Click here for a quick and easy “Know Your Rights” reference card (in English and Spanish, updated 10/2020) with COVID-19 legal info related to housing, employment, money, benefits, immigration, education and family issues.

Need a volume of these info cards?  Call 216-861-5889 to request some for use in community distribution of food boxes, home school packets and for use with other outreach.

Click here for a quick and easy reference (in English and Spanish, updated 10/2020) with how to ask questions or get legal help during the coronavirus pandemic.

This flyer is printable for use by community partners in food boxes, home school packets and for use with other outreach.

Every Worker has Rights at Work, Including Undocumented Workers

Minimum Wage: Most workers have the right to be paid the current minimum wage in Ohio. For the current rate, check: https://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/america.htm

If you make tips at work, the amount you make in tips plus the amount you make per hour must add up to at least the minimum wage rate.

Overtime Pay: Most workers have the right to overtime pay when they work over 40 hours in a workweek. The overtime rate is one and one-half (1½) times your rate of pay. For example, a $10/ hour regular rate would be a $15/hour overtime rate ($10 x 1.5 = $15).

Discrimination and Sexual Harassment: You have the right to a workplace that is free from sexual harassment and discrimination based on your race, color, sex (including pregnancy), religion, disability, national origin, ancestry, military status and age.

You also have the right to participate in any claim or investigation about these issues.

Organizing: You have the right to organize a union at work and talk about unionizing during nonwork hours (breaks). You also have the right to talk to your supervisor about problems at work that affect you or your coworkers.

Safety: You have the right to a safe workplace. Your work must provide and require the use of proper safety gear and safeguards. You cannot be forced to enter any workplace that is unsafe. You cannot be forced to perform work without proper safety gear or safeguards.

How to Protect Yourself

Document! Keep your own records of (1) what days you worked; (2) how many hours you worked each day; and (3) whether you took any breaks and how long.  Always compare your pay rate on your paystub to what you were actually paid and document any difference between the two.

Know Who You Are Working For!  Know the address and phone number for your workplace and the name of your supervisor.

Get Help! Get help as soon as you can when you believe that something may be wrong.

What to Do if Your Employer Owes You Pay

Call Legal Aid at 888.817.3777 or 216.687.1900.

File a complaint with the State of Ohio Bureau of Wage and Hour Administration at 614.644.2239.

Call the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division at 866.487.9243 or 216.357.5400.

File a lawsuit in Small Claims Court for up to $6,000 in unpaid wages, plus interest and costs.

What to Do if You Were Discriminated Against or You Were Punished for Speaking Up About Your Rights

Call Legal Aid at 888.817.3777 or 216.687.1900.

If you were discriminated against, file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) at 800.669.4000 or the Ohio Civil Rights Commission (OCRC) at 216.787.3150.

If your right to organize was violated, file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) at 216.522.3715.

What to Do if Your Workplace is Unsafe

Notify your supervisor or the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) at 216.447.4194.

Ask OSHA to inspect your workplace.

If you were discriminated against or punished because you filed a safety complaint with OSHA, you have 30 days to inform OSHA of the discrimination or retaliation by filing an additional complaint.

Request copies of your medical records from your doctor and collect other records that document your exposure to toxic or harmful chemicals.

What to Do if You Were Hurt on the Job

As soon as you are hurt:

1. 1. Get medical help;
   2. Tell your work you have been hurt. Let your supervisor know you have been hurt and ask if you need to fill out an accident report;
   3. Tell your doctor or emergency room the name of your health care organization that handles workers’ compensation claims. If you don’t know, find out from your workplace. This helps ensure your injury is counted as work related;
   4. Tell your pharmacist that any prescriptions you receive are related to treatment for an Ohio Worker’s Compensation claim;
   5. File a Workers’ Compensation claim with the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation.

What more info?

More information is available in this brochure published by Legal Aid: Employment Law

Learn about Ohio Landlord-Tenant Law through this new brochure published by Legal Aid.  Click here to see a PDF of the brochure.

In Ohio a Landlord has a duty to:

1. Keep the property in livable condition.
2. Keep the common areas clean and safe.
3. Comply with building, housing, health, and safety codes.
4. Keep in good working order all electrical, plumbing, heating, and ventilation equipment.
5. Maintain all appliances and equipment supplied by the landlord.
6. Provide running water, hot water and heat (unless the hot water and heat are controlled entirely by the tenant and supplied by a direct public utility hook-up).
7. Provide garbage cans and trash removal (if the landlord owns four or more residential units in the same building).
8. Give at least 24 hours notice, unless it is an emergency, before entering a tenant’s unit, and enter only at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner.
9. Evict the tenant when informed by a law enforcement officer of drug activity by the tenant, a member of the tenant’s household, or a guest of the tenant occurring in or otherwise connected with the tenant’s premises.

In Ohio a Tenant has a duty to:

1. Keep the property clean and safe.
2. Dispose of rubbish in the proper manner.
3. Keep the plumbing fixtures as clean as their condition permits.
4. Use electrical and plumbing fixtures properly.
5. Comply with housing, health, and safety codes that apply to tenants.
6. Refrain from damaging the property and keep guests from causing damage.
7. Maintain appliances supplied by the landlord in good working order.
8. Conduct yourself in a manner that does not disturb any neighbors and require guests to do the same.
9. Permit landlord to enter the dwelling unit if the request is reasonable and proper notice is given.
10. Comply with state or municipal drug laws in connection with the property and require household members and guests to do the same.

Are you recently unemployed? You can receive unemployment compensation benefits if you are unemployed (1) due to lack of work (laid off), (2) you were discharged without just cause, or (3) you quit  with just cause. This brochure outlines how to apply for unemployment benefits, what a Determination is, and how you can appeal an unfavorable Determination. Also included is information on what happens after a Redetermination is issued and steps you must take to continue receiving unemployment benefits after you apply. For more information and to apply for benefits online, you can visit https://unemployment.ohio.gov.

More information is available in this brochure published by Legal Aid: What You Need to Know About Unemployment Benefits

This brochure is also available in Spanish at: Lo que usted debe Conocer Acerca del Beneficio de Desempleo

Lost your job and your former employer will not give you your last paycheck? Here are some steps you can take. This brochure explains what you should do if you cannot get your last paycheck. (1) Remember to give back all company property, (2) wait until your regular payday has passed, and (3) make a request for your paycheck in writing if your payday has passed. If that  doesn’t  work, you may file a complaint with the Ohio Wage and Hour Bureau, call Legal Aid, or go to Small Claims Court.  Contact information is  included.

More information is available in this brochure published by Legal Aid: Can’t Get Your Last Pay Check?

Are you the victim of domestic abuse or violence? This brochure describes what domestic violence is, provides the numbers of local and national domestic violence hotlines, and outlines steps to take if you are a victim of abuse. It explains the importance of a Criminal Temporary Protection Order (TPO) and Civil Protection Order (CPO), the differences between the two, and how to file for each. The brochure also describes how to press for criminal charges and what to do if charges are filed and the abuser is convicted.

More information is available in this brochure published by Legal Aid: Domestic Violence: What Is It? What Can You Do About It?

This brochure is also available in Spanish at: Violencia Doméstica:  ¿Qué es?  ¿Qué puede hacer usted acerca de esto?

I lost my job due to Covid-19 and am having trouble paying my bills. Am I eligible for rent assistance?

Do I qualify for utility assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Do I qualify for property tax payment assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic?

I have not received my Economic Impact Payment yet. Can I still receive it?

Am I eligible for the Prevention, Retention, Contingency (PRC) program benefits?

Food Access

The federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020 created the temporary food benefit program called Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) that will be issued through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) is partnering with the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) to ensure that families with children in kindergarten through twelfth grade receive the benefit. All school-age children that are eligible for free and reduced-price meals will receive P-EBT benefits. Each child is eligible for $5.70 for each day a school is closed due to COVID-19. For more information about the P-EBT benefits, see this flyer.  For questions about benefits, contact the ODJFS customer service line at 1.866.244.0071.

The Greater Cleveland Food Bank continues to provide food assistance to families in need throughout northeast Ohio.  Call the Help Center at 216.738.2067 if you need food assistance, Monday – Friday, 7 am – 6 pm.

Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) will continue meal service to all students during the shutdown of Ohio schools. Meals are free for all children in the city of Cleveland 18 and younger. Click here for a flyer with school meal pickup sites and shuttle information.

Aramark will provide emergency meals for Lorain City School District (LCSD) Monday through Friday at various sites.  For more information and to see a list of the meal sites, visit the Lorain City School District website.

Many other school districts continue distributing free meals to families.  Visit your district’s website for information about times and locations to pick up meals.

Phone & Internet Access

Free and low-cost internet access is available from Charter Communications and Comcast.  Households with school-aged children are eligible for free services.  To enroll in free internet during the COVID 19 pandemic, call 1-844-488-8395.  Other households may qualify for low-cost service.  For more information, visit Spectrum Internet Assist.

Innovate Ohio has compiled a list of public hotspot locations that Ohioans can use in areas where they may not otherwise have access. For a list of Ohio wi-fi hotspot locations, click here.

Mental Health Services

The ADAMHS Board of Cuyahoga County has provided resources to support mental health during this stressful time. If you are experiencing stress or anxiety, you can call the Cuyahoga County Warmline at 440.886.5950 to talk with a peer. The warmline operates daily from 9am-1am. You can also text “4hope” to 741741, the Crisis Test Line. If you are in crisis, please call the 24-hour Suicide Prevention, Mental Health/Addiction Crisis, Information and Referral Hotline at 216.623.6888.

Signature Health is providing telemedicine services for mental and behavioral health to patients on Medicare, Medicaid and those without any health insurance. New patients of Signature Health can call 440.578.8200 to schedule a telemedicine appointment.  For more information regarding telehealth services at Signature Health, click here.

Shelter and Utilities

Ashtabula County Community Action Agency announces changes to the application process for their Energy Assistance programs during the state of emergency. Ashtabula County Residents who are enrolling in the Percentage of Income Payment Plan (PIPP) for the first time, applying for the Home Energy Assistance Winter Crisis Program, or with incomes at or below 30% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, are no longer required to visit the Ashtabula County Community Action Agency in order to complete an application. In person appointments have been suspended but clients must still call to make their appointments at 440.997.5957 or 866.223.1471. Clients may submit their documentation online here or by dropping documents off at 6920 Austinburg Road, Ashtabula, Ohio 44004. For more information, visit ACCAA’s website.

The Lorain Metropolitan Housing Authority will be accepting applications for the Housing Choice Voucher Program waiting list. Applicants must complete the pre-application and send it to LMHAHCVP-WL PO Box 1009 Lorain, Ohio 44055. The envelope must be postmarked by May 29, 2020 to be eligible. For more information about next steps and how to apply, click here.

Emergency Financial Assistance

Some counties are expanding Prevention, Retention, Contingency (PRC) benefits to cover certain needs related to COVID 19. Contact the Department of Job and Family Service in your county for more information. In Cuyahoga County, visit: https://cjfs.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/PRC.aspx. To apply for PRC, call United Way at (216) 436-2000 or Ohio Benefits at 844-640-6446.

UCAN has emergency financial assistance for rent, utilities and other emergency basic needs. Individuals do not need an agency referral and do not need to be working to apply.  Visit  www.ucanapply.org for more information and to apply.

Reentry Resources

The Cuyahoga County Office of Reentry in partnership with the North Star Neighborhood Reentry Resource Center is providing walk up and drive-thru supply distribution for those directly impacted by incarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Visitors can receive vouchers for birth certificates, 2 bus tickets with new modified bus routes, Dave’s gift card, non-perishable food items, soap, hand sanitizer, and a list of open resources. These distributions will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays through June from 11:00 am – 1:00 pm at North Star Reentry Resource Center at 1834 E. 55th Street, Cleveland, OH 44103. For more information, contact the Cuyahoga County Office of Reentry at crystal.bryant@jfs.ohio.gov or call Marcus Bell of NRRC at 216.881.5440.

Other Community Resources

There will be a COVID-19 PPE kit distribution  at the May Dugan Center (4115 Bridge Ave Cleveland, Ohio 44113) on Saturday, June 27th from 12-4 pm (while supplies last). There is a limit of one kit per household and a max of two kits per vehicle. Participants must stay in their vehicles. In observance of social distancing measures, supplies will be place directly into vehicle trunks. For more information, contact Andy Trares at 216.631.5800 ext. 300 or atrares@maydugancenter.org.

Read more about Legal Aid’s procedures related to COVID-19 here: www.lasclev.org/COVID19

Legal Aid is also closely monitoring updates from local courts and agencies.  Here is a summary of quick links to webpages, updated as of May 6th, 2020:

FEDERAL

Courts

• United States Supreme Court: https://www.supremecourt.gov/announcements/COVID-19.aspx

Agencies

• Social Security: https://www.ssa.gov/coronavirus/
• Veterans Affairs: https://www.va.gov/

STATE

Courts

• The Supreme Court of Ohio (for a list of amended Ohio court procedures by county): http://sc.ohio.gov/coronavirus/courts/default.aspx 
• Eighth District Court of Appeals: https://appeals.cuyahogacounty.us/
• Ninth District Court of Appeals: http://www.ninth.courts.state.oh.us/index.htm
• Eleventh District Court of Appeals: http://www.11thcourt.co.trumbull.oh.us/ed_announcements.html

Agencies

• Public Utilities Commission of Ohio: https://www.puco.ohio.gov/

LOCAL

Ashtabula County

Courts

• Ashtabula Municipal Court: http://www.ashtabulamunicourt.com/wordpress/
• Conneaut Municipal Court: http://www.conneautohio.gov/alert_detail.php

Agencies

• Children Services: http://help-a-child.com/

Cuyahoga County

Courts

• Bedford Municipal Court: https://www.bedfordmuni.org/
• Berea Municipal Court: http://www.bereamunicipalcourt.org/
• Cleveland Heights Municipal Court: http://www.clevelandheightscourt.com/
• Cleveland Municipal Court: https://clevelandmunicipalcourt.org/
• Cleveland Municipal Housing Court: https://clevelandmunicipalcourt.org/housingcourt
• Cleveland Law Library: https://clevelandlawlibrary.org/
• Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court: https://cp.cuyahogacounty.us/court-information/covid-19/
• Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court: http://domestic.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/home.aspx
• Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court: http://juvenile.cuyahogacounty.us/
• Cuyahoga County Probate Court: http://probate.cuyahogacounty.us/Default.aspx
• Cuyahoga County Public Defenders: http://publicdefender.cuyahogacounty.us/
• East Cleveland Municipal Court: http://www.eccourt.com/
• Euclid Municipal Court: http://www.cityofeuclid.com/community/court
• Garfield Hts. Municipal Court: https://www.ghmc.org/
• Lakewood Municipal Court: http://www.lakewoodcourtoh.com/index.html
• Lyndhurst Municipal Court: http://www.lyndhurstmunicipalcourt.org/
• Parma Municipal Court: http://parmamunicourt.org/
• Rocky River Municipal Court: http://rrcourt.net/
• Shaker Hts. Municipal Court: http://www.shakerheightscourt.org/home/
• South Euclid Municipal Court: http://southeuclidcourt.com/
• U.S. District Court Northern District: https://www.ohnd.uscourts.gov/
• U.S. Bankruptcy Court Northern District: https://www.ohnb.uscourts.gov/

Agencies

• All Cuyahoga County buildings are closed to the public, but services available online and by phone: https://cuyahogacounty.us/
  • Children and Family Services: https://cuyahogacounty.us/online-services#cfs
  • Child Support Services: https://cuyahogacounty.us/online-services#ocss
  • Job and Family Services: https://cuyahogacounty.us/online-services#cjfs
  • Senior and Adult Services: https://cuyahogacounty.us/online-services#dsas
  • Veterans Service Commission: http://cuyahogavets.org/
• City of Cleveland will temporarily cease shutoffs and restore connections to public water and power in light of COVID-19 pandemic: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/03/city-of-cleveland-will-temporary-cease-shutoffs-and-restore-connections-to-public-water-power-in-light-of-coronavirus-pandemic.html

Geauga County

Courts

• Geauga County Court of Common Pleas: https://www.co.geauga.oh.us/commonpleas/Clerk-Of-Courts
• Chardon Municipal Court: https://www.co.geauga.oh.us/municourt/

Agencies

• Department on Aging: https://www.co.geauga.oh.us/Departments/Aging
• Job and Family Services: https://www.geaugajfs.org/
• Veterans Services: https://vets.co.geauga.oh.us/

Lake County

Courts

• Lake County Court of Common Pleas: https://www.lakecountyohio.gov/cpcgd/
• Lake County Probate Court: https://www.lakecountyohio.gov/probatelco/COVID-19-Information

Agencies

• All Lake County buildings are closed to the public, but services available online and by phone: https://www.lakecountyohio.gov/
  • Council on Aging: https://www.lccoa.org/
  • Job and Family Services: https://www.lakecountyohio.gov/lcojfs/
  • Veterans Service Center: https://www.lakecountyohio.gov/veterans

Lorain County

Courts

• Elyria Municipal Court: https://elyriamunicourt.org/
• Lorain County Court of Common Pleas: http://cp.onlinedockets.com/LorainCP/index.aspx
• Lorain County Domestic Relations/Juvenile Court: https://www.loraincounty.com/domesticrelations/

Agencies

• Department of Job and Family Services: http://www.lcdjfs.com/latest-news–updates
• Veterans Service Commission: https://www.loraincountyveterans.com/

Consumer Protections and Scams: What Should I Know to Avoid Scams Related to COVID-19?

Consumer Protections and Scams: What Should I Know about Stimulus Check Scams and Collection by Creditors or Banks?

Consumer Protections and Scams: What Should I Know about the Economic Impact Payment or Stimulus Check if I Do NOT Regularly File Taxes (Non-filer)?

Consumer Protections and Scams: What Should I Know about the Economic Impact Payment or Stimulus Check if I Regularly File Taxes?

Education: What Do I Need to Know About School During COVID-19?

Education: What Are Schools Doing for Students with Disabilities During COVID-19?

What are some common questions about Living Wills and Health Care Powers of Attorney?

Are Wills Really That Important?

Immigration Rules: What Do Immigrants Need to Know about Unemployment Compensation?

Immigration Rules: How is the Public Charge Rule Affected by COVID-19?

Immigration: What is Happening at Immigration Agencies (EOIR, USCIS, an ICE) during COVID-19?

Immigration: What Should Immigrants Know about Publicly Available Assistance during COVID-19?

Nonprofits and Small Businesses: What programs can Help Nonprofits and Small Businesses during COVID-19?

Are the offices of Job and Family Services open?

