Houses and apartment buildings across Western North Carolina were destroyed by Tropical Storm Helene: falling trees crushed roofs, rushing flood waters wiped away interiors and landslides uprooted entire homes. Others have less catastrophic damage, but lack access to basic utilities, such as running water or electricity. All of these issues compound an already challenging housing shortage in the region.
Evictions tend to rise sharply after natural disasters such as this one, and activists are working to stop mass homelessness before it happens. Asheville and other areas in Western North Carolina already have largely unaffordable housing markets for many residents, and Helene threatens to make the problem worse.
About 31% of all housing units in Asheville are occupied by those who rent. Now, running water is a rarity in much of the city due to the severe damage to Asheville’s water plants. Those who do have water need to boil it before use. Many homes have no power, have substantial damage or mold or are difficult to access due to washed out streets.
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What happens when the home you rent is no longer habitable, or lacks the most basic comforts of modern day life? What rights do you have?
“I explained to (my landlord) that the house is unlivable because we have no running water, no electricity, and no one will be living since we had lost these basic necessities,” a childcare worker who rents a house near UNC Asheville told Carolina Public Press.
“There is no point in paying rent if all we can do is use the house for storage. What justification is there for charging rent after a natural disaster when you don’t have guaranteed amenities, electricity, water or the job that provides money for this company?”
His landlord informed him that late fees would be waived, but it wasn’t enough to quell his tenant’s economic fears.
“I immediately emailed and asked them about a possible rent reduction,” the tenant said. “When they replied, they only sent me the link for FEMA applications and gave me no information about why they were still charging full rent for the month.”
Weak renter’s rights in tight housing market
The news is unfortunate for renters in Asheville and other communities impacted by Tropical Storm Helene. Renters generally have a duty to pay rent even if their space becomes inhabitable, David Bartholomew, staff attorney at Pisgah Legal Services, told CPP.
Even so, landlords also have a duty to repair and provide a habitable space.
The catch: the tenant’s duty to pay rent and the landlord’s duty to repair are not legally interdependent on one another in North Carolina. Just because a landlord has not fulfilled his or her duty to repair does not mean the renter is off the hook, Bartholomew said.
The number of eviction cases in Western NC is expected to rise dramatically over the coming months, and this is one of the main reasons why.
But it goes the other way too. If a tenant fails to pay rent, the landlord still owes them a habitable space.
“They’re required to provide a premises that is ‘habitable,’ and that includes having water and power,” Bartholomew said. “But if the lack of water is not (the landlords’) fault, the question is whether they can be liable for that breach. It’s a difficult question.”
Another reason that the number of evictions increase after disasters is that housing prices tend to rise in the aftermath, due to depleted supply and the cost of rebuilding. Also, the influx of wealthier people who were forced out of their homes into the rental market can temporarily inflate the cost of housing.
“It will take time, but as long as we don’t see a lot of people leaving Asheville, you’re going to see the price of housing increase,” UNC Charlotte professor of real estate economics Yongqiang Chu told CPP.
“Asheville house prices are pretty high as it is. The (housing) market is not friendly to locals, and it’s probably going to become even worse.”
Evictions rules complicate housing situation
Courts reopened in Buncombe County this week, and 40 evictions came before the court on Monday alone. Twenty-two came before the court in Henderson County.
“This is just a fraction of what it is on a weekly basis,” Samuel Gunter, executive director of NC Housing Coalition, told CPP.
The cases heard this week were on the docket before Helene, but anyone evicted will be on the streets of a city in disaster.
“The reality of the storm is that there is no place to go right now,” Gunter said.
North Carolina’s Chief Justice Paul Newby extended the appeals deadline to Oct. 28 on account of the storm, but Gunter says this isn’t enough to save people from homelessness.
Both Gunter and Bartholomew are advocating for an eviction moratorium in Western North Carolina.
A moratorium could be handed down in a few different ways. During the pandemic, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued an eviction moratorium.
NC Housing Coalition, along with partner organizations, has sent a letter to Gov. Roy Cooper asking him to personally authorize a 90-day moratorium. The legislature may also be able to do so, according to Bartholomew.
“After a natural disaster, an eviction moratorium is a very effective way to slow things down and make sure we are not making more people homeless,” Bartholomew said.
“It’s effective for our entire community, because it gives time for rental assistance, unemployment assistance, and FEMA assistance to filter into our area and get to the people who need it.”
If landlords and courts move too quickly, tenants may not receive the federal or state assistance they’re eligible for before they are evicted. In turn, then, landlords won’t receive the assistance either.
“Then, our region loses population, which hurts the tax base and the economy at large,” Bartholomew said.
Eviction cases — even in the event that a tenant wins in court — are particularly detrimental in North Carolina, according to Bartholomew.
“Anyone could file an eviction against me, and even though they aren’t my landlord, and I’ve never been a tenant of theirs, and I would certainly win that case, it would still show up in a search for landlord-tenant eviction filings,” Bartholomew said. “That could have negative consequences for me when I try to rent another place.”
North Carolina does not have an expunction program for evictions, nor a way to seal eviction records, according to Bartholomew.
“We don’t even really have an official record system,” he said. “Landlords are allowed to use systems where the searches are not accurate, and certainly don’t reflect whether an actual order was issued against the tenant.
“It’s also an equity issue. Most of the studies on this issue show that it disproportionately affects people of color.”
There are some who are skeptical about a moratorium in Western NC, however. UNC Charlotte professor Chu is one of them.
“I can understand the rationale from those who wish to help renters,” Chu said.
“But you should also think about landlords. They’ve suffered a lot of losses as well. If there’s no assistance to them, and then you add on a fixed moratorium, you’re probably going to see fewer landlords willing to be on the market again. That puts a lot of pressure on the supply side of apartments. An eviction moratorium alone will not solve the crisis.”
Landlords in Western NC are particularly vulnerable due to the rarity of a severe event such as this one. Many do not hold flood insurance on their properties, according to Chu.
Those who cannot use FEMA shelter
Samuel Gunter of the NC Housing Coalition is concerned that many whose homes are uninhabitable are unable to take advantage of FEMA’s temporary shelter assistance.
“The last time I got data, on Thursday afternoon, there were 143,000 households signed up for FEMA individual assistance,” Gunter told CPP. “But there’s only around 1,400 families in the agency’s temporary shelter assistance. That’s a huge disparity.”
Temporary shelter assistance through FEMA entails placement in a hotel, not a housing voucher.
“There’s a whole swath of folks that qualify for temporary shelter, but the hotel placements are in South Carolina, or Knoxville, Tennessee,” Gunter said.
“One of our employees lives in Asheville. They don’t have water. They were awarded temporary shelter assistance, but the closest hotel is in South Carolina. Her husband’s a doctor. He’s working daily. They’re living in what is defined as an uninhabitable home, but they cannot move to South Carolina for eight weeks while they wait for Asheville’s water system to get back online.”
FEMA announced on Sunday that the agency is seeking property owners to help meet the temporary housing needs for disaster survivors by leasing their rental properties directly to the agency.
An alternative to the temporary shelter assistance are FEMA trailers, where people can seek temporary shelter closer to home. Whether those are a good solution in Western North Carolina remains to be seen.
“The topography of Western NC makes trailers a pretty big challenge,” Gunter said. “Landslides took out steep mountain roads. It’s a challenge for FEMA to access some of these places, especially with a trailer.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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