordable housing shortage before the COVID-19 pandemic hit -- renters across the state are paying massive amounts of their income in rent. Couple that with unemployment or reduced hours and you have a horrible storm that, unless the state steps in with immediate relief for rental assistance, is going to result in massively increased homelessness," said Michele Thomas, policy director of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance (LIHA).
For now, tenants cannot be kicked out for unpaid rent. Last Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee extended the statewide moratorium on evictions until Aug. 1, although tenants still can be evicted for property damage or if the owner plans to sell or occupy the property.
However, the accumulating debt of unpaid rent will have to be addressed come September when the moratorium expires, or renters could face a flood of evictions.
"The moratorium is a temporary reprieve," Thomas said. "The state needs to do more; the federal government needs to do more to invest in a permanent solution which is affordable housing."
Among a list of other demands, LIHA is calling on the governor to quickly allocate CARES act funding into direct aid for renters. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has estimated that low-income renters in Washington state will need as much as $3 billion in assistance over the next year to make rent.
"The Governor's Office and the Department of Commerce are actively looking at possibilities for putting CARES act funding into rental assistance," wrote Deputy Communications Director Mike Faulk in an email to The Olympian.
Even those who are paying right now may be going into debt to do so. Data from digital payment platform Zego suggests that an increasing number of people may be paying rent with credit cards.
"People will do anything they can to keep a roof over their heads, obviously," said Thomas. "But racking up a bunch of debt to a credit card company is a really unsustainable situation that's going to cost folks so much more in the long run."
The governor's eviction moratorium provides that landlords offer a "reasonable" re-payment plan that takes into account each individual resident's finances and health. Few tenant or landlord advocates express optimism that they'll be able to agree on what "reasonable" looks like, however.
Odd bedfellows
Landlord groups and property management companies, who have been critical of the eviction moratorium, have called for government rental assistance.
"It would be a lot easier if the state created a rental subsidy for people who legitimately cannot pay their rent," said Kosturos, who is also a landlord, adding "the government should plug the middle."
Tenant advocates have pointed out that rental assistance, while necessary to keep people housed, effectively functions as subsidizing landlords.
"I think there is a shared interest by both tenants and landlords for the state to invest in rental assistance,' Thomas said. "You know, rental assistance you can think of as landlord assistance, right? It goes directly into the landlord's pocket."