Jobs and Family Services (JFS) lobbies are closed to the public. For information or to apply, call Ohio Benefits at 1-844-640-OHIO or visit benefits.ohio.gov. For Cuyahoga County residents: To drop off documents, use the drop boxes at the Virgil E Brown, Jane Edna Hunter, Quincy, Old Brooklyn, or Westshore locations. Verifications may also be mailed to the Agency. JFS will mail you a postage paid envelope if you call and ask for one.

What happens to my cash benefits if I can’t work, attend training/education, or look for a job right now?

At this time, most Ohio counties are not requiring recipients of Ohio Works First (OWF) cash assistance benefits to participate in work activities because of the Governor’s Stay at Home order.  The federal government has not removed work requirements, but told states to be flexible and use “good cause” exemptions when possible.  For more information, see: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/resource/tanf-acf-pi-2020-01

How do I maintain health care during the COVID 19 pandemic?

Health insurers must allow employers to continue covering employees, even if the employee would otherwise become ineligible because of a decrease in hours worked per week. Employees may be working a significantly reduced schedule right now, through no fault of their own.

Those who do lose insurance coverage, are eligible for a special enrollment period to gain new coverage. Premium subsidies may be available for those who qualify by purchasing plans on the federal exchange.

Click here for the Ohio Department of Insurance’s official bulletin on this topic.

I’m a parent without childcare and I work an essential job. What benefits can I access? 

Parents whose jobs are deemed essential should apply immediately for emergency childcare.  Most jobs in health and safety fields are considered essential. For more information, go here: http://jfs.ohio.gov/cdc/CoronavirusAndChildcareForFamilies/

Are childcare facilities still allowed to operate?

Childcare facilities must have a pandemic license in order to operate now through April 30, 2020. For more information, go here: http://jfs.ohio.gov/cdc/CoronavirusAndChildcareForFamilies/

Can I receive financial assistance to help pay my bills? 

Some counties are expanding their Prevention, Retention, Contingency (PRC) benefits to cover certain needs related to COVID 19.  You must have a child living in your household or be pregnant to be eligible for this program.   You must also be below a certain income level.  This financial assistance is limited to food assistance, rental assistance and essential supplies such as cleaning products, infant care items, and cleaning products.

You can contact the Department of Job and Family Service in your county for more information.

In Cuyahoga County, visit: https://cjfs.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/PRC.aspx and click on the COVID-19 Emergency Response link for information about PRC.   Applications can be submitted to any of the JFS Neighborhood Family Service Center drop boxes, via email at Cuy-PRC-Application@jfs.ohio.gov,  or by fax at (216) 987-8655.  For questions, call the PRC Information Line at (216) 987-7392 and leave a message and allow 48 hours for a response.  You can also apply for PRC by calling the United Way at (216) 436-2000 or Ohio Benefits at 844-640-6446.

I’m a veteran with a VA overpayment and/or medical debt which I have to repay or is being deducted from my VA benefits and/or Social Security benefits.  Can I ask the VA to stop collection of this debt? 

As of April 3rd, the VA has suspended collection of debts which are currently being deducted from benefits by the Treasury Department, including any deductions made from your Social Security benefits for medical or VA benefit debts.   You should not have to ask that the collection cease.  The VA is also suspending collection or extending repayment terms for all VA benefit debts collected through the VA’s Debt Management Center.   You should contact the VA Debt Management Center at 1-800-827-0648 to ask that the debt be suspended or for a lower monthly payment.  For health care debts, Veterans can contact the Health Resource Center at 1-888-827-4817 to ask that collection be suspended or for lower monthly payments.

For more information on Public Benefits during COVID-19, please see these related FAQs:

Public Benefits: What Should I Know about Medicaid during COVID 19?

Public Benefits: What Should I Know about SNAP (food stamp) Benefits during COVID-19?

Public Benefits: What Should I Know about Social Security Benefits during COVID-19?

Public Benefits: What Should I Know about the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program?

What are my rights as a tenant during the COVID-19 pandemic?

What is the CDC Eviction Moratorium?

I lost my job due to COVID-19 and am having trouble paying my bills. Am I eligible for rent assistance?

Do I have the right to an attorney in my eviction case?

What can I do if my water is off or if I have a shut off notice during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Effective immediately, during the time of the COVID-19 emergency in Ohio, a public water system shall not disconnect customers’ water due to nonpayment of fees or charges. Customers whose service was disconnected for nonpayment after January 1, 2020 should request reconnection and the public water system shall restore drinking water service as quickly as possible. The customer may not be charged reconnection fees but may be billed for actual usage. This order ends when the emergency ends or on December 1, 2020, whichever is sooner. See the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Order.

Cleveland Water and Cleveland Public Power (CPP) have temporarily stopped disconnection of residential services for non-payment. If you have recently been disconnected for non-payment, please call Cleveland Water at 216.664.3130 or CPP at 216.664.4600.

How do I get home heating assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Ohio has received an extension of the Winter Crisis Program through May 1, and the Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP) through June 1. The Winter Crisis Program helps income-eligible Ohioans maintain their utility service, while HEAP provides eligible Ohioans assistance with home energy bills through a one-time benefit applied directly to their bill.

You can now apply for these programs over the phone.  Visit EnergyHelp.Ohio.gov for more information or call 1 (800) 282-0880 to begin your application.

Is the PUCO Winter Reconnect Order going to be extended during the COVID-19 pandemic?

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) extended its winter reconnect order through May 1, 2020. The Winter Reconnect Order helps Ohioans reconnect or maintain electric and natural gas service during the heating season between October 14, 2019 and May 1, 2020. The Commission also noted that PUCO-regulated utilities should review their policies and identify where it may be prudent to suspend, the duration of the emergency, any policies that would impose a service restoration hardship or create an unnecessary risk of human contact. Utility customers who have questions or concerns regarding their utility service are encouraged to contact the PUCO online.

Has unemployment eligibility expanded during COVID-19?

Unemployment eligibility has expanded during COVID-19. Workers who lose employment as a result of COVID 19 may qualify for benefits immediately.  See details about the expanded eligibility at here.  You can apply online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at http://unemployment.ohio.gov. Click here for FAQs about unemployment insurance benefits from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Has there been an expansion of sick/medical leave during COVID-19?

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act goes into effect on April 2, 2020 and ends on December 31, 2020. The act includes an Emergency Expansion of the Family Medical Leave Act (EEFMLA), Emergency Unemployment Insurance Stabilization and Access Act, and the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act (PSLA). To read a summary of the key provisions, click here. To read the full act, click here.

For more information on Worker Rights and Benefits during COVID-19, please see these related FAQs:

Worker Rights and Benefits (Unemployment): What are the New Rules for Unemployment Compensation Benefits Related to COVID-19?

Worker Rights and Benefits: What Benefits Does the Families First Coronavirus Response Act Provide?

Worker Rights and Benefits: What Help Can I Get from the Emergency Expansion Family Medical Leave Act?

Worker Rights and Benefits: What Help Can I Get from the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act?

Worker Rights and Benefits: What Does the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act Do for Unemployment Compensation (UC) Benefits (including Pandemic UC)?

Worker Rights and Benefits: What do I need to know about remote schooling and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA)?

Worker Rights and Benefits: What is Lost Wages Assistance (LWA)?

Starting March 17, Legal Aid will only do new client intake online and via phone.

Those needing civil legal assistance can apply online 24/7 at www.lasclev.org or weekdays by calling 888-817-3777.  Those with non-legal questions related to landlord-tenant and other rental issues can also call our Tenant Information Line at 216-861-5955 (Cuyahoga) or 440-210-4533 (Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake, Lorain Counties).

Offices in Cleveland, Elyria, Painesville and Jefferson are closed and walk-in intake is suspended until further notice.  All Legal Aid staff will be working remotely to help our clients in need.  Current clients should continue to work with their attorneys and anticipate handling matters by phone and electronically to the extent possible.

Legal Aid will keep the public updated about changes to intake and other activities and events via www.lasclev.org and social media channels – including Facebook and Twitter.

The coronavirus pandemic expanded Legal Aid’s client-eligible population literally overnight.  Legal Aid’s 52 staff attorneys need the help of private lawyer volunteers during this time of great need.

Are you an attorney and want to volunteer right away?  Click here to see a list of current, available cases for you to handle.

Are you interested in helping with future “virtual clinics,” brief advice over the phone, or with other projects?  Please click here to fill out a form and show your interest.

As always, Legal Aid attorneys will provide full support for volunteers – including, but not limited to, malpractice insurance, litigation support, mentoring, and training.

Written by Joe Pagonakis in News 5 Cleveland on 10/23/2020.

On Friday, News 5 teamed-up with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland and United Way’s 211 HelpLink system to address issues with evictions and unemployment compensation, taking hundreds of calls during a live phone bank.

Attorney Anastasia Elder with the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cleveland said her agency has been fighting back against growing evictions with its “Right-To-Counsel” program.

Elder said the initiative was launched in July and provides free legal representation to tenants who are facing eviction in Cleveland Housing Court.

Elder said tenants must meet a few basic requirements to qualify.

“The goal of right-to-counsel is to avoid homelessness,” Elder said. “Someone should get legal counsel if they have at least one child in the home, meet certain federal poverty guidelines and live in the city of Cleveland.”

Elder said it’s crucial tenants quickly respond to a court summons and communicate with their landlord if they are facing eviction or are having difficulties paying their rent.

“So when a court says that you should show up for something, you should show up. There is a lot at stake, specifically whether or not you’ll have a home tomorrow,” Elder said. “Have open communication with their landlord, or reach out to legal aid for some legal advice, reach out to those rent assistance agencies, because there is help out there.”

Nancy Mendez, V.P. of Community Impact with the United Way of Greater Cleveland, said her agency saw a record number 95,000 calls for help between March and October due to the ongoing pandemic and a high amount of job loss.

There were 5,000 calls for food, another 3,000 extra calls for rental assistance, as well as help with unemployment, Mendez said

“Our calls at some points have tripled,” Mendez said. “A number of folks are very anxious and have no idea how they’re going to be able to pay next month’s rent. We are really worried about the long-term effects this going to have on individuals and in particular their ability to cover basic needs like food and rent.”

Mendez said Cuyahoga County had some 20,000 eviction over the past year, but that could dramatically increase if the federal government doesn’t approve a second COVID-19 stimulus package soon.

“Anywhere from a potential 50,000 to upwards of 80,000 potential evictions in Cuyahoga County, if the government doesn’t intervene,” Mendez said. “So we really do need Washington, or government, to continue to look at funding these programs that are literally keeping people in their homes right now.”

Both the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland and the United Way of Greater Cleveland have multiple resources to help residents facing eviction or unemployment compensation issues.

Click here to read the full article in News 5 Cleveland. 

Written by Conor Morris in Cleveland.com on 10/20/2020.

Anna Powaski and Chad Falatic walk down the cracked sidewalk of a street in the Kinsman neighborhood, toward a small rental home with a sagging porch and a U-Haul moving truck in the driveway. They strike up a conversation with two men on the porch.

Falatic and Powaski – both wearing masks ­– explain they’re with the Cleveland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the reason why they’re there: The landlord has filed an eviction order.

“Are you going to be attending your hearing? You could potentially be hooked up with legal representation for free; either way, you should still probably attend the court date,” Falatic said.

“It’s virtual, right? So I’ll probably do it virtual,” one of the tenants says.

As they talk, Falatic and Powaski learn that the tenants are planning on moving out anyway. The men said they didn’t want to deal with their unresponsive landlord any more; the home’s previous owner had sold the home to a new buyer, and neither owner had fixed glaring issues like a broken front porch step.

Still, Powaski hands them several flyers, warning them that an eviction could make it difficult to find rental housing in the future. The flyers included how to access Cleveland’s Right to Counsel program, a leaflet on Cleveland and Cuyahoga County’s rental-assistance program, and other information on tenant rights in Ohio.

This information is crucial, and the DSA’s work is helping address a real gap: most of the time, tenants have no idea of the assistance that’s available to them. It could help keep these renters in their homes despite the social and economic challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cleveland DSA’s eviction-prevention door-knocking campaign has been happening biweekly for the past two months. As of mid-September, the group had used Cleveland Housing Court records to find, and knock on the doors of, 730 homes where eviction cases had been filed against the tenants.

The results have been hard to quantify so far. Sometimes, tenants aren’t home, or have already moved on. Other times, they’ve already made plans to move out, even though they haven’t attended their hearing yet to try to defend themselves.

Still, there are some success stories. Powaski said that on multiple occasions, tenants have told DSA members they weren’t even aware of an eviction before DSA members stopped by their homes. Plus, some people have been connected to Cleveland’s Right to Counsel program.

“We had a woman (who) qualified for a lawyer through the Right To Counsel program,” said Powaski, who is communications director for the Cleveland DSA. “They hooked her up with an attorney and she attended her hearing via Zoom. She said her landlord got caught lying about her rent payment. She was allowed to stay in the property, and she has until December to pay back the rent for July that she owes.”

The DSA outreach has been very helpful in getting the word out about the Right to Counsel program, said Melanie Shakarian, director of communications for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. It’s especially important because, despite the federal moratorium on evictions announced in September, evictions are still happening (see our related story from Oct. 20).

Shakarian said the DSA’s work is one part of a multi-pronged approach to get this information out to tenants.

“It’s one really important element of a totality of outreach that tenants need to get,” Shakarian explained. “Legally, they get the summons. Separately, they get a letter from United Way to follow up on the summons, then, the DSA outreach. There’s other communications we’re doing through the public libraries, through the Food Bank, through social media and other paid advertisements.”

Legal Aid has handled about 150 cases that qualified under the Right to Counsel ordinance since June, Shakarian said. Since Cleveland Housing Court went back into session in June, a total of about 1,700 evictions have been filed in the court, according to records analyzed by the Eviction Lab project housed at Princeton University.

Cleveland’s Right to Counsel program – which is available for anyone under 100% of the poverty line with a child in the house – could provide critical help. A 2015 study from the Institute for Research on Poverty found that an estimated 90% of landlords have legal representation in eviction cases, while only 10% of tenants do.

Meanwhile, Judge W. Moná Scott said the Housing Court recently started asking lawyers from the Legal Aid Society to be present during eviction hearings to ensure that if a tenant does qualify for Right to Counsel, they get representation they need (the lawyers can help them get connected to rental assistance money, too).

Despite the assistance, evictions are still being granted. In September, Scott said 344 eviction cases were filed, with 180 granted; in August, 437 were filed and 164 were granted. At the same time, plenty of cases did get resolved through the court’s mediation program, (almost 80 in August, for example). Typically, tenants agree to move out in those situations while the landlord agrees to drop the case.

Revelations from visiting tenants’ homes

Powaski and Falatic said some common themes have emerged for the Cleveland DSA after going to multiple door-to-door events over the last few months.

Often, these people are essential workers with children, struggling to pay their rent in homes where landlords have long ignored their obligations to fix problems, Falatic said.

“Nobody talks to these people face to face,” Falatic said. “They just get sent papers with a ton of small text information in it. When you’re really exhausted and beaten down… that method of delivery is not good enough.”

From left to right, Cleveland DSA members Anna Powaski and Chad Falatic talk to Cleveland resident Frank Hawkins about the home he was renting and the problems he was having with his landlord back in August.

Judge Scott said she noticed a similar trend in her court, with many tenants simply not showing up to court. She said she feels there’s a “communication gap,” with tenants not knowing about the assistance available to them.

Another commonality: Many don’t know that their hearings with the Housing Court are being heard virtually, Powaski said.

Powaski said the DSA Cleveland group acknowledges that they’re not going to get to every eviction case. The DSA group only has so many members and volunteers, plus, some might worry about potentially spreading COVID-19 while meeting people in-person. However, canvassing is a safe practice so long as everyone is staying distant and wearing masks, said Suzanne Hrusch, an environmental sanitarian at the Cuyahoga County Board of health.

Since the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium was enacted on September 1, the DSA has begun taking the CDC eviction prevention forms to tenants and even helping them fill it out. That’s important because, Powaski said, tenants they talk to are almost “never” aware of it in the first place. The forms are required for eviction relief.

Frank Hawkins was one of the tenants Falatic and Powaski spoke to during one of their door-to-door campaigns in late August, heading through the Kinsman and Lee-Miles neighborhoods.

Hawkins said he was planning on moving out of his rental housing after his landlord filed an eviction notice against him for non-payment of rent. That’s after he said the property manager refused to renew his lease earlier this year, and refused to pay him for work he did to fix issues in the home. This is while he’s been working long hours at a rubber factory throughout the pandemic.

“I just think they’re trying to push me around,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins said he checked and found he wasn’t eligible for Cleveland’s right to counsel program because he doesn’t have a child in the home. Powaski recommended he still call the Legal Aid Society to get advice on his situation, noting that the DSA couldn’t provide legal advice.

“Even if you don’t get a lawyer, these are some good tips on how to represent yourself,” Powaski said, handing over another flyer on landlord-tenant law.

A few days after the DSA members stopped by, Hawkins represented himself at his virtual eviction hearing, although his efforts were hampered by a spotty internet connection. Ultimately, his landlord’s attorney agreed to drop the case if Hawkins moved.

Several days later, Hawkins moved out of Cleveland altogether. While he wasn’t happy with not being able to defend himself, or having to move so quickly, he was glad the DSA stopped by his home. He said it gave him a chance to feel heard by somebody.

Abigail Staudt, managing attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, said the number of eviction filings in Housing Court represents only a portion of the overall problem of housing instability in Cleveland.

Even outside of formal eviction proceedings, some landlords may be resorting to so-called “self help evictions,” where they illegally change the locks of a rental home, or shut off the utilities in the home, Staudt said. She said her office has only helped with a few of those cases since March, but she is sure more are flying under the radar.

Changing the status quo?

Over in Washington D.C., the Metro D.C. DSA chapter has previously tried a similar door-to-door tactic to try to educate tenants on their rights and prevent evictions. They even have a guide on how to do it.

Evan Spath, an organizer with that group’s “Stomp out Slumlords” campaign, said at the height of its door-to-door canvasses, his group was doing 300-500 door knocks a month, with about one-third of those resulting in conversations with tenants. Tenants who spoke with DSA were 80 percent more likely to show up in court, he said.

“We found that generally, the problem wasn’t that they were getting evicted (after showing up in court),” Spath said. “A lot of them would work out a payment plan with the landlord, go into debt, or just float around to find other properties. It’s just this sort of unsustainable status quo in place of evictions.”

Cleveland DSA member Anna Powaski holds some of the materials the activist group has been handing out to Cleveland tenants at risk of being evicted. The canvases are held twice a month.

