A Friday U.S. Supreme Court ruling ending a federal eviction ban could have widespread ramifications in Michigan, where at least one estimate suggests more than 100,000 households face potential eviction or foreclosure in the next two months.
Bridge Michigan reports what lies ahead for the state and Detroit:
Under state court rules, tenants who already face eviction judgments that have not yet been finalized will now have 10 business days to pay their back rent or lose their home. That means evictions will likely resume early next month after Labor Day.
In the city of Detroit, as many as 650 families with pending court judgments could be evicted in “very short order,” said Phillips. “Evictions are always horrific, even before COVID. Imagine losing every single possession that you have. That’s horrific, and it’s costly.”
There are also as many as 10,000 Michiganders who fought eviction notices this year but could see landlords challenge them again now that the moratorium has lifted, (said Ted Phillips, executive director of the United Community House Coalition, a nonprofit housing advocacy group for low-income residents in Detroit).
Though federal rental assistance is still available — Michigan has been allotted $622 million — and eviction proceedings for those applying for help can be delayed, disbursement has been slow, particularly in Detroit.
Nearly a third of all Michigan applicants to the rental-assistance program live in Wayne County. But only 24 percent of the county’s 25,000 applications have been processed to date, far shy of the 48 percent statewide average.
The assistance process has been particularly slow in areas like Detroit because of the large volume of applications and federal rules that can hold back landlord payments if the property they are renting is in need of significant repair, (Jim Schaafsma, a housing attorney for the Ypsilanti-based Michigan Poverty Law Program) said.
As of early August, a U.S. Census Bureau housing survey found that up to 103,500 Michigan households were at risk of eviction or foreclosure in the next two months.
A handful of states had their own eviction moratoriums, but Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has expressed no plans to reinstate Michigan's.
Last year the ban and assistance helped cut the number of court-approved evictions in the state to 13,450, down from more than 41,000 the year prior, Bridge reported.