Once the pandemic hit, Spath said his group has mostly pivoted away from that tactic, fearing it would put tenants or organizers at risk of contracting COVID-19. In addition, D.C. has a continuing local moratorium on evictions in place.

Instead, Spath said his group has been working with the D.C. Tenants Union to “organize” individual apartment buildings to fight for better living conditions, with tenants using the threat of rent strikes and holding their rent in escrow until the landlords assent to make needed repairs. The group has managed to organize, or is in the process of organizing, 23 buildings so far.

Elsewhere, in places like Minneapolis, tenants have organized to achieve a rare feat: outright buying up the buildings they live in from their landlords.

Back in Cleveland, local DSA chapter members Powaski and Falatic said they hope their door-to-door campaign is a way to build “working class power” in Cleveland.

“This is the only option we as Americans have left because in a lot of ways, our representatives have failed us,” Falatic said.

There’s one thing that the DSA members and Staudt all agreed on in separate interviews: Additional aid from state or federal government needs to be made available to renters (or to their landlords).

“We’re going on six months of no rent paid for many of them (landlords),” Staudt said. “They’ve got mortgages. They’ve got bills to pay, and many of them own just a couple of properties.”

For Powaski and Falatic, these conversations with tenants in hard-off areas of the city has them thinking larger. Falatic hopes some of the people they talk to end up joining the DSA, although anyone can volunteer to help out with the DSA canvassing. Powaski said inviting friends along on the door-to-door campaign has opened their eyes.

“When thinking about a citywide tenants union, about rent striking, about working against a ruling class… this totally changes their perspective and gets them wanting to be more involved,” Powaski said.

Click here to read the full article in Cleveland.com

Written by Conor Morris in Freshwater Cleveland on 10/19/2020. 

Anna Powaski and Chad Falatic walk down the cracked sidewalk of a street in the Kinsman neighborhood, toward a small rental home with a sagging porch and a U-Haul moving truck in the driveway. They strike up a conversation with two men on the porch.

Falatic and Powaski—both wearing masks—explain they’re with the Cleveland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the reason why they’re there: The landlord has filed an eviction order.

“Are you going to be attending your hearing? You could potentially be hooked up with legal representation for free; either way, you should still probably attend the court date,” Falatic tells the men.

“It’s virtual, right? So, I’ll probably do it virtual,” one of the tenants says.

As they talk, Falatic and Powaski learn that the tenants are planning to move out anyway. The men said they didn’t want to deal with their unresponsive landlord anymore—the previous owner sold the home to a new buyer. Neither owner had fixed glaring issues like a broken front porch step.

Cleveland DSA members Anna Powaski and Chad Falatic talk to Cleveland resident Frank Hawkins about the home he was renting and the problems he was having with his landlord back in August.
Still, Powaski hands them several flyers, warning them that an eviction could make it difficult to find rental housing in the future. The flyers include how to access Cleveland’s Right to Counsel program, a leaflet on Cleveland and Cuyahoga County’s rental-assistance program, and other information on tenant rights in Ohio.

It’s crucial information that could help keep renters stay in their homes despite the social and economic challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cleveland DSA’s eviction-prevention door-knocking campaign has been happening biweekly for the past two months. As of mid-September, the group had used Cleveland Housing Court records to find, and knock on the doors of, 730 homes where eviction cases had been filed against the tenants.

The results have been hard to quantify so far. Sometimes, tenants aren’t home, or have already moved on. Other times, they’ve already made plans to move out, even though they haven’t yet attended their hearings to try to defend themselves.

But there are some success stories. Powaski says that on multiple occasions tenants have told DSA members they weren’t even aware of an eviction before DSA representatives stopped by. Additionally, some people have been connected to Cleveland’s Right to Counsel program.

“We had a woman [who] qualified for a lawyer through the Right to Counsel program,” says Powaski, who is the Cleveland DSA’s communications director. “They hooked her up with an attorney and she attended her hearing via Zoom. She said her landlord got caught lying about her rent payment. She was allowed to stay in the property, and she has until December to pay back the rent for July that she owes.”

DSA outreach has been very helpful in getting the word out about the Right to Counsel program, says Melanie Shakarian, director of communications for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. It’s especially important because, despite the federal moratorium on evictions announced in September, evictions are still happening (see sidebar).

Shakarian says the DSA’s work is one part of a multi-pronged approach to get this information out to tenants.

“It’s one really important element of a totality of outreach that tenants need to get,” explains Shakarian. “Legally, they get the summons. Separately, they get a letter from United Way to follow up on the summons, then, the DSA outreach. There’s other communications we’re doing through the public libraries, through the Food Bank, through social media and other paid advertisements.”

Legal Aid has handled about 150 cases that qualified under the Right to Counsel ordinance since June, Shakarian says. Since Housing Court went back into session in June, a total of about 1,700 evictions have been filed in the court, according to records analyzed by the Eviction Lab project housed at Princeton University.

Cleveland’s Right to Counsel program—which is available for anyone under 100% of the poverty line with a child in the house—could provide critical help. A 2015 study from the Institute for Research on Poverty found that an estimated 90% of landlords have legal representation in eviction cases, while only 10% of tenants do.

Meanwhile, Judge W. Moná Scott says the Housing Court recently started asking lawyers from the Legal Aid Society to be present during eviction hearings to ensure that if a tenant does qualify for Right to Counsel, they get representation they need (the lawyers can help them get connected to rental assistance money, too).

Despite the assistance, evictions are still being granted. In September, Scott said 344 eviction cases were filed, with 180 granted; in August, 437 were filed and 164 were granted. At the same time, plenty of cases did get resolved through the court’s mediation program, (almost 80 in August, for example). Typically, tenants agree to move out in those situations while the landlord agrees to drop the case.

Cleveland DSA member Anna Powaski holds some of the materials the activist group has been handing out to Cleveland tenants at risk of being evicted.

Revelations from visiting tenants’ homes

Powaski and Falatic say some common themes have emerged for the Cleveland DSA after going to multiple door-to-door events over the last few months.

Often, these people are essential workers with children, struggling to pay their rent in homes where landlords have long ignored their obligations to fix problems, Falatic says.

“Nobody talks to these people face to face,” he says. “They just get sent papers with a ton of small text information in it. When you’re really exhausted and beaten down… that method of delivery is not good enough.”

Judge Scott said she noticed a similar trend in her court, with many tenants simply not showing up to court. She says she feels there’s a “communication gap” with tenants not knowing about the assistance available to them.

Another commonality: Many don’t know that their hearings with the Housing Court are being heard virtually, Powaski says.

She says the DSA Cleveland group acknowledges that they’re not going to get to every eviction case. The DSA group only has so many members and volunteers, plus, some might worry about potentially spreading COVID-19 while meeting people in-person. However, canvassing is a safe practice so long as everyone is staying distant and wearing masks, said Suzanne Hrusch, an environmental sanitarian at the Cuyahoga County Board of health.

Since the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium was enacted on September 1, the DSA has begun taking the CDC eviction prevention forms to tenants and even helping them fill it out. That’s important because, Powaski says, tenants they talk to are almost “never” aware of it in the first place. The forms are required for eviction relief.

Frank Hawkins is one of the tenants Falatic and Powaski spoke to during one of their door-to-door campaigns in late August, heading through the Kinsman and Lee-Miles neighborhoods.

Hawkins says he was planning on moving out of his rental housing after his landlord filed an eviction notice against him for non-payment of rent. That’s after he said the property manager refused to renew his lease earlier this year and refused to pay him for work he did to fix issues in the home. This is while he’s been working long hours at a rubber factory throughout the pandemic.

“I just think they’re trying to push me around,” says Hawkins.

Hawkins says he checked and found he wasn’t eligible for Cleveland’s right to counsel program because he doesn’t have a child in the home. Powaski recommended he still call the Legal Aid Society to get advice on his situation, noting that the DSA couldn’t provide legal advice.

“Even if you don’t get a lawyer, these are some good tips on how to represent yourself,” says Powaski, handing over another flyer on landlord-tenant law.

A few days after the DSA members stopped by Hawkins represented himself at his virtual eviction hearing, although his efforts were hampered by a spotty internet connection. Ultimately, his landlord’s attorney agreed to drop the case if Hawkins moved.

Several days later, Hawkins moved out of Cleveland altogether. While he wasn’t happy with not being able to defend himself, or having to move out so quickly, he was glad the DSA stopped by his home. He said it gave him a chance to feel heard by somebody.

Abigail Staudt, managing attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, says the number of eviction filings in Housing Court represents only a portion of the overall problem of housing instability in Cleveland.

Even outside of formal eviction proceedings, some landlords may be resorting to so-called “self-help evictions,” where they illegally change the locks of a rental home, or shut off the utilities in the home, says Staudt, adding that her office has only helped with a few of those cases since March but she is sure more are flying under the radar.

Cleveland DSA members Anna Powaski and Chad Falatic head toward the home of a local renter who faces an eviction case.
Changing the status quo?

In Washington D.C., the Metro D.C. DSA chapter has previously tried a similar door-to-door tactic to try to educate tenants on their rights and prevent evictions. The office even has a guide on how to do it.

Evan Spath, an organizer with the group’s “Stomp out Slumlords” campaign, says at the height of its door-to-door canvasses, his group was doing 300 to 500 door knocks a month, with about one-third of those resulting in conversations with tenants. Tenants who spoke with DSA were 80% more likely to show up in court, he said.

“We found that generally, the problem wasn’t that they were getting evicted (after showing up in court),” says Spath. “A lot of them would work out a payment plan with the landlord, go into debt, or just float around to find other properties. It’s just this sort of unsustainable status quo in place of evictions.”

Once the pandemic hit, Spath says his group has mostly pivoted away from that tactic, fearing it would put tenants or organizers at risk of contracting COVID-19. In addition, D.C. has a continuing local moratorium on evictions in place.

Instead, Spath says his group has been working with the D.C. Tenants Union to organize tenants in individual apartment buildings to fight for better living conditions—with tenants using the threat of rent strikes and holding their rent in escrow until the landlords assent to make needed repairs. The group has managed to organize, or is in the process of organizing, 23 buildings so far.

Elsewhere, in places like Minneapolis, tenants have organized to achieve a rare feat: outright buying up the buildings they live in from their landlords.

Back in Cleveland, local DSA chapter members Powaski and Falatic say they hope their door-to-door campaign is a way to build “working class power” in Cleveland.

“This is the only option we as Americans have left because in a lot of ways, our representatives have failed us,” says Falatic.

There’s one thing that the DSA members and Staudt all agreed on in separate interviews: Additional aid from state or federal government needs to be made available to renters (or to their landlords).

“We’re going on six months of no rent paid for many of them [landlords],” says Staudt. “They’ve got mortgages. They’ve got bills to pay, and many of them own just a couple of properties.”

For Powaski and Falatic, the conversations with tenants in hard-off areas of the city has them thinking about a larger picture. Falatic says he hopes some of the people they talk to end up joining the DSA, although anyone can volunteer to help with the DSA canvassing. Powaski said inviting friends along on the door-to-door campaign has opened their eyes.

“When thinking about a citywide tenants union, about rent striking, about working against a ruling class, this totally changes their perspective and gets them wanting to be more involved,” says Powaski.

Click here to read the full article in Freshwater Cleveland. 

Written by Conor Morris in ideastream on 10/19/2020. 

Tenants facing eviction in Cleveland Housing Court can access a temporary measure of relief through the current federal moratorium on evictions, and through the city and county’s rental aid programs. But they’re no silver bullet.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium, which started Sept. 1, was meant to pause pandemic-related eviction cases against tenants, providing a measure of relief during these challenging times.

However, that relief is only available for a tenant – and anyone else who is on their lease – if they sign the CDC’s eviction moratorium form and give it to their landlord.

Meanwhile, of the roughly $18.1 million in rental assistance funds made available by Cleveland and Cuyahoga County on July 1, less than $2 million has gone out so far to landlords to pay for back rent owed.

Cleveland Housing Court Judge W. Moná Scott explained how tenants should get the eviction moratorium form to their landlords during a virtual public meeting on Sept. 29.

“That means you can hand deliver [the form], mail it off to them [landlords], you can email it to them,” Scott said.

The forms can be found on the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland’s website, and are available in multiple languages.

However, the eviction moratorium does not relieve tenants of their obligation to pay all the rent they owe once the moratorium expires, Scott and other officials explained. Plus, there’s no guarantee it will fully protect tenants.

Tenants must sign the document, confirming that they are unable to pay their full rent because of a “substantial loss of household income.” By signing it, tenants also promise they are using “best efforts” to make payments that are as close to their normal rent as possible, Housing Court Chief Magistrate Tracey S. Gonzalez said during the panel. Signing the form also confirms the signer has used “best efforts to obtain all available government assistance for rent or housing.”

Landlords can contest those claims in court – requiring a tenant to prove the things they claimed in the form – and if the landlord is successful, a judge can order an eviction.

Scott said she already requires tenants to be in the process of seeking rental assistance in order for the eviction case against them to be postponed under the moratorium.

In a follow-up interview Oct. 16, Scott said it’s important for tenants to show up for hearings because evictions are still happening. The court now has lawyers from the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland present during most eviction hearings to respond immediately if the tenant qualifies for the city’s Right to Counsel program, and those lawyers can help get tenants connected to rental assistance.

Meanwhile, plenty of rental assistance is still available locally.  There’s millions left in the roughly $18.1 million pool of rental-assistance money being offered by the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County for renters affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kevin J. Nowak, executive director of CHN Housing Partners, the nonprofit administering the fund, said as of Sept. 29, about 6,000 applications for rental aid were submitted to CHN. A CHN spokesperson confirmed that number had jumped to 6,800 by Oct. 12.

That number accounts for about $12.64 million in aid that could end up going out, provided all those applications are accepted. Around 2,000 applicants had an eviction case filed against them, giving them “priority status” in the assistance application process, Nowak said.

In total, about 913 tenants’ landlords have received rental assistance from the city-county program, for a total of almost $1.7 million provided so far out of the $18.1 million.

In other areas, rental assistance funds have run out in a matter of weeks or even days. A few factors have led to the rental aid not going out quickly since the program started in July, Nowak said.

“We’ve tried to be as accommodating as possible; you sometimes have a landlord that does not want to accept rental assistance for whatever reason they have,” he explained. “Sometimes you have tenants that may not want to apply.”

Laura Boustani, a spokesperson for CHN, said the number of documents tenants needed to provide to prove their eligibility was another barrier, so fewer documents are now being required.

“People would start an application, save their work, and then go figure out where the documents are,” she said. “Not being able to find a lease, things like that.”

Another challenge? The rental-assistance program is mainly meant to cover three months of missed rent, Boustani said. But with the pandemic dragging on, many people have been unable to go back to work, meaning some have already missed more than three months. So other funding sources may need to be pieced together. Recognizing that, the city has extended the amount of aid Cleveland tenants can be eligible for from three months to four.

Applicants can fill out the forms on paper or through a mobile app, but the main avenue – through the CHN website – requires a reliable Internet connection, which can be another barrier for many Clevelanders.

To make matters worse, Cleveland’s city hall has been closed since the pandemic hit, and with it, the city’s Bureau of Vital Statistics, where someone would normally go to get records needed to apply for the rental aid. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said during a press conference Friday that requests to that office are taking “much longer” than usual to fulfill because the office is closed and people need to mail in requests.

The city is renovating that vital statistics offices, Jackson said, to make it possible for people to enter into the area with appropriate social distancing, and a process for people to submit requests online is in the works.

With the federal moratorium on evictions now in place, it’s up to tenants to fill out the forms if they can’t afford to pay rent, Scott said.  And eviction cases filed against a tenant for non-financial reasons may still continue.

Jayah J. Watters-Clark, a spokesperson for the Housing Court, said it’s not clear yet how many have been able to postpone their eviction hearings through the CDC moratorium. According to the Eviction Lab project at Princeton University, about 1,700 eviction cases have been filed in Cleveland Housing Court since June.

Despite the pandemic and record levels of unemployment in prior months, Scott said there haven’t been “massive” numbers of evictions filed in Housing Court since the court opened back up in mid-June after a pandemic-induced hiatus.

“I think it’s because people have taken advantage of rental assistance, and I believe landlords show compassion,” Scott said. “I believe everyone understood the ramifications of the pandemic.”

Anyone with questions about the local rental-assistance aid can call CHN at 833-377- 7368. Help is also available through the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland at 216-687-1900, the Spanish American Committee at 216-961-2100 and other partners listed on the CHN website.

Click here to read the full article in ideastream. 

Written by Danilo Powell-Lima in Lakewood Observer on 10/08/2020.

On September 2nd, The Center for Disease Control (CDC) issued an order temporarily banning some evictions to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

This law is not applied automatically, and is not a rent forgiveness program – tenants will still have to pay rent once the Order expires on December 31, 2020. The law also only covers tenants who fit a certain set of requirements. Tenants must continue to comply with the terms of their lease as well as federal, state, and local laws.

Tenants who want the protection of this law must demonstrate that they qualify and ask for the protection. A tenant can do this by completing a Declaration Form and presenting this form to his or her landlord. Every adult listed on the lease must complete a DeclarationForm and give a copy of the form to the landlord. Tenants should keep a photocopy of the completed Declaration Form for their own records.

To qualify for protection, a tenant must be able to say that all five of the following statements are true:

1. The tenant has made a sincere effort to get all available government assistance for rent or housing.
2. The tenant either:

• • Received a CARES Act stimulus check;
  • Was not required to report any income in 2019 to the IRS; or
  • Expects to earn no more than $99,000 in the calendar year 2020 (or no more than $198,000 if filing a joint tax return).

1. The tenant cannot pay the full rent because of a significant loss of household income (fewer work hours, lower wages, a lay-off) or extraordinary out-of-pocket expenses.
2. The tenant is using his or her best efforts to make timely partial payments in the largest amount possible as their circumstances permit.
3. An eviction would likely make the tenant homeless or force a move into close quarters with other people (e.g. doubling up with friends or family, or living in a shelter).

Tenants may need to prove that they gave a copy of the Declaration Form to their landlord. Legal Aid suggests tenants ask their landlord to initial the tenant copy of the form, or give the form to their landlord with a witness present.

Visit lasclev.org/cdc-eviction-moratorium for more important information on the Order and for a link to a fillable Declaration Form.

Tenants with housing questions can always call Legal Aid’s Tenant Information Line, which is available 24/7. Cuyahoga County residents can call 216-861-5955. Ashtabula, Lake, Geauga, and Lorain County residents can call 440-210-4533. Callers should leave a detailed voicemail and a Legal Aid staff member will return the call in 1-2 days, between 9 A.M. and 5 P.M.

If you are facing eviction and need legal help, please call Legal Aid’s toll-free intake line at 888-817-3777. Legal Aid’s intake line is available in several other languages, including Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin and French. Visit lasclev.org/contact for those contact numbers or to apply for help online. The sooner you are in touch with Legal Aid, the more work an attorney may be able to do to protect your home.

Click here to read the full article in Lakewood Observer. 

Written by Shawn Donnan in Bloomberg Businessweek on 10/06/2020. 

From the outside, 11410 Clarebird Ave. looks like many homes in Cleveland’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood. The fading yellow siding and creaky front porch point to mild neglect. The grass in the front yard needs a trim. But on a street of aging, single-family homes in an area that for decades has been fighting a losing battle against economic decline, the three-bedroom house has a new story to tell: Calais Gathings, a nursing assistant who lost her job in the pandemic and fell behind on rent, has moved out.

A 23-minute drive away, in the leafy western suburb of Lakewood, Ohio, 17527 Daleview Drive tells a different story. Built in 1927, two years after the Clarebird home, the four-bedroom brick house with a gabled roof and neatly landscaped grounds was sold in August to newlyweds Nathan Hodge and Erica Schulstad for $319,500, more than the asking price.

The two Cleveland houses paint a stark picture of how the pandemic—and the recovery from the economic crisis it precipitated—are not only reinforcing but widening America’s inequalities. On the east side of town, in mostly Black neighborhoods with a high percentage of rental properties, tenants struggling with their rent are facing the prospect of eviction. On the west side, in wealthier and whiter neighborhoods filled with homeowners, housing prices are soaring.

The disparities are a legacy of decades of housing discrimination and the Great Migration of 6 million Black Americans from the South to then-thriving northern industrial cities. Cleveland, which went into the pandemic as the poorest of the 100 largest U.S. cities, is still reeling from the last financial crisis. It left a physical imprint in the vacant lots that turned some communities into checkerboards and a less visible one in the speculative churn that brought seven owners to the Clarebird house in a little more than two years.

Now a new crisis is widening the gap, and not just in Cleveland. Cities across the U.S. have been bracing for a wave of evictions as the pandemic disproportionately affects lower-wage workers. Politics are playing a role, too, with President Donald Trump promising to keep low-income housing out of the suburbs as he courts a constituency that polls show he is losing.

In an economic recovery that looks increasingly uneven, home ownership is a dividing line. When the U.S. Census Bureau asked 9.8 million people living in rented homes in September how likely they were to move out in the next two months because of an eviction, almost half, 45%, said they were somewhat or very likely to face that fate. A similar survey of 8.7 million people in owner-occupied homes found that fewer than 20% were worried about having to move as a result of foreclosure.

In Cleveland, as elsewhere, essential workers in the leisure, hospitality, and health-care industries bore the brunt of the pandemic—both the virus itself and its economic consequences. What’s also becoming clear is that the tentative recovery is exacerbating the race-linked inequalities that divide the two sides of the city. “The Cuyahoga River is like our Berlin Wall,” says Eric Morse, chief executive officer of the Centers for Families and Children, a Cleveland nonprofit that provides early education, employment training, and free health care to some of the city’s most vulnerable communities. The current crisis, he says, “is definitely accelerating inequality.”

Even if the $2 trillion federal Cares Act softened the economic blow for many Americans, the expiration of several key features has meant that the full impact of the crisis is only now materializing for the most vulnerable.  After a dip over the summer, the Cleveland Food Bank has started to see an increase in the number of cars lining up for weekly food distributions. It’s now feeding more than 2,000 households a week, 30% more than before the pandemic. At Morse’s nonprofit, social distancing guidelines have forced it to reduce the number of slots for children in the Head Start early education program by 40%.

But it is evictions that most worry people such as Morse. Housing plays a role in everything from wealth creation to health and education outcomes. A Case Western Reserve University study of almost 20,000 evictions in Cleveland from 2013 to 2016 found that they resulted not only in higher rates of housing instability but also in children missing more school and being tested less often for lead poisoning, a persistent problem in Cleveland associated with its aging housing stock. If a new wave of evictions washes over the city, it could unwind decades of work.

That hasn’t happened yet, thanks largely to an $18 million countywide rental-assistance program that has received applications from more than 6,000 tenants but is running out of money. The original funds came from the Cares Act; without further federal help for cities such as Cleveland, which have seen local tax revenues collapse during the crisis, the prospects for replenishing the program look dim. “I’m not sure that we are going to get through the end of the year with what we have available,” says Kevin Nowak, executive director of CHN Housing Partners, the nonprofit that runs the program.

A national moratorium on evictions announced Sept. 2 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has had little effect in Cleveland, partly because the initiative is so new but also because there’s no money behind it. By the end of September, only a dozen evictions in the city had been delayed because of the moratorium, according to the Cleveland Housing Court.

To Judge W. Moná Scott, who this year became the first Black woman to preside over the housing court, the pause on evictions ordered by the CDC just adds to the confusing, mixed messages that characterize the federal government’s pandemic response. The moratorium does nothing to help tenants resolve existing debts to landlords—or to stop those debts from mounting. “It’s not if they come and collect, it’s when they come and collect,” Scott says.

Scott is doing what she can to avoid or at least slow evictions, which are down substantially this year, largely because of the rental-assistance program. Of the 437 cases filed in August, only 164 resulted in eviction orders. The rest ended in some kind of mediation.

That’s what happened when Gathings showed up for a hearing on Sept. 4. It took place via a Zoom call, and she didn’t have a lawyer representing her. Still, just making an appearance was unusual. Even since hearings went online during the pandemic, only about 40% of tenants have argued their cases. Those who do often lack lawyers, despite a “right to counsel” rule Cleveland adopted in July that provides free legal help to tenants from households with minors. Scott asked Legal Aid in September to start having a lawyer available in all Zoom hearings to avoid situations like the one Gathings faced in her session.

Gathings didn’t seem to know she was entitled to a lawyer, or even that there was a moratorium, when questioned by Magistrate Mark Wiseman.

“Where would you go if you were evicted?” Wiseman asked.

“A shelter? I have nowhere to go. That’s why I need a couple of weeks to find somewhere to go,” Gathings answered.

Gathings had fallen behind on the rent after losing her job at a nursing home. Then her mother moved out, leaving her responsible for the full $900 a month. Gathings was back at work at the nursing home but earning less money than before and unable to pay her landlord. “I just can’t keep up with it,” Gathings told the magistrate. “It’s too much on my own.”

The landlord, identified only as BL US1 LLC, had a lawyer on the Zoom call who argued that Gathings wasn’t eligible for the CDC moratorium, which would have kept her in her home at least until January. He said she hadn’t applied for government help or rental assistance. Wiseman agreed. It was all over in 4 minutes and 45 seconds. To avoid a forced eviction, which would have led to bailiffs piling her belongings on the curb, Gathings later agreed to move out by Sept. 25.

What no one said that day was that when BL US1 bought 11410 Clarebird for $65,150 a year ago, the Ohio-registered company became its 13th owner since 1975. The house had sold for $93,000 in 2004 and bounced around among home flippers after the subprime mortgage crisis. In one 28-day stretch last year culminating with the Sept. 17, 2019, sale to BL US1, ownership changed four times, all among limited liability companies, according to property records. BL US1 bought the house from another LLC, Immobilier Cleveland, that purchased it earlier the same day for $49,000 and recorded a 32% gain in a matter of hours.

Both Immobilier Cleveland and BL US1 are linked to Thibaut Gueant, whose Aventura, Fla,-based property firm, Invest US, caters to French investors looking to buy Cleveland real estate. The Clarebird house, Gueant says, was one of about 150 his firm sold over the past 18 months to individuals drawn by Cleveland’s low prices and high rental returns. Immobilier Cleveland was his company, and BL US1 belonged to a French client he declines to identify. The gap between the sales prices last September was meant to cover the cost to his firm of a one-year guarantee on rent and repairs that he offers to investors. The $900 a month Gathings paid to live in the Clarebird house provides a gross annual return in line with the 15% to 17% typical of his other Cleveland properties. “It’s pretty nice,” he says.

Zach Germaniuk, a housing lawyer at a nonprofit in Slavic Village, a neighborhood near Mount Pleasant, says investor-driven churn in deprived communities has perpetuated both the decline of some neighborhoods and Cleveland’s race-based economic inequality. “We’re one of the most heavily segregated cities in the country,” Germaniuk says. “Real estate is really the centerpiece of that tragic history.”

Ten days before Gathings got on the Zoom call that would decide her fate, Hodge and Schulstad closed on their house at 17527 Daleview Drive. The two tech company employees—he’s a software architect, she’s an engineer—met at work and were married in July. They toured the house for the first time three hours after the listing went online and found it had almost everything they were looking for, including a front porch that could house the swinging couch they had been hankering for since Reese Witherspoon posted pictures of hers on Instagram in 2019.

They made an offer an hour later and followed up with a letter pleading their case and saying they would add $10,000 to the asking price. They won the bidding over a half-dozen other buyers just days before their wedding and closed on the deal Aug. 25. “We were racing, racing, racing,” Hodge says. “We didn’t want to miss this opportunity.”

The price of the house was more than double the $143,500 the previous owner paid in 2011. That’s a testament to the value of suburban economic stability and of how a recovery fueled by the Federal Reserve and low interest rates is inflating the price of assets such as suburban homes and the stock market.

The median sales price of homes in Lakewood was up 11% in July from the previous year, to $227,000, with houses on the market for an average of 26 days, down from 39 days in July 2019, according to data provided by property site Redfin. In Gathings’s 44105 ZIP code, the median sales price in July was also up 11%—though to only $36,000. In other predominantly Black ZIP codes nearby, prices have tumbled 20% or more over the past year, according to Redfin.

Julie Weist, a Cleveland real estate agent, says the rapid drop in mortgage rates this year, driven by the Fed’s response to the crisis—along with a shortage of properties—has turned the city’s western suburbs into the hottest seller’s market she has seen in three decades in the business. “The pandemic really has not slowed anybody down,” she says.

Weist helped tech entrepreneur Mitch Bihuniak sell a three-bedroom colonial in the suburb of Rocky River in August for $457,500, almost twice what he and his wife paid for it in 2013. She also helped them trade up to a five-bedroom, Tudor-style house closer to Lake Erie, bought for $560,000. One motivation was finding a quieter street for his daughter, who turns 5 in October. Another was that they were able to get a mortgage at 2.85%. “It’s insane,” Bihuniak says.

The disparity in house prices on the two sides of the city reinforces Cleveland’s wealth gap. People such as Bihuniak and the newlyweds are doing fine. Hodge and Schulstad both work from home, and the pandemic has had little impact on their professional lives or incomes. “We’re fortunate to be relatively safe in our work environment,” Hodge says. “It’s weird that the housing market is so crazy, but people want more space, and interest rates are so low.”

But for renters on the east side, the pandemic has been crueler. At least one-third of tenants who inhabit the 900 affordable housing units managed by the Famicos Foundation in the neighborhoods of Hough and Glenville are behind on their rent, says John Anoliefo, the nonprofit’s executive director. Almost two dozen haven’t paid any rent since March, he says.

That has cast a shadow over long-term efforts to address the area’s glut of abandoned properties, aging housing stock, and homeownership rates of only about 30%. It also presents a conundrum for an organization helping people secure long-term housing. “My goal is to work with my tenants to avoid even going to court,” Anoliefo says.

Neither the volume of eviction cases nor the number of people receiving rental assistance reflect the true scale of what’s happening, says Hazel Remesch, who oversees Legal Aid’s housing team in Cleveland. Remesch says lack of knowledge and representation are not uncommon. That makes her worry about what comes next. “We are absolutely looking out at a crisis,” she says.

For Don Fenderson, a retired guidance counselor who started investing in rental properties in the east side neighborhoods of Glenville, Collinwood, and Mount Pleasant in the early 2000s, buying them at sheriff’s auctions, that crisis is already visible. One-third of his 21 tenants are behind on the rent, he says, and “one person hasn’t paid for three months.” The only ones who aren’t behind are those whose rent is paid by the federal government as part the Section 8 subsidized housing program for low-income Americans. Even those tenants, Fenderson says, are struggling to come up with the small amount of rent they contribute, and the houses that he bought two decades ago are worth less than he paid for them.

“I’m okay for now,” Fenderson says. “But long term, it’s definitely curtailed some of the way that I am used to living. It was so easy to buy houses, and I probably jumped in too far.”

Gathings declined to comment when a reporter knocked on the door of her Clarebird home after her court appearance. She moved out before the Sept. 25 deadline, which means the eviction won’t be logged on her record or affect her credit. She later texted to say she found a new place to live.

On the housing court Zoom call, Gathings made clear she was hoping for some help and a new start. “I tried for everything,” she said, “and I wasn’t getting approved for anything. It’s out of control.”

At 11410 Clarebird, the search for a new tenant is already underway. Gueant says the house is one of about 20 managed by his firm that have been involved in eviction proceedings this year, a number that increased as a result of the pandemic. The evictions are taking longer to move through the courts, he says, but it’s a cost of business his investors are willing to bear. Finding a new tenant shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks. “The market is very dynamic,” he says. “We still have a lot of opportunities there in Cleveland. It’s just a matter of transitioning back to normal.”

Click here to read the full article in Bloomberg Businessweek. 

Written by Danilo Powell-Lima in The Collinwood Observer on 10/01/2020.

On September 2nd, The Center for Disease Control (CDC) issued an order temporarily banning some evictions to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

This law is not applied automatically, and is not a rent forgiveness program – tenants will still have to pay rent once the Order expires on December 31, 2020. The law also only covers tenants who fit a certain set of requirements. Tenants must continue to comply with the terms of their lease as well as federal, state, and local laws.

Tenants who want the protection of this law must demonstrate that they qualify and ask for the protection. A tenant can do this by completing a Declaration Form and presenting this form to his or her landlord. Every adult listed on the lease must complete a Declaration Form and give a copy of the form to the landlord. Tenants should keep a photocopy of the completed Declaration Form for their own records.

To qualify for protection, a tenant must be able to say that all five of the following statements are true:

1. The tenant has made a sincere effort to get all available government assistance for rent or housing.
2. The tenant either:

• •  Received a CARES Act stimulus check;
  • Was not required to report any income in 2019 to the IRS; or
  • Expects to earn no more than $99,000 in the calendar year 2020 (or no more than $198,000 if filing a joint tax return).

1. The tenant cannot pay the full rent because of a significant loss of household income (fewer work hours, lower wages, a lay-off) or extraordinary out-of-pocket expenses.
2. The tenant is using his or her best efforts to make timely partial payments in the largest amount possible as their circumstances permit.
3. An eviction would likely make the tenant homeless or force a move into close quarters with other people (e.g. doubling up with friends or family, or living in a shelter).

Tenants may need to prove that they gave a copy of the Declaration Form to their landlord. Legal Aid suggests tenants ask their landlord to initial the tenant copy of the form, or give the form to their landlord with a witness present.

Visit lasclev.org/cdc-eviction-moratorium for more important information on the Order and for a link to a fillable Declaration Form.

Tenants with housing questions can always call Legal Aid’s Tenant Information Line, which is available 24/7. Cuyahoga County residents can call 216-861-5955. Ashtabula, Lake, Geauga, and Lorain County residents can call 440-210-4533. Callers should leave a detailed voicemail and a Legal Aid staff member will return the call in 1-2 days, between 9 A.M. and 5 P.M.

If you are facing eviction and need legal help, please call Legal Aid’s toll-free intake line at 888-817-3777. Legal Aid’s intake line is available in several other languages, including Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin and French. Visit lasclev.org/contact for those contact numbers or to apply for help online. The sooner you are in touch with Legal Aid, the more work an attorney may be able to do to protect your home.

If you live in Cleveland, are facing eviction, and have at least one child in your home, you may qualify for free eviction help. Visit freeevictionhelp.org for more information.

Click here to read the full article in The Collinwood Observer. 

Written by Lisa Ryan in ideastream on 09/30/2020.

Cleveland Housing Partners (CHN) has distributed about $1.2 million in aid to tenants facing eviction due to the coronavirus pandemic, with $11.2 million more in requests.

Kevin Nowak, CHN executive director, told a Cleveland Housing Court panel Tuesday some landlords and tenants are not open to accepting the help.

“Some of it is an education process, particularly on the tenant side, also on the landlord side,” Nowak said. “Sometimes the landlord is not interested in taking the assistance.”

Some of the assistance offered requires inspections, which is a disincentive for some landlords, he said.

The city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County have set aside $18 million in coronavirus aid for eviction prevention.

Since eviction is a civil matter, many tenants across the country don’t have access to free legal aid. The city of Cleveland changed that by passing legislation last year that guarantees tenants have the right to free legal help during evictions, but there are still barriers due to the pandemic, said Hazel Remesch of the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.

Legal Aid this week started appearing at every virtual eviction docket to screen tenants for eligibility for free legal aid and rental assistance.

“We’ve had to pivot quite a bit,” Remesch said. “We’re in an era where we believed we’d be in court physically, we’ve now had to pivot to virtually doing all the hearings, which is a whole new way of practicing.”

Access to the internet and confusion over how to access Zoom meetings is a barrier for some tenants, Remesch said.

Most people who apply for rental assistance walk away with some money, said Nowak. He said of the $1.2 million distributed, all of those tenants are “housing stable,” meaning they have resolved financial issues with their landlord.

Those who apply with an eviction status or pending eviction status are given priority, he said.

The September 29 discussion was part of a Cleveland Housing court’s panel entitled “From Confusion to Clarity: Understanding Cleveland Housing Court, the Pandemic, and the CDC’s Eviction Moratorium.”

Click here to read the full article in ideastream.

Interview conducted on 09/29/2020 on Facebook Live. 

Sam Sylk speaks with Anastasia Elder, attorney at The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland and Andrew Katusin from the United Way of Greater Cleveland. The three speak about access to housing support, Cleveland’s new “Right To Counsel” legislation, the CDC Eviction Moratorium, tenants’ rights, and more.

Click here to listen to the full interview on Facebook. 

Written by Karlynn Wells in Spectrum News 1 on 09/25/2020. 

Michael Anderson has called Cleveland his home all of his life. He says he has experienced a lot of things, and now he’s at risk of experiencing homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What You Need To Know

• Evictions are still happening across the state of Ohio at unprecedented rates as a result of COVID-19
• Organizations are advocating for housing stability for the city’s most vulnerable populations
• According to Evictionlab.org, over 57 percent of homes in Cleveland are rented and the current eviction rate in the city is over 4.5 percent

Anderson, like many people across the country and in Northeast Ohio, are struggling with navigating the COVID-19 crisis.

“It’s impacted our lives and changes from doing what we need to do to survive —that’s eating and everything! Food has went up since the virus. We cannot find toilet paper or paper towels or bleach or nothing like that,” Anderson said.

Anderson, who is a Navy veteran, says unfortunately he has experienced homelessness before, but this time, he’s fighting not only to stay in his Euclid Beach-area apartment, but he feels like he is fighting for his life.

“If you get evicted, it’s really hard. If a person gets evicted and you become homeless, you have to go downtown to the men’s shelter on 2100, or the ladies shelter over on Payne. I got to shower down here, I got to sit down and eat, I got to sleep with these people. I can contract the disease that quick,” he said.

According to Evictionlab.org, a site that makes nationwide eviction data publicly available, over 57 percent of homes in Cleveland are rented and the current eviction rate in the city is over 4.5 percent. The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland is representing many tenants, including Anderson, who are caught in the eviction crisis which has been made worse by COVID-19.

“End of March, spanning through mid-June, we saw many courts closing down, you know, the majority of their work, including evictions, but we didn’t see our work subside at all. The number of calls for people with housing issues stayed the same and then increased since then, so now we’re at about 39 percent more calls average, in comparison to a year ago,” said Abigail Staudt, of the Legal Aid society of Cleveland

Staudt is the managing attorney of the Housing Group for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. She says many tenants that end up getting evicted do so because they don’t know their rights.

“Defenses that tenants may have that they’re not aware of. So, navigating that on one’s own, which, you know, most tenants are doing, actually leaves them vulnerable for eviction, when maybe they had a great defense and they just didn’t know it,” Staudt said.

In early September, the CDC issued a new order, effective through December 31, 2020, that provides protection from eviction to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. Staudt says the order hasn’t stopped enough evictions from being filed, and adds that a temporary eviction moratorium won’t protect tenants long term.

“The halt of the eviction is great. Without sort of the companion part of rent assistance for those families and for those households, we are, we are gearing up for a very very difficult beginning of 2021. This is the time where we need our federal government to support the housing stability of, I don’t know, 50 to 60 percent of our community,” she said.

Click here to read the full article in Spectrum News 1. 

Written by Sam Allard in Cleveland Scene on 09/23/2020.

In early September, a spokesperson for the Cleveland Housing Court told Scene that the court’s legal team was “working to interpret” the recent federal moratorium on evictions issued by the Center for Disease Control.

That moratorium, issued Sept. 1, should be in effect through the end of the year, but housing advocates have worried that because the order was issued with no prior warning, additional direction was needed from local and state governments.

The moratorium was criticized on other grounds as well. The president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition called it a “half-measure” that merely extends “a financial cliff for renters to fall off of when the moratorium expires and back rent is owed.”

According to the CDC, the order was issued to prevent the spread of Covid-19, especially in shelters where mass evictions could lead to overcrowding. But in communities across the country, renters and landlords are still scrambling to understand what it means for them.

In Cleveland, housing court judge Mona Scott recognized the need to provide clarity. She has organized a panel to explain the confusing situation and how her court will proceed. Scott will be joined Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. by her leadership team on the court; Colleen Cotter, the executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland; Kevin Nowak, executive director of CHN Housing Partners; and Ayonna Blue Donald, Director of the Cleveland Department of Building and Housing. The panel will be moderated by Cleveland.com columnist Leila Atassi.

Those interested in the panel can register online — see the flyer above — or watch on Facebook Live.

Click here to read the full article in Cleveland Scene. 

Molly Banks (name changed to protect client privacy) was temporarily unable to work at her job at a daycare around the time of the statewide quarantine orders. Several weeks later she was called back to work when daycare was officially considered an “essential service.” As a single mother, she was unable to find childcare for her own young children and was therefore not able to return to work. This led to a discontinuation of her unemployment compensation.

Molly called Legal Aid for help and was referred to a volunteer attorney through the Virtual Advice Clinic. The attorney, a new volunteer, informed Molly that while the denial would be expected under normal circumstances, she should still be entitled to benefits through the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act.  The volunteer worked with her to develop an action plan to appeal the decision and apply for relief under the CARES Act. Molly began receiving her unemployment benefits as well as the extra $600 a week of Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC). These benefits have been Molly’s sole source of financial support during the pandemic.

Susan Steels, 70, is one of the millions of Americans who lost their job due to the coronavirus pandemic. She worked for many years in the event industry – planning weddings and then working for a catering company –  but was laid off when stay-at-home orders were introduced in March.

Susan applied for unemployment benefits right away. For weeks and then months, she went back and forth with the administration, and was denied multiple times without any clue as to was wrong with her application. Anxiety mounted as the weeks went by and her mortgage, car, and utility bills piled up. Then, her best friend suggested she call Legal Aid.

A Legal Aid attorney got right to work on Susan’s case.  He advocated on her behalf and worked with the unemployment administration to get Susan the money she was owed.  Thanks to Legal Aid, Susan now is receiving her benefits as well as back payments for the weeks she spent lost in the system.

“They worked everything out with me,” says Susan. “I really can’t say enough about Legal Aid.”

Written by Leila Atassi in Cleveland.com on 09/19/2020.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Less than two months after taking the bench, Cleveland Housing Court Judge W. Moná Scott found herself in March grappling with how to adapt her docket to the social distancing requirements of the coronavirus pandemic and bracing for an avalanche of eviction filings propelled by a suddenly failing economy.

Since then, Scott has held hearings online, with an eye toward making sure defendants can access their cases despite the digital divide. Meanwhile, on the heels of a 90-day moratorium on eviction filings in Cleveland, the city launched its long-anticipated “right to counsel” program in July, providing free legal representation for families in poverty who are facing eviction.

For Scott, drawing all of that together has been the challenge of a lifetime, as the housing court sits at the fulcrum of one of the worst consequences of the pandemic’s recession – housing insecurity.

After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced earlier this month yet another eviction moratorium, this time nationwide, I had a chance to catch up with Scott about the challenges of implementing the new federal order, the early successes and setbacks of the city’s Right to Counsel program, and the impact of government rental assistance on the housing court caseload, mid-pandemic.

Here’s what Scott had to say:

Compassion and rental assistance

Coming out of the citywide eviction moratorium, the court had capped eviction filings to 125 a day to hold back the surge and let the court catch up on the backlog of cases that had been in the queue for months. Surprisingly, however, Scott says the court never saw the record-breaking number of filings everyone predicted. She attributes that to a combination of factors – compassionate landlords willing to reach out-of-court agreements with tenants during tough times and the availability of rental assistance from the federal government.

The city and Cuyahoga County received $18.1 million in federal rental assistance to be disbursed to those facing financial hardship on account of the pandemic. About $3 million of that has been paid out or is being processed, according to CHN Housing Partners, which is administering the funds and handling the application process. That means a considerable sum remains on the table.

It’s hard to believe, Scott said, but many tenants still aren’t aware of the available assistance or they view the application process as too cumbersome during an already stressful time.

“In my years of working in housing issues, rarely have I seen government money available to pay rent. But I want to tell people, if it’s there, take advantage of it. If you’re unemployed and can’t make ends meet and there’s money available to keep a roof over your head, get it. Because if you let it pass you by, it’s not if this eviction happens, it’s when.”

Federal eviction moratorium

Scott said the federal eviction moratorium provides a cushion for many tenants who are waiting for rental assistance to come through or getting started at a new job and need a little more time to catch up on rent. Eligibility, however, hinges on several criteria that leave much gray area for the court’s discretion. And arriving at policy that governs the implementation of the federal order has been a challenge because magistrates must determine to what degree each defendant has met the qualifications.

For example, to qualify, tenants must file a declaration with their landlord affirming that they have “used best efforts to obtain government assistance for rent or housing” and are unable to pay rent due to a COVID-19-related hardship. They also must attest to having “used best efforts” to make as close to full rent payments as possible, and that eviction would likely render them homeless or leave them no option but to share close quarters with others.

All of those factors leave room for dispute, and Scott said the court already is hearing arguments from the attorneys of landlords trying to disqualify tenants.

In exercising discretion, Scott said, the court finds itself in the difficult position of balancing the public health concerns of widespread eviction during the pandemic against the need to make landlords whole and protect them from losing their livelihood. She also worries that many tenants don’t understand that the temporary halt to the eviction process is not the same as rent forgiveness. All back rent will come due when the moratorium ends on Dec. 31 — which also happens to be during the coldest, most brutal season to end up evicted or homeless.

The Right to Counsel

Scott applauded the efforts of attorneys from the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland for their work on the city’s Right to Counsel program, which offers legal representation to tenants who are facing eviction while at or below the poverty line with at least one child living in the household.

To my surprise, however, Scott said she has not noticed a significant uptick in tenants participating in their cases. And still too many who should qualify for an attorney free of charge are falling through the cracks, unaware of the program’s existence.

In part, Scott blames the pandemic. If these were normal times, she noted, a Legal Aid attorney would be physically stationed at the courthouse, talking with tenants and screening those who might qualify for free representation. Making those connections is much more difficult in virtual hearings.

To help bridge that divide, Scott said she has suggested that Legal Aid attorneys sit in on every virtual docket, where they can request private discussions with potential clients. She also said she has encouraged Legal Aid to “meet people where they are” — to promote the Right to Counsel program in places such as free food distribution sites and COVID-19 testing locations, rather than relying on traditional outreach methods and mailers.

“If I’m African-American, and I’m poor, and I’m stressed and depressed and dealing with a pandemic, and now I’m facing an eviction, do you really think I’m reading the summons that’s coming in the mail, telling me my court date?” Scott said. “Do you really think I’ll open the door when I see a white person knocking to give me information about my right to counsel? You must get to the point of meeting people where they are. Because traditional ways do not touch people in poverty.”

A spokeswoman for Legal Aid said the agency promotes the Right to Counsel program at grocery stores and libraries, in radio ads and with flyers in all Cleveland Food Bank boxes distributed since the pandemic began. She added that Legal Aid embraces the notion of stationing attorneys on every magistrate’s docket and is thrilled to hear that the judge will accommodate that in the future.

Click here to read the full article in Cleveland.com

Written in Business Wire in 09/10/2020.

United Way of Greater Cleveland today hosted its first-ever Virtual Annual Community Meeting, convening local and national leaders to discuss poverty, systemic racism and the ongoing effects of the coronavirus pandemic on Greater Clevelanders.fnew

Russ Mitchell, news anchor and managing editor at 3News – WKYC Studios in Cleveland, hosted the event where Wes Moore, CEO of Robin Hood Foundation, one of the nation’s largest and most effective anti-poverty forces in the nation, delivered the keynote address.

Moore shared his personal experiences fighting the root causes of poverty and how employing common-sense solutions can help change one of the greatest threats to our country.

“Poverty is a choice. But it’s not the choice of the individual or the family that is feeling the oppressive weight of poverty,” said Moore. “It’s our choice. It’s society’s choice. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that poverty costs our nation anywhere between $800 billion and $1.1 trillion a year in lost productivity, criminal justice costs and reparative initiatives. This is not something that has no impact on us; it has an impact on every one of us.”

A panel of leaders joined Moore to discuss the unique problems Greater Cleveland faces, based on their extensive experience working in public, private and nonprofit sectors to tackle the root causes of poverty, including housing instability, and the solutions necessary to identify, alleviate and end the cycle of generational poverty:

• Toby Cosgrove, MD, distinguished chair of United Way of Greater Cleveland’s Impact Institute and executive advisor at the Cleveland Clinic and Google Cloud Healthcare and Life Sciences
• Bill Lacey, president & CEO of GE Lighting, a Savant company
• Marsha A. Mockabee, president & CEO of the Urban League of Greater Cleveland

Cosgrove discussed the progress made by United Way’s Impact Institute since its launch last June, including right to counsel legislation enacted on July 1, 2020 and the key, cross-sector partnerships necessary to advance the law. Cleveland families living at or below the federal poverty line across Cleveland and facing eviction now have the right to free legal counsel through The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.

Lacey shared how the pandemic and the modern-day Civil Rights movement has brought a sense of urgency to solve the issues facing Clevelanders. Lacey noted that the fuel that will be needed to solve these issues is a spirit of endurance and collaboration, and one step GE Lighting is taking is to help bridge the digital divide by providing computers and Broadband internet access to those who need them.

Mockabee echoed Lacey’s sentiments by stressing that collaboration is in the DNA of the Urban League of Greater Cleveland. Mockabee also discussed the collaborative work done by the Racism as a Public Health Crisis working group, highlighting the Urban League’s role in eliminating poverty, as well as its focus on the issues of education and making a living wage possible for more Clevelanders.

Augie Napoli, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Cleveland, unveiled a comprehensive Community Assessment report, completed in partnership with the Center for Community Solutions. The report includes significant data and statistics that illustrate the decades-long poverty crisis in Greater Cleveland, which has been further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. An executive summary and the full report are available at unitedwaycleveland.org/community.

Napoli reiterated the organization’s continued commitment to advancing its race, diversity, equity and inclusion work.

“Cleveland is at a tipping point. Among the 50 largest cities in the nation, we rank worst in child poverty. Cleveland is second from the bottom in poverty for the working poor, and we have the third worst record for seniors in poverty in the nation. United Way of Greater Cleveland will not accept this as a reality,” said Napoli. “Data shows that systemic racism has magnified the hardships for the Black and brown members of our community.”

“Through collaboration and coordination, we will measure our work against a specific set of goals United Way will set by concentrating on specific areas of work within the three most vulnerable populations in Greater Cleveland: children, the working poor and seniors,” Napoli continued. “This framework for agency investments will activate in 2021, and we will place a strong emphasis in our grant-making on minority-led organizations serving minority populations.”

Napoli added, “Because of your generosity and commitment, our fundraising efforts this year raised close to $30 million. The dollars you give are being used to fund essentials for our neighbors in need and our 2-1-1 HelpLink, a free, confidential and 24/7 resource which connects thousands seeking food, shelter and other needs to survive with real-time help.”

Consider what $1 million can do for children, working poor and senior citizens in Cleveland. In 2021, United Way of Greater Cleveland will dedicate work within the Community Hub for Basic Needs to the following goals:

• To further aid the 51% of Cleveland’s children living in poverty, United Way will provide school readiness programs to 5,000 children for every $1 million donated.
• To further aid the 30% of Cleveland’s working poor, United Way will provide 1,000 adults with programs to help them access and maintain living-wage jobs to build stable families for every $1 million donated.
• To further aid the 22% of Cleveland’s seniors living in poverty, United Way will provide 5,000 seniors with food and other basic needs services for every $1 million donated.

“United Way is on a different path, a more agile path, the right path for all Greater Clevelanders,” said United Way of Greater Cleveland Board Chair Paul Dolan. “We have become a much more nimble and efficient organization that is better prepared to step up and stand up to meet the needs within our community — now and into the future. Because of the significant changes we have made to the way we operate, our organization was ready to answer the call to help the community in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which created a crisis upon a crisis within our community.”

Photos and interviews available on request.

Learn more at unitedwaycleveland.org.

Click here to read the full article in Business Wire. 

Written by Joe Pagonakis in News 5 Cleveland on 09/08/2020.

Local legal and housing experts report there are still too many northeast Ohio tenants facing eviction who still aren’t sure how to apply for the federal eviction moratorium, established by the Centers for Disease Control, established on Sept. 4.

Melanie Shakarian with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland told News 5 tenants who have questions about filling out the declaration form should contact legal aid or the United Way’s 211 Helplink system.

Shakarian said tenants need to submit the declaration form to their landlords to see if they qualify to suspend rent payments and eviction proceedings until Dec. 31, 2020.

She said tenants must meet the following qualifications:

• Making less than $198,000 this year as a couple or $99,000 as a single person.
• Trying to obtain rental assistance through various government programs.
• Being unable to pay rent because of job loss, reduced hours, or large medical bills.
• The risk of becoming homeless if evicted.

Shakarian said tenants should keep a copy of their eviction moratorium declaration form and other supporting documents, so they are prepared if they face eviction in housing court, once the moratorium is lifted.

“People shouldn’t be intimidated by the forms, it’s a one or two-page declaration,” Shakarian said.

“Keeping copies of things like applications for rent assistance, acknowledgments that you applied, applications for public housing, applications for unemployment, keeping proof you’re enrollment in government benefits.”

Shakarian said tenants also need to work with their landlords in creating a rent payment plan that works for both sides once the eviction moratorium is over.

Molly Martin with the Northeast Ohio Coalition For the Homeless told News 5 her agency is once again hosting its “Housing 101” webinar series, starting on Sept. 10.

Martin said tenants facing eviction are scrambling to find the information they need during the on-going pandemic, that 1500 new eviction has been filed since the City of Cleveland lifted its eviction moratorium in June.

“Education is key because the onus ultimately falls on the renter, who will have to provide documentation, to prove they are struggling financially,” Martin said.

“That only demonstrates the need for Congress and even local officials to have the authority to provide financial assistance.”

“People who are calling, not really knowing what they actually need to show in order to qualify, is that the guidance isn’t really clear.”

Martin said tenants searching for local rental assistance can apply for funding currently being administrated by CHN Housing Partners.

Click here to read the full article in News 5 Cleveland.

Written by Lisa Ryan in ideastream on 09/08/2020.

Carrie Davis, who lives in an apartment in the Buckeye-Woodland area of Cleveland’s east side, said she’s confused about whether she can get evicted by her landlord.

“One of my neighbors told me they seen on the news where he can’t evict me, but I can’t tell because I got my eviction court papers with me now,” Davis said.

Davis tried to call the Cleveland Housing Court to find out if she’ll be allowed to stay until she finds a new place, but said the court had not yet returned her call.

Cleveland Housing Court officials, however, told ideastream Tuesday they plan to fully enforce the Trump administration’s eviction moratorium that went into effect Sept. 4, for eligible tenents.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued the order, which forbids evictions through Dec.31 for many tenants who are unable to pay rent, as part of efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19.

In order to avoid eviction, eligible tenants will need to provide the required declaration, to landlords showing they meet specific criteria, such as having lost wages due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tenets will still need to pay rent, or they will owe back rent and face eviction after the moratorium ends.

The Cleveland Housing Court’s staff attorneys and legal team are working to understand the details of the CDC order to enforce it properly, according to the court’s spokesperson Jayah Watters-Clark. The court didn’t answer media questions until after the weekend, and Watters-Clark said that was so the team could fully look over the order.

It is possible that many people are not aware that help is available, because the federal mandate has not been widely publicized, Watters-Clark said.

“We’re not authorized to provide tenants with legal advice,” Watters-Clark said. “I have seen that some of our magistrates are asking if they provided their landlords with the declaration form and if they say no, then they just move on.”

While the moratorium will help tenants in the short-term, there needs to be continued rental assistance to help tenants and landlords, said Melanie Shakarian, director of development and communications at The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.

“A moratorium with rent assistance is the most effective way to ensure housing stability and safety for tenants, but then also a really solid footing for the landlord business community,” Shakarian said.

Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland also have a rental assistance program to help those who are struggling to pay rent due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Watters-Clark said.

Click here to read the full article in ideastream. 

Written by Eric Heisig in Cleveland.com on 09/07/2020. 

The Trump administration’s order that could help millions avoid eviction might put many landlords in a bad financial situation.

The order announced last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention forbids evictions through Dec. 31 for many tenants who are unable to pay rent.

One problem with the order is that the administration did not attach any money to offset the landlords’ lost income if a tenant does not pay their rent, local advocates say. Instead, renters are still on this hook for any back rent when the order expires in December, leaving landlords to chase money from people who might still not have the means to pay their rent, plus all the rent accrued over the months while the order was in effect.

Ralph McGreevy, executive vice president of the Northern Ohio Apartment Association, called the order “an aggressive reach into a business’ cash flow.” He said it would hurt smaller landlords who own a few properties, possibly leading to foreclosures on houses or buildings.

“It doesn’t offer the landlord anything except (saying that) you cannot evict these people,” McGreevy said. “Most of them can’t afford to have tenants who aren’t paying the rent.”

The order lets tenants avoid eviction for nonpayment by presenting a declaration to their landlords if they meet specific criteria, which are broad and focus on people who have lost wages or their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The order intends to stave off a wave of evictions that many feared would come as federal stimulus benefits expire. It is similar in reach to many moratoriums enacted by local and state governments at the beginning of the pandemic that since lapsed. It came as President Donald Trump is engaged in a fierce re-election campaign against former Vice President Joe Biden.

Even tenants’ advocates expressed mixed feelings about the order. They said it was good that many renters who cannot pay rent will not get evicted for the next few months. However, the order says the amount of unpaid rent continues to accrue, which advocates fear could lead to significant money judgments when the moratorium expires.

Landlords and their representatives are unequivocally bothered by the order, though, as it could mean that landlords lose money and cannot to do anything about it.

Middleburg Heights attorney Edward Kasputis, who frequently represents landlords in court, noted that landlords can still seek eviction of tenants for reasons other than not paying rent. However, he acknowledged that nonpayment is the most prevalent reason landlords seek to evict renters.

Kasputis noted that landlords have their own mortgages and bills to pay.

“I feel bad for landlords in this time of uncertainty,” he said. “They’re experiencing a huge wealth transfer.”

In discussing the order, McGreevy also said rental assistance would have been helpful. Such assistance, which was not included as part of the CDC’s order, is obtained by tenants but also benefits landlords. Nonprofits administering an $18.1 million rental assistance program send checks for approved applications directly to the landlords in Cuyahoga County.

The county and city of Cleveland still have money available for rental assistance, which the federal government sent as part of a stimulus bill, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit CHN Housing Partners noted.

A spokeswoman for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, which frequently represents tenants facing eviction, also noted that landlords’ financial well-being is crucial for people to maintain housing.

“Rent assistance is needed to ensure rent payments continue to be paid to landlords. Without rent assistance to help fund this order, many tenants will face an insurmountable rent burden when the moratorium lifts,” the spokeswoman said. “Also, there will be a profound impact on many landlords’ ability to continue their business.”

Click here to read the full article in Cleveland.com 

Written by Eric Heisig in Cleveland.com on 09/03/2020.

Local advocates for landlords and tenants are worried about how unprecedented action President Donald Trump’s administration took this week to halt evictions until the end of the year will play out.

Even housing advocates felt the directive was a mixed bag. While happy that more people may not lose their homes in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and the corresponding recession, they said the administration’s order postpones the inevitable and could leave many tenants in debt, owing even more money to their landlords in the end.

“Even if it works as it’s laid out, by January all these tenants would have a great big pile of rent due,” Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio Executive Director Bill Faith said.

The order also left local municipal court judges scrambling to figure out how to implement it, since they ultimately decide who gets evicted in Cuyahoga County. A spokesman for the Ohio Supreme Court said guidance for the lower courts was forthcoming on the topic, and several judges told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer that things would have to change quickly.

The surprise new directive announced Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention forbids evictions through Dec. 31 for a large swath of renters who meet specific criteria. The Trump administration’s action, a sweeping directive it maintains is legal, comes as the president is in a fierce campaign to win re-election against Vice President Joe Biden.

Barring any court action, the CDC’s directive goes into effect Friday.

Criteria include:

• Making less than $198,000 this year as a couple or $99,000 as a single person.
• Trying to obtain rental assistance through various government programs.
• Being unable to pay rent because of job loss, reduced hours or large medical bills.
• The risk of becoming homeless if evicted.

The order says eligible tenants should give their landlord a declaration, attesting that they meet the requirements and are trying to pay as much rent as possible.

It only disallows evictions for people facing their circumstances because they are unable to pay rent. If a landlord wants a tenant out for other reasons, such as crimes or property damage, an eviction case can still proceed.

The CDC’s action is similar to those taken by cities, counties, states and courts when the pandemic spread across the country rapidly in March. Many enacted months-long moratoriums on evictions for fear that the high unemployment rate would quickly translate into tenants not having enough money to pay rent. The federal government had also barred evictions for properties in which federal money was involved, such as a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgage.

Most of those measures expired. Advocates have warned that courts could be inundated with eviction cases because a coronavirus stimulus bill lapsed, and both Congress and the president have failed to agree on a new bill.

Housing advocates said Wednesday that they were happy to learn that the government recognized the negative consequences on a tenant’s health if evicted. At the same time, they noted that the order explicitly says that tenants still owe rent in the coming months.

“It’s not the best way to address the problem, but hopefully it can provide a little breathing room,” Faith said.

Still, unpaid rent is why housing advocates have pushed for federal money to go toward assistance programs. They say the new moratorium is problematic without it.

“While an eviction moratorium is an important tool to fight the spread of COVID, it is only one half of an important equation,” a spokeswoman for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, which frequently represents people facing eviction, said in a statement. “An eviction moratorium needs to be developed in partnership with rent assistance, so landlords can be made whole, and tenants do not find themselves at the precipice of a financial cliff when the moratorium expires.”

It’s also why landlords want the same thing. Rental assistance means landlords get paid what they’re owed, which allows them to pay mortgages, taxes and other costs associated with owning property.

“For the small landlords it’s a disaster,” Ralph McGreevy of the Northern Ohio Apartment Association said. “Let’s face it: the federal government is issuing edicts that (landlords) have to swallow and hasn’t offered any compensation.”

While the directive clarifies what tenants must do, like presenting a declaration to their landlord, it still leaves many questions about how it will work in practice. For example, it’s unclear how the requirement to seek rental assistance will comport with programs the city of Cleveland and the county set up for people to apply for just that.

The program has a combined $18.1 million for assistance and still has money left for applicants to seek. A spokeswoman for CHN Housing Partners, which administers the program along with EDEN, said Wednesday that 5,091 have applied for rental assistance since the program went live on July 1.

The applicants seek more than $8.5 million in rental assistance combined. Of that, city residents requested $3.85 million, and about $4.7 million from county residents outside Cleveland.

The spokeswoman cautioned that the numbers represent the money requested and not the money approved. She said the program could pay out about $1.5 million by next week.

Still, many of the disputes over what the order says, and does not say, will fall into the laps of judges who hear eviction cases.

A spokeswoman for the Cleveland Housing Court, which handles the most eviction cases of any court in the county, said staff was researching the CDC’s order and that she was unable to comment.

Other suburban municipal court judges said they were reviewing the order but acknowledged many evictions would not happen if it goes forward. Some were already making plans; others were trying to figure out how it would work in practice.

It left them and others wondering about specific scenarios. What if a landlord filed an eviction case but a judge has not yet held a hearing? What if a judge ordered a tenant evicted but a move out supervised by a bailiff or sheriff’s deputy is scheduled for Friday or later?

Garfield Heights Municipal Court Judge Deborah Nicastro said she wondered whether it’s best for a tenant to file the declaration they gave to their landlord with the court as a defense.

Lakewood Municipal Court Judge Patrick Carroll, who has taught seminars on eviction cases at the Ohio Judicial Conference, said the order appears to change everything, and fast. He anticipated having to explain the order to many parties, many of whom represent themselves and likely do not keep up with the latest changes for court cases.

“Twenty-four hours ago, it didn’t exist,” Carroll said, explaining that he had to make last-minute changes to an online seminar on landlord-tenant issues he was set to film Wednesday. “It was something that caught everybody by surprise.”

Shaker Heights Municipal Court Judge K.J. Montgomery said she planned to stop holding most eviction hearings starting Friday. She said her court sees about 400 eviction cases a year and that most are filed for nonpayment of rent.

While the order is still new and untested, she wondered if the order’s practical effect will be to force both sides to settle and for landlords to drop some cases.

“It may force better communication among landlords and tenants, who are truly trying to be accommodating on both sides,” Montgomery said.

Click here to read the full article in Cleveland.com

Written by Emily Badger in The New York Times on 09/03/2020.

Click here to read the full article in The New York Times. 

A reminder as Labor Day approaches, Legal Aid attorneys offers legal information, advice and representation for workers.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Ohio in early spring, most residents couldn’t have predicted the economic impact it would have. Like many others, maintenance technician Noah Bowler (name changed to protect client privacy) lost work when the state shut down and immediately applied for unemployment benefits.

Noah’s hopes for relief were dashed when Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services denied his application, claiming he did not meet the minimum amount of weeks worked  to qualify. Noah knew this was not true, yet he felt helpless on his own up against a complicated administrative system. He contacted Legal Aid and a paralegal helped him file an appeal with all of the appropriate documents. The appeal was approved, and Noah now has the financial support to weather the pandemic.

“The Ohio unemployment compensation system was not set-up for the type of volume we’ve seen in 2020,” explained Tom Mlakar, deputy director at The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. “Sadly, so many lives depend today on this safety net. The stability that UC brings helps people remain stable as they anticipate returning to work. UC benefits help pay for rent, food and other basic needs.”

Ohio’s unemployment system, operated by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, has seen unprecedented numbers of applications since the pandemic began.

These issues have been further complicated by the complex system of multiple layers of programs being offered right now by both the state and the federal government.

Legal Aid is encouraging people who have been waiting for five or more weeks to contact them.

“Our team is poised and ready to stand by the side of people who need help,” Mlakar explained. “Knowledge is power in this uncertain time, and our Legal Aid staff can do important problem-solving work.”

In early April 2020, The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland launched a Worker Information Line, for people who were unsure about talking with an attorney and perhaps just needed a question answered. If a caller asks a question that needs legal action, they are immediately referred into Legal Aid’s intake system.

The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland is also available to help anyone who may have been denied benefits. “The appeals process can be intimidating, and sometimes, people can be wrongly denied,” Mlakar said. “Legal Aid can help people through the process of appeals.”

Think you need help? Contact the Worker Information Line or contact Legal Aid for legal help by visiting this page. Online intake is open 24/7 and phone lines are open during most business hours.

Written by Emily Hamilton in News 5 Cleveland on 09/02/2020.

In an unprecedented move, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a temporary eviction moratorium through the end of the year.

The latest move offers renters some protection from losing their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic and a nationwide economic downturn.

While millions of Americans are potentially one missed paycheck away from homelessness, the CDC stated that there is an impending threat to public health.

The order was implemented to stop the spread of COVID-19 and prevent renters from becoming homeless or living in crowded quarters like shelters.

“This will help families who have been affected by the pandemic,” Melanie Shakarian said. “Keeping families stable and in housing during this public health crisis.”

But the new order is causing confusion and leading some to believe rent is excused through the rest of the year.

“However, it does not take away the obligation to pay rent,” Shakarian said. “You still need to pay your rent.”

Landlords like Dana Blair are potentially facing a tough predicament ahead.

“Ninety percent of landlords are usually mom and pop landlords,” Blair said. “They just have a couple of investment properties.”

The eviction moratorium lists criminal penalties for landlords who evict tenants from now until December 31, but it does not absolve renters from paying up.

“So when you can’t generate income because of the government, I think the government has to step in and provide assistance to not only renters but the landlords,” Blair said.

Blair, along with his wife, owns three small investment properties in Lakewood and said if a tenant was unable to pay rent, he’d work to find a common ground.

“Perhaps they can only pay three-quarters of their rent this month and then moving forward when they’re employed again they catch up,” Blair said.

Shakarian of the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland said unless this order is met with rent assistance payments from the government, an eviction moratorium is ultimately just kicking the can down the road.

“It’s only half of an important equation,” Shakarian said. “Without rent assistance to help fund this order, many tenants will face that insurmountable rent burden when the moratorium lifts.”

House Democrats have proposed giving up to $100 billion in assistance to renters, specifically to pay their landlords. The National Multifamily Housing Council said it would support such a move.

Click here to read the full article in News 5 Cleveland.

Written by Lisa Ryan in ideastream on 09/02/2020.

The Trump administration is ordering a halt on evictions nationwide through December for eligible tenants.

Evictions are on hold, but rent is still due, and the tab keeps building through the moratorium. When it ends, tenants may have trouble covering months of back rent.

Melanie Shakarian, director of development and communications at The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, wants to see rent assistance to help ease the burden for tenants and help landlords.

“A moratorium [on evictions] with rent assistance is the most effective way to ensure housing stability and safety for tenants, but then also a really solid footing for the landlord business community,” Shakarian said.

Landlords still need to pay mortgages, taxes and bills, said George Sass, who owns rental properties on Cleveland’s West Side.

“It’s certainly a concern, and that’s months of income that I would then be out of because of the rule, so it’s definitely not a good thing for me as a landlord,” Sass said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the order as part of the efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. But there are other negative health outcomes from housing instability that an eviction moratorium could help prevent, Shakarian said.

“Health and housing are inextricably linked,” she said. “The stressors of being evicted create negative health consequences, not the least of which is affecting mental health.”

The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland provides assistance for those dealing with housing instability, and Shakarian said intake inquiries related to housing have increased 39 percent in the last two months compared to same period a year ago.

Cleveland Housing Court said it would answer questions about the national eviction ban after Labor Day weekend.

Click here to read the full article in ideastream.

Written by Douglas J. Guth in Freshwater Cleveland on 08/27/2020

A tsunami of evictions and foreclosures is feared in Ohio and across the U.S. as federal moratoriums protecting renters and homeowners expire. And the surge is expected to be equally strong in Cleveland’s East Side inner ring suburbs.

On the rental front alone, a report from Cleveland nonprofit housing service provider CHN Housing Partners revealed 4,200 requests for emergency rental assistance in Cuyahoga County as of Aug. 14, with half of those renters living in suburban communities.

Though county-wide mortgage foreclosures are down from 241 to 40, as compared to the same six-month period in 2019, a rise in mortgage delinquencies tells a different story, according to a study released earlier this month by the Western Reserve Land Conservancy.

Per data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 90-day delinquencies in Cuyahoga County increased about 2.5% in the first half of 2020. Though not a large jump, observers expect a continued upward trajectory in delinquencies barring a quick end to the pandemic.

Kamla Lewis, director of neighborhood revitalization for the City of Shaker HeightsThe reserve bank data is ominous for a population still not fully recuperated from the decade-old foreclosure crisis. Unemployment from COVID-19 further portends a wave of housing instability—particularly in Cleveland’s East Side suburbs where systemic racial inequities and an uneven economic recovery were already making an impact, even pre-pandemic.

But the news isn’t all bleak. Leaders in inner-ring communities are proactively providing residents with resources to mitigate the effects of income loss and, hopefully, reduce the likelihood of evictions and foreclosures.

“Our issues are irrespective of the moratoriums—we know that people have reduced incomes from layoffs or furloughs,” says Kamla Lewis, director of neighborhood revitalization for the City of Shaker Heights. “Our lowest-income groups were already leveraged in terms of housing payments, even before COVID. The real issue is getting payments made.”

In need of protection

Federal CARES Act moratoriums protected homeowners with federally-backed mortgages as well as those living in housing subsidized by the government.

But Ohio’s situation is more complicated, as the state never had an official moratorium on evictions. Instead, eight of Ohio’s largest municipal courts issued their own eviction suspensions, the last of which expired at the end of July.

Ninety-day mortgage delinquencies in Cuyahoga County have doubled January through June over the same period last year, representing a clear indicator of future foreclosures, notes Lewis.

However, the city is an active member of the Greater Cleveland Reinvestment Coalition (GCRC), an organization that has been tracking data on evictions and mortgage delinquencies since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.

The coalition has crafted recommendations on rental support, along with funding for housing counseling agencies helping residents in danger of becoming unhomed.

Additionally, Shaker Heights is publicizing a $6.8 million county rental assistance program. The program aids residents within the city and county having difficulty making rental payments due to the ongoing virus emergency.

“It’s on our COVID-19 resource page on our city website; has been publicized through social media; was shared with all our neighborhood associations, local non-profits and churches for them to disseminate to their networks; was sent to all our apartment building owners; and was included in food bags distributed through the pantries,” Lewis says.

More help on the way?

As an early victim of the 2008 housing crisis, the City of South Euclid is bracing for a second surge of foreclosures in light of a backlog of new mortgage delinquencies.

Sally Martin, housing director for the City of South Euclid and a chair on the reinvestment coalition’s executive committee Sally Martin, housing director for the city and a chair on the reinvestment coalition’s executive committee, says some renters are receiving multiple three-day notices from landlords without intervention from COVID-stalled municipal courts.

“This is disproportionately affecting minority areas, mostly African-Americans,” says Martin. “These are people in service jobs at the lower end of the economic spectrum. They were waiting tables or working at places that shut down during COVID.”

Data from the Greater Ohio Policy Center’s Ohio Affordable Housing Learning Exchange estimates more than 713,000 Ohio renters could be evicted this year.

The inner ring’s weak housing market is also having a negative impact on bank lending, leading to investor activity where homes are bought for cash by landlords charging what they please in rent.

Coalition leaders are talking to banks about backstop loans around property taxes and mortgage delinquencies. Meanwhile, Martin would like to see Cuyahoga County put to better use the $215 million it received in CARES Act funding.

“The point of our advocacy is for the county to step up a little bit more,” says Martin. “Keeping folks housed is our biggest concern.”

The coalition group also supports the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, a bill to create a tax credit for revitalizing single-family homes in distressed neighborhoods. The legislation requires that homes built or renovated be sold to households earning 140% or less of area median income.

For low-income renters facing ousting, newly enacted right-to-counsel legislation guarantees these individuals get eviction representation from the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland or other entity.

“There’s advocacy at all levels,” Martin says. “Here in South Euclid, we want to be proactive and reach out. We were knocking door-to-door last year on tax delinquencies. It’s about being communicative with residents and seeing those delinquencies decline. “

Frank Ford, policy advisor for Western Reserve Land Conservancy and chair of the Vacant and Abandoned Property Action CouncilAlthough local moratoriums have ended, federal laws and regulatory rulings still provide tenant protections, notes Frank Ford, policy advisor for Western Reserve Land Conservancy and chair of the Vacant and Abandoned Property Action Council (VAPAC).

For instance, mortgage forbearance rights apply to property owners with a federally supported mortgage who can demonstrate a COVID-19 hardship.

Qualifying participants can obtain forbearance from payments for up to 180 days, requesting an additional 180 days, as necessary.

Some jurisdictions—among them Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland – are using CARES funding to provide rental assistance to landlords and tenants. As a best practice, courts should require plaintiffs filing foreclosures to certify by affidavit that their property isn’t eligible to receive rental assistance.

“A family renting a house may have a defense they don’t know about,” says Ford. “Courts should be very aggressive in raising this possibly when there’s a plaintiff, landlord and tenant in their court.”

An estimated 27% of U.S. adults missed their rent or mortgage payment for July, per a nationwide survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

For local communities already suffering from COVID-19, joblessness, and housing discrimination, the specter of homelessness is very real.

“The end goal is the economy comes back while moratoriums and rental assistance are used to bridge the gaps,” Ford says. “But those things haven’t happened as best we want. Congress should create a pool of funds dedicated for emergency rental assistance, because right now, it doesn’t appear we’re on the verge of economic recovery.”

Click here to read the full article in Freshwater Cleveland.

Written by Danilo Powell-Lima in Lakewood Observer on 08/19/2020

The economic impact of COVID-19 caused more people to become eligible for free legal assistance from The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. As a result, Legal Aid is taking on an increased number of cases, especially in the areas of housing law and employment law. Already, compared to the same time last year, the organization has seen a 25% increase in landlord-tenant cases and a 46% increase in work-related issues such as unemployment.

Legal Aid is open and available to both new and returning clients, offering online intake 24/7 and phone intake during certain business hours. Hundreds have already benefitted from Legal Aid’s assistance and representation during the pandemic.

One person Legal Aid assisted recently is Melissa Benjamin (name changed to protect privacy). Melissa lives with her husband and their three children. She worked as a Lyft driver to make ends meet, but lost her income when Ohio’s “stay at home” order took effect in March. Unable to make the family’s mortgage payments, Melissa contacted Legal Aid. Her attorney knew that the CARES Act prevented banks from filing new foreclosures, so she submitted a forbearance request, which was quickly approved. Thanks to Legal Aid’s intervention, the Benjamin family is safe in their home as their payments are deferred, giving them time to save.

Anyone struggling with a legal issue that threatens a basic need such as shelter, income, health, safety, or access to education should contact Legal Aid. A toll-free phone line, 888-817-3777, is available from Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 9:00am to 4:00pm, and 9:00am to 2:00pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. To apply for help through online in-take, available 24/7, visit lasclev.org/contact/.

For renters with questions about Ohio housing law and their rights, Legal Aid’s Tenant Information Line is available. Cuyahoga County tenants can call 216-861-5955. Ashtabula, Lake, Geauga and Lorain County tenants, call 440-210-4533.

If you are working or are recently unemployed, call Legal Aid’s Worker Information Line for answers to work-related questions. Leave a message at any time, and a specialist from Legal Aid will return your call within 1-2 business days, between 9:00am and 5:00pm. All Legal Aid services are free of charge.

Click here to read the full article in Lakewood Observer. 

Written by Jordan Walker in Cleveland Scene on 08/18/2020

Kimberly Rodriguez is an accomplished veteran of Cleveland’s food scene. She has worked as a department manager at a grocery store, a personal chef for professional athletes, an event planner, and an instructor in restaurants, cafes and markets.

Yet, the last two weeks of March were the most stressful of her life. She contracted Covid-19 and lost her job. Like many restaurant workers thrown into financial uncertainty, Rodriguez now deals with federal and state unemployment systems ill-equipped to handle her plight.

Click here to read the full article in CleveScene.com

Written by Kellie Nock in WCBE on 08/11/2020

As moratoriums on evictions put in place during the coronavirus pandemic expire and evictions kick back in, people who rent are facing a whole new set of challenges, brought on by the pandemic and increased housing instability. For Ohio Public Radio, WKSU’s Kellie Nock takes a closer look at some of the challenges… and the help that’s available.

When Akron resident Jeannie Vashaw’s fiance lost his job at a heating and cooling company, and their family lost their main source of income, she figured the front office of the company managing her townhome would understand the unusual circumstances behind their late rent.

“She goes ‘you know, it’s ok there’s other people calling in, take care of you and the kids, make sure everyone’s healthy, and everything will be fine.’ …and ten days later I’m getting a notice on my door and I’m being evicted.”

While Vashaw had been late on rent before in the three years she’s been living there, the office had always been cooperative, and she would always pay her late fees.

“I don’t know if this (COVID-19) scared them, or ‘oh you know, the coronavirus is gonna stop them from going to work and they can’t live here for free.’ And then boom. I get it on my door.”

It took Vashaw and her family over six weeks to get unemployment benefits as well as the economic impact payment that was part of the CARES Act. In the meantime, the management company at her townhome kept redirecting her to their attorney.

He suggested that maybe she should find someplace else to live. She says if she could find something else, she wouldn’t be there in the first place.

“Considering the circumstances of the situation, I wish he was a little more helpful.”

Eventually, Vashaw discovered Community Legal Aid through searching the internet. They were able to connect her to an attorney who provided research and information that helped Vashaw find the right way forward and avoid an eviction.

“He gave me information, unlike their attorney.”

While Akron has Community Legal Aid, Cleveland has something similar called the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. As an attorney there, Abigail Staudt (Stout) understands the concerns around evictions happening during a pandemic.

“It’s wrong to potentially cause someone to have unstable housing. It’s wrong that somebody might have to move in with friends or family during this time when we really want people to be socially isolated, and we see that people living in close proximity to each other is what is most likely to have higher rates of transmission.”

Despite the ongoing pandemic, a federal moratorium on evictions has expired and some landlords can once again evict a tenant if they are behind on their rent.

Staudt says The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland is mainly seeing two types of cases right now–families who have lost their source of income, and can’t afford rent and fees, and those who have had a family member get sick with COVID-19.

“It’s a terrible situation for a family to be in–to have sick household members and having to pack up and move and not knowing where they may be able to go during this crisis period of time.”

The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland covers five counties. It’s able to refer people to rent assistance agencies. Groups in the Cleveland area like CHN Housing Partners and Eden Inc. received federal funding through the CARES Act to supplement rent assistance.

Staudt says the Ohio Department of Child and Family Services also offers something called a PRC Program, a prevention, retention and contingency program that is now providing additional assistance because of COVID.

“So even if a family had received some assistance earlier this year that was non-COVID related they are still eligible for additional assistance.”

Tenants in Cleveland who are at or below the 100% federal poverty guideline and have at least one child in the household have a right to legal counsel in these eviction cases, thanks to an ordinance passed in October 2019. Staudt says it was recently implemented coinciding with the reopening of courts on July 1st.

“I think that it’s a really, really critical timing for this to be happening, in part because of all of these housing issues colliding at the same time as COVID, and also this additional rent assistance that’s available to support continued housing stability.”

Whether physically at an in-person court hearing or on a virtual Zoom call, having an attorney with you can alleviate some of the stress when you’re facing eviction.

Though no such ordinance has passed in Akron where Jeannie Vashaw and her family live, she has been able to fight the fees and get back on her feet with a new part-time job, though she’s not feeling optimistic about future evictions.

“Like I said, you know, we’re still trying to play the catch-up game. I just hope it doesn’t happen again, and I know it will in the Fall time, and I know we’re gonna be in the same boat as we were.”

Vashaw knows that next time, if it does happen again she’ll take it to court, and that’s what she’s preparing for.

Click here to read the full article on WCBE.org

Written by Alex Stokes in Fox 8 on 08/10/2020

With stimulus negotiations stalled on Capitol Hill and expiring federal protection, housing advocates in Northeast Ohio are working to connect those facing eviction with resources and legal representation as courts resume hearings.

“The pandemic is hitting harder than anything I’ve seen in 12 years,” said Jennifer Sheehe, housing supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. “Our clients are telling us they can’t even move if they want to. They cannot find a place to move to.”

The organization says requests in the last month for help in landlord/tenant issues are up 25 percent from the same time period last year.

“We are very, very worried about the tide of evictions that will be filed,” Sheehe says. And while they’re doing what they can, the demand is overwhelming, “The need is greater than what we can do.”

They also anticipate foreclosures to increase once the federal moratorium expires on Aug. 31.

On Saturday, President Trump signed an executive order on evictions. It does not explicitly provide funds to help homeowners and renters rather it directs the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC to consider measures halting residential evictions, identify federal funds for rental assistance and take appropriate legal action to promote COVID-19 related eviction avoidance.

“I think it’s good news, but I think it’s a wait and see situation as to how much it’s going to help [Legal Aid’s clients],” Sheehe says.

We asked Sheehe what they are hoping for from congress.

“Just a total moratorium. It’s just, it’s not safe for people to move out, they don’t have anywhere to go,” she said.

The nationwide moratorium expired when the 600 dollar unemployment benefit ended a couple of weeks ago.

While noting helpful direction from the State Supreme Court, she says Ohio could also do better. “There’s never been a statewide moratorium.”

Cleveland’s Right to Counsel Program launched last month has been very successful Sheehe says.

“You have to have a child in the house and you have to income qualify,” she says. “They have a right to an attorney.”

Legal Aid works with the landlord’s representation and their ultimate goal is to help stabilize the housing market.

“We are sympathetic to landlords and we understand that they have their own bills to pay”, she says.

The organization covers five counties from Lorain to Ashtabula.

“We are now trying to be responsive to COVID and so we have changed the way we react,” she says. “So now you don’t need that notice, you just need to tell us ‘I can’t pay my rent’ and we will try to set you up with whatever rent assistance we can find.”

If you are having housing problems you can contact them through the Tenant Information Line here.

Click here to read the full article in Fox 8. 

Written by Kellie Nock in WKSU on 08/07/2020

As moratoriums on evictions put in place during the coronavirus pandemic expire and evictions kick back in, people who rent are facing a whole new set of challenges, brought on by a global pandemic and increased housing instability. As part of our Informed Communities project looking at evictions, we take a closer look at some of the challenges and the help that’s available.

When Akron resident Jeannie Vashaw’s fiance lost his job at a heating and cooling company and their family lost their main source of income, she figured the front office of the company managing her townhome would understand the unusual circumstances behind their late rent.

“She goes ‘you know, it’s ok there’s other people calling in, take care of you and the kids, make sure everyone’s healthy, and everything will be fine.’ …and ten days later I’m getting a notice on my door and I’m being evicted.”

While Vashaw had been late on rent before in the three years she’s been living there, the office had always been cooperative, and she would always pay her late fees.

“I don’t know if this (COVID-19) scared them, or ‘oh you know, the coronavirus is gonna stop them from going to work and they can’t live here for free.’ And then boom. I get it on my door.”

It took Vashaw and her family over six weeks to get unemployment benefits as well as the economic impact payment that was part of the CARES Act. In the meantime, the management company at her townhome kept redirecting her to their attorney.

He suggested that maybe she should find someplace else to live. She says if she could find something else, she wouldn’t be there in the first place.

“Considering the circumstances of the situation, I wish he was a little more helpful.”

The way forward
Eventually, Vashaw discovered Community Legal Aid through searching the internet. They were able to connect her to an attorney who provided research and information that helped Vashaw find the right way forward and avoid an eviction.

“He gave me information, unlike their attorney.”

While Akron has Community Legal Aid, Cleveland has something similar called the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. As an attorney there, Abigail Staudt (Stout) understands the concerns around evictions happening during a pandemic.

“It’s wrong to potentially cause someone to have unstable housing. It’s wrong that somebody might have to move in with friends or family during this time when we really want people to be socially isolated, and we see that people living in close proximity to each other is what is most likely to have higher rates of transmission.”

Despite the ongoing pandemic, a federal moratorium on evictions has expired and some landlords can once again evict a tenant if they are behind on their rent.

Staudt says The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland is mainly seeing two types of cases right now–families who have lost their source of income and can’t afford rent and fees, and those who have had a family member get sick with COVID-19.

“It’s a terrible situation for a family to be in–to have sick household members and having to pack up and move and not knowing where they may be able to go during this crisis period of time.”

The assistance that’s available
The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland covers five counties. It’s able to refer people to rent assistance agencies. Groups in the Cleveland area like CHN Housing Partnersand Eden Inc. received federal funding through the CARES Act to supplement rent assistance.

Staudt says the Ohio Department of Child and Family Services also offers something called a PRC Program, a prevention, retention and contingency program that is now providing additional assistance because of COVID.

“So even if a family had received some assistance earlier this year that was non-COVID related they are still eligible for additional assistance.”

Tenants in Cleveland who are at or below the 100% federal poverty guideline and have at least one child in the household have a right to legal counsel in these eviction cases, thanks to an ordinance passed in October 2019. Staudt says it was recently implemented coinciding with the reopening of courts on July 1st.

“I think that it’s a really, really critical timing for this to be happening, in part because of all of these housing issues colliding at the same time as Covid, and also this additional rent assistance that’s available to support continued housing stability.”

Whether physically at an in-person court hearing or on a virtual Zoom call, having an attorney with you can alleviate some of the stress when you’re facing eviction.

Though no such ordinance has passed in Akron where Jeannie Vashaw and her family live, she has been able to fight the fees and get back on her feet with a new part-time job, though she’s not feeling optimistic about future evictions.

“Like I said, you know, we’re still trying to play the catch-up game. I just hope it doesn’t happen again, and I know it will in the Fall time, and I know we’re gonna be in the same boat as we were.”

Vashaw knows that next time, if it does happen again she’ll take it to court, and that’s what she’s preparing for.

Click here to read the full article in WKSU.org

Written by Alexa Maslowski in Spectrum News 1 on 08/05/2020

Ohio tenants are increasingly unable to afford their rent, and while the pandemic has amplified it, managing attorney at The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, Abigail Staudt said this problem isn’t new.

“Even before COVID-19 hit, we had an affordable housing crisis,” Staudt said. “The reality is that way more people are paying more than 30 percent of their income towards their rent, which is how you measure what affordability is. It’s more like most people are paying closer to 50 percent of their income towards their housing.”

A report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows in order to afford a two-bedroom home, Ohio renters need to make a wage of $15.99 per hour. If they make minimum wage, they would need to work 74 hours per week.

“Our economy hasn’t quite picked up yet, and so, while there is some unemployment help, some federal stimulus help, that’s not forever. And it may not be adequate to meet the rent needs” said Staudt.

Cleveland launched a program to help tenants during the pandemic. Eligible applicants may receive as much as three months of rental assistance paid directly to the landlord.

“The rental assistance program is intended to alleviate the burden on Clevelanders needing assistance as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,” Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said in a statement. “It is our intent that this assistance helps ease renters’ worries by providing resources during these stressful and uncertain times.”

Staudt recommends communicating with your landlord if you feel that you can’t make your rent payment.

“We really recommend if you can tell them in advance that you’re going to have trouble paying for your rent,” Staudt said. “Keep the communication open with your landlord, your landlord can be an advocate in helping identify rent assistance they may know of some resources.”

For help go to neorenthelp.org.

Click here to read the full article in Spectrum News 1.

Written by Taylor Haggerty in ideastream on 08/04/2020

Housing advocates are working to connect Cleveland residents facing eviction with resources and legal representation as courts continue hearings.

The Legal Aid Society has helped about 29 people facing eviction since launching Cleveland’s Right to Counsel initiative last month, according to managing attorney Abigail Staudt.

The pandemic has exacerbated the existing crisis in housing affordability across the city, Staudt said.

“We now are facing a much larger number of people that are housing unstable,” she said, “and many of those folks had stable income, stable jobs, hadn’t faced evictions before.”

Under the Right to Counsel program, low-income residents with at least one child can receive free legal representation from during eviction proceedings. The housing court communicates the options to residents facing eviction, Staudt said, and can grant a continuance to those who ask to enroll at their initial hearing.

“Our first priority is to assess the case, assign a case to an attorney, identify the amount owed and what rent assistance program would be most suitable for that tenant,” Staudt said.

Those arrangements often must be made within a few days, she said.

“We’re scrambling in many cases, which we anticipated, because there are a number of cases where the tenant doesn’t come to us until a day or two before their hearing,” Staudt said, “or they’ve gone to the court, and the court has granted them a continuance to seek Legal Aid’s assistance.”

A majority of the cases the Legal Aid Society has helped with were the result of tenants struggling to pay rent during the pandemic, Staudt said.

“It’s pretty typical for an eviction to be based on non-payment of rent when there isn’t a pandemic,” Staudt said. “Now that we have a pandemic, it’s even more prevalent.”

Local housing courts saw a spike of eviction filings when they began reopening in June, Staudt said, though it was lower than expected after the months-long moratorium. Case numbers leveled out to normal rates after a few days, Staudt said, but she anticipates more cases are forthcoming.

“We sort of are anticipating another spike in evictions, and it might be a slow spike but I do think they’re going to go up,” Staudt said, particularly as additional unemployment and other CARES Act protections expire.

“Knowing the number of people who are unemployed and how slow our economy is still, I just don’t see how we can deal with the number of people who are housing unstable and facing eviction during the pandemic,” Staudt said.

Click here to read the full article in ideastream.org

Written by Joanne Parrino Cahill in Cleveland Magazine on 08/01/2020

Right to Counsel-Cleveland provides access to free legal counsel to eligible renters living at or below the federal poverty line with at least one minor child in the home. In September, Cleveland City Council passed legislation mandating this access.

According to a 2019 study conducted at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), 60 percent of the approximately 9,000 evictions filed each year in Cleveland are households with children. Among the eviction hearings included in the study, only 1 percent of tenants had attorneys compared to nearly 66 percent of landlords.

Right to Counsel-Cleveland addresses this disparity. It is based on a model that has proven successful in other U.S. cities. In New York City, for example, 84 percent of the renters with a Right to Counsel attorney were able to stay in their homes during 2018.

The initiative is part of United Way’s Impact Institute, a new branch of the organization that its leaders refer to as “a think tank with an action plan.”

Nancy Mendez, vice president of community impact, says the timing of the rollout is fortunate because of the uptick in evictions due to job loss caused by COVID-19. She says the economic downturn has been especially devastating to Cleveland’s renters.

“Eviction triggers a black hole of poverty — people go deeper and deeper into the poverty hole,” says Mendez. “Unstable housing can lead to homelessness, which impacts school attendance, health and life quality outcomes for children and families.”

She points out that the CWRU study also found that children whose families get evicted have a school absence rate of 30 percent — much higher than Ohio’s definition of “chronic absence,” which is 10 percent.

Mendez says that landlords who struggle financially when rent payments are missed can also benefit from the chance to resolve disputes with their renters.

“Different boat — same storm,” she says. “A large number of the landlords are mom-and-pop renters who would rather retain their current tenants than go through court and then have to find new tenants.”

Abigail Staudt, managing attorney of Legal Aid’s Housing Law Practice, explains how her team will connect with clients.

“When an eviction is filed by a landlord, a summons goes to the tenant with the complaint,” she says. “There will be an insert telling the renter that you may be eligible for representation and to call Legal Aid. If potential clients are determined eligible, they will be assigned an attorney.”

Staudt anticipates high demand moving forward, especially because there was already a backlog of about 1,000 cases when the courts reopened in June.

“It comes down to so many variables — the relationship between tenant and landlord is a big one,” she says. “Communication is a large factor, but there are so many factors.”

Whatever comes its way, Staudt says that Legal Aid is ready. The company has hired five new attorneys and moved some of its current staff to the Right to Counsel team. In turn, United Way also has hired a staff person to manage its portion of the program and work with Legal Aid and the courts.

With $3 million already committed to the effort by United Way, the partners still need to secure an additional $4 million for the program’s projected $7 million price tag.

In addition to raising money, United Way also is charged with community education and helping connect tenants with so-called wraparound services, such as assistance with food and utilities. Data collection and evaluation also will be an important part of United Way’s role.

“The best way we can attract new dollars is to evaluate and show our concrete results — a return on investment,” explains Mendez.

Housing Stability is a priority for United Way’s Impact Institute. To that end, the team is a major collaborator in the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition, which is another large public-private partnership. The goal of this effort is to identify aging homes in Cleveland where children are at risk of inhaling or ingesting toxic lead. This exposure can cause developmental, learning and behavior problems, just to name a few. Violators will be required to make improvements and show that the home meets lead-safe standards by 2023.

The Impact Institute is rolling out other projects aimed at tackling the root causes of poverty, as well. Mendez says that health care and education-related efforts are in the works.

“For many years, United Way did responsive grant making, which addressed the symptoms of poverty,” she says. “But through needs assessments, we could see that things like poverty and unemployment didn’t change. If we want to disrupt and break the cycle of poverty, we need to take risks and do things in a different way. We must change our model.”

That model evolved into the Impact Institute, which was established to take a more strategic approach to achieving these far-reaching goals.

“While we are not walking away from the basic needs like providing food, we can’t make change by just funding symptoms of poverty,” she adds. “The Impact Institute will address the reasons why families are stuck in this cycle.”

Mendez says United Way will continue to look to proven models like Right to Counsel and to forming other collaborative opportunities that maximize limited resources.

Legal Aid’s Staudt also expects to see positive change from the Right to Counsel program.

“This is a huge step for Cleveland,” she says. “The timing is incredible given COVID-19. We expect to help a lot of people remain stably housed because of it.”

Click here to read the full article in Cleveland Magazine. 

Written by Jeremy Nobile in Crain’s Cleveland Business on 07/28/2020

Unemployment levels remain high. The $600 unemployment bonus is set to end in July. Courts have largely reopened, and eviction moratoriums are evaporating — in fact, eviction filings, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, have already rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in some places.

For legal aid groups, this is writing on the wall pointing to a heavy upcoming level of need as struggling Americans trying to make ends meet lose the safety nets they’ve had the past few months to stay in their homes and protect their credit.

Always stretched thin, legal aid groups — like the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland and Community Legal Aid in Akron — continuously face tough decisions of who to help and who to turn away because of finite resources. The requests for help have only picked up in recent months, and the situation could become even more dire in the future.

That’s why the Legal Services Corp. (LSC), the national nonprofit that funds legal aid providers across the country, is asking Congress for an additional $100 million in emergency funds to help groups like those in Northeast Ohio help those in need.

A recent survey of LSC organizations serving low- and moderate-income communities found that 97% of grantees are anticipating a surge in need for legal help in the coming weeks. Those needs could be most acute in the areas of eviction, foreclosures, unemployment assistance and appeals, consumer debt and income maintenance.

Meanwhile, 94% of respondents report seeing requests for help from people newly eligible for legal aid assistance (i.e. being within 125% of federal poverty guidelines). On average, grantees are reporting a nearly 18% increase of eligible clients as a result of the pandemic.

“The survey responses confirm that the pandemic and its economic consequences are causing or will cause a spike in legal needs in areas such as evictions, unemployment claims and domestic violence,” said LSC president Ronald Flagg in a statement. “America’s legal aid programs are responding innovatively to meet those needs while providing their services remotely and while facing state and local funding cuts.”

The legal aid groups in Cleveland and Akron received about $350,000 and $307,000 in grants from the LSC earlier this year, respectively, as a result of the CARES Act. That money was used to upgrade technology to enable better and more reliable remote service for clients and to hire more attorneys and some support staff.

If LSC secures additional funding, both groups could see grants of roughly double those previous amounts. That money would cover the hiring of additional staff attorneys to address the coming need.

“There is no question what’s happening in our community is playing out in the low-income community with a lot of people who find themselves newly poor because of the economic crisis that’s happening,” said Steven McGarrity, executive director for Community Legal Aid. “There are a lot of issues people face in housing and public assistance, and the best remedy to get them what they need is through the help of a lawyer. And the people in this community who can do that are with the local legal aid organizations.”

Community Legal Aid has already pivoted to help individuals in certain areas, like in eviction and unemployment benefits. The group has stopped accepting asks for help related to divorce, for example — with the exception of those related to domestic violence.

Between May 1 and July 15, requests related to unemployment compensation have surged 400%. Staff have been redirected to work on those cases, which include securing the $1,200 government stimulus payments for low-income individuals who didn’t file tax returns.

The eviction situation, though, is one where “we’re terrified of what’s coming,” McGarrity said.

That’s something Colleen Cotter, executive director for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, is equally fretting about. Requests for assistance in landlord/tenant issues is up 25% compared to last July, she said, and undoubtedly will climb. Requests for work-related issues, like unemployment, are up 46% over last year.

“The economic impact of the pandemic is hitting people in poverty and those living paycheck to paycheck with particular ferocity,” Cotter said. “Legal aid is adding capacity to meet the increased need in related legal issues, but the demand is pretty overwhelming.”

That extra money from the LSC, by the way, is not necessarily a straight increase in funding — it’s largely replacing some lost capital even as community support keeps individual donations coming in.

This is because of the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation, which helps fund legal aid groups in the state with interest generated from lawyer trust accounts. Because of the drop in federal interest rates, which are likely to stay at rock bottom for the foreseeable future, that funding has diminished.

Community Legal Aid, for example, is expecting about 18% less (roughly $400,000) of its previous $2.2 million allocation.

“Any extra money is really compensating us for that loss of revenue we are anticipating,” McGarrity said.

The LSC has submitted a request to Congress for $100 million in emergency funds to enable grantees to provide additional assistance as result of the pandemic. The CARES Act included $50 million for LSC. In May, the House passed the HEROES Act, which includes an additional $50 million for LSC; the Senate is discussing the next legislation to address the impact of COVID-19.

Go here to learn more about the LSC survey and its campaign for additional funding.

Click here to read the full article in Crain’s Cleveland Business

Written in Cleveland.com on 07/12/2020

Ohio was early to close schools, restaurants, and nonessential businesses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the virus is still a major threat, and the economy may not fully recover until we have a vaccine. In the span of one month this spring, 855,197 Ohioans had submitted new unemployment applications. Families that can’t afford rent are doubling and tripling up in homes at a time when social distancing is advised for all of our health.

This is why social safety net programs are vital: We need them to safeguard the efficacy of the public health response. Beyond that, these programs address the most basic of human needs; they ensure that people can eat, get their medicine, and have a roof over their heads. Examples of such programs include Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka food stamps); Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC); Medicaid; and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

While there is no doubt that state and local budgets are facing challenges, it is important that the most vulnerable among us do not bear the brunt of this economic crisis.

Some issues to consider:

Avoid Medicaid cuts: Gov. Mike DeWine recently announced that the state’s Medicaid budget would be cut, but gave no clear indication as to where the cuts would come from. It is hard to believe that this reduction in spending on health care will not result in inadequate care or inaccessible treatment. The pandemic’s economic impact expanded the pool of Medicaid-eligible Ohioans. And given a global health crisis and the racial health inequities it has laid bare, further cuts to Medicaid are inconceivable.

Make use of PRC funds: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a federal program that has been administered through public assistance block grants to the states since 1996. Ohio receives $727 million per year, and matches those funds with more than $400 million in state dollars. A portion of TANF funds is designated to be used for Prevention, Retention, and Contingency (PRC) programs, which are designed to address emergent, one-time costs that will help families regain economic stability.

COVID-19 has created the exact circumstances PRC funds were designed to address. Accordingly, states have funneled more TANF dollars into PRC funds and are making these funds available to people in need. In Ohio, each county received an amount of PRC funds to distribute to residents who qualify. Just 24 hours after Franklin County began offering one-time $500 assistance checks, all of the money had been exhausted. Hamilton County also expended its $3 million in the first day funds were available.

Cuyahoga County received $1.6 million in emergency PRC funds; these have not been distributed as quickly, and the need certainly persists.

Don’t wait to act: From our front line at Legal Aid, we see the urgency. A recent client, “Laurie,” lives in private housing with her three sons. To pay rent, Laurie uses cash assistance from Ohio Works First, and her son “Danny” helps cover the rest with his income from working for a food delivery service. Unfortunately, Danny’s income dipped dramatically due to the pandemic, and the family has been unable to pay rent. Worried about an eviction, Laurie got help from Legal Aid and applied for three months of rent assistance. Legal Aid negotiated with Laurie’s landlord, who agreed to accept the late rent and not evict her.

As these eviction and utility moratoriums are lifted, people like Laurie will suddenly face the prospect of losing their home, running water, or electricity.

Ohio’s low-income families made tremendous sacrifices as the state took measures to flatten the coronavirus curve. Now, by shoring up public assistance programs to address the long-term economic fallout of this pandemic, Ohio can take purposeful steps to alleviate their burden.

Timely action to extend fundamental economic assistance will help stabilize families, bolster the local economy, and ensure the ultimate success of our state’s public health strategy.

Click here to read the full article in Cleveland.com

Written by Ron Lieber in The New York Times on 07/11/2020

Click here to read the full article in The New York Times

Written by Eric Heisig in Cleveland.com on 07/09/2020

The Cleveland Housing Court ordered the eviction of a man from his St. Clair-Superior apartment after neither he nor his attorney showed up for their online hearing. The attorney insists she never received the link from court staff to appear.

Frank Reda and his lawyer Alisa Boles were required to appear for a June 26 hearing held on video chat service Zoom. Reda’s landlord on March 10 filed to have his tenant evicted after he said Reda didn’t pay his $385-a-month rent since January for his apartment on East 72nd Street.

Boles, a Euclid lawyer who started representing Reda in April after the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland referred the case to her, said she previously emailed the court about another matter in her client’s case. However, she said she received nothing on how to access the Zoom conference.

A magistrate held the hearing without them and ordered Reda evicted. Housing Court Judge W. Moná Scott later signed off.

Court records show the eviction is scheduled for July 13. Reda, 58, found out about the order from his lawyer on Monday. She had not yet received anything in the mail about the decision and said she only found out because she checked the online docket.

Reda and Boles’ troubles highlight the difficulties parties face in eviction cases as the Housing Court, which is the largest in Cuyahoga County, continues to hear cases while also making accommodations to protect people from the coronavirus. Housing advocates have feared a flood of eviction cases will come because people lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic and that technical problems will hamper hearings and result in people wrongly losing their homes.

In eviction cases in the county, a large number of tenants often defend themselves with no lawyers. Boles wondered how the average tenant facing eviction, who is often poor and may not have adequate access to technology, would handle a similar situation.

“If this happened to a lawyer who is reasonably tech-savvy, I mean, how is this affecting the average person?” Boles asked.

“Who doesn’t have a lawyer,” Reda said, finishing his attorneys’ sentence as he spoke with her Tuesday outside his apartment.

A disabled construction worker, he said he doesn’t know where he’s going to go if he has to leave.

“It makes me feel like I’ve gotten beat up with my hands tied up,” Reda said. He said he was hospitalized several times in recent months for problems associated with a brain injury and other ailments. He wears a brace on his left leg and is missing part of a finger.

He has said he has defenses he wants to present to the court. He acknowledged, though, that the eviction order may have resulted from a misunderstanding. Boles filed motions on Tuesday to put the eviction on hold, and they await a ruling.

Scott’s bailiff Belinda Gest said in an email Wednesday the court could not provide details about a pending case but noted that Reda filed motions to halt the eviction and re-open the case and that the judge will review them.

Zoom woes

The Cleveland Housing Court stopped accepting and hearing most eviction cases in March as more businesses and government offices closed down because of the coronavirus. It resumed its operations June 15 and holds most eviction hearings via Zoom, something many other courts are doing across the country.

However, local advocates such as the Legal Aid Society have expressed concern about the hearings, both in terms of ensuring that tenants can access them to defend themselves and because holding them via Zoom doesn’t guarantee the public can watch the hearings.

Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer previously wrote about how the Housing Court magistrates are effectively conducting hearings in private because they’re set up as closed meetings. While the court’s website mentions the ability for individual reporters and members of the public to watch, Scott said last month that staff was working on a way for the public to more easily view the proceedings.

Legal Aid Development and Communications Director Melanie Shakarian said the organization heard from two other people ordered evicted after they had technical difficulties and could not appear for a hearing.

Legal Aid Managing Attorney Abigail Staudt said in an email that summonses sent to tenants facing eviction say that they must provide an email address and phone number in an email to the Housing Court. The email must include a full name and case number in the subject line. Staff will then send instructions on how to participate in the virtual hearing.

However, the online docket does not include any information about Zoom. It also doesn’t always reflect that a hearing will be “virtual” or that court officials sent login information to the landlord and tenant, Staudt noted. There also isn’t a lot of information on the Housing Court’s website to help parties navigate virtual hearings, she said.

Reda’s summons sent on March 11 for a hearing, then set for March 31, had no such instructions because the hearing was set before the coronavirus-motivated shutdown. It ordered him to appear in person. Still, the docket indicates that the summons never reached Reda, as the envelope went undelivered.

A June 4 magistrate’s order resetting his hearing for June 19, this time to be held virtually, said the parties must contact the clerk of court’s housing division at least a week prior and provide an email or phone number.

“Failure to call/log in on time pursuant to this Order, is a failure to appear, and may result in dismissal of the failing party’s claims, immediate hearing of the opposing party’s claims, default judgment or other appropriate sanctions,” the order stated.

‘Standing by’

Reda said he was a “dinosaur” with his phone and made clear he was relying on his lawyer’s technological knowledge to attend the hearing.

Boles – who took Reda’s case pro bono, or free of charge – said she sent an email on June 5 with a motion asking the court to postpone the June 19 hearing because of a planned vacation. The subject line had Reda’s name and the case number, as well as the words “MOTION FOR CONTINUANCE.”

She also wrote in the email that “regarding yesterday’s order requesting an email address, you can use this email, which is the email on file with this case.”

A staff member responded 11 days later and said Boles needed to come to the Justice Center to file the motion in person. She did, and the court pushed the hearing back a week.

She made sure she was by a computer at 10 a.m. June 26, so she could still show up to the virtual hearing. She was still on vacation with her son and in a Conestoga wagon fashioned into a hotel room in Torrey, Utah, near Capitol Reef National Park. It was 8 a.m. there and she said she had a Wi-Fi connection.

She said she never received an email with a Zoom link before that day and figured it must arrive around the time of the hearing. There was another complication, too: her client, who was going to appear by phone, was in the hospital. She planned to ask the magistrate during the hearing to push the proceedings back.

At 10:03 a.m. eastern time that day, Boles sent an email to the court staff that said, “standing by for Zoom link. I don’t think I have phone reception. At any rate, Mr. Reda is in hospital and cannot attend.”

She waited for more than an hour. At 11:27 a.m., she wrote to the Housing Court email and said, “I stood by an hour and a half. I will have spotty phone reception and internet at best the rest of the day. Please reschedule for after the holiday.”

Ten minutes later, staff members responded to both emails saying they were forwarded to the magistrate, David Roberts, and he would decide how to proceed.

Meanwhile, the hearing went forward with the landlord, Kodjo Tino Adognravi, present. Roberts said there was enough evidence to order Reda evicted.

Adognravi, reached Wednesday, confirmed he attended the hearing. When asked to clarify how he obtained access, he told a reporter that “at this point, I’m going to stop this communication. Thank you.” He then hung up.

Roberts referred a reporter to Scott’s bailiff.

Helping the helpless

Looking back, Boles felt like “I’m trying to help somebody, and this is not happening,” she said.

Shakarian, of the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, acknowledged that the pandemic had caused many issues and that virtual hearings are new territory.

She and Boles, however, said the court should find ways to make sure that tenants have access before the eviction hearing, such as through pre-trial proceedings that could present opportunities for them to apply for rental assistance or to enter mediation.

“We know that the court is aware of the difficulties of this right now, and we want to offer some constructive possible solutions,” Shakarian said.

To Reda, though, it’s just the latest in a string of bad luck.

“I seem to have a target on my back,” he said.

Click here to read the full article in Cleveland.com

Written by Kelly Kennedy in Cleveland 19 News on 07/08/2020

Imagine being kicked out of your home and suddenly you are forced to live in the streets during this pandemic. Unfortunately, that will be the sad reality for millions of Americans as eviction moratoriums expire.

19 News did reach out to the property management company that owns Griffin’s apartment but so far, we have not heard back.

Click here to read the full article in Cleveland 19 News

Written by Rachel Rood in ideastream on 07/07/2020

Click here to listen to the full broadcast and read the article on ideastream.org

Written by Renae Merle in The Washington Post on 07/06/2020

Click here to read the full article at washingtonpost.com

Legal Aid is proud to announce The Cuyahoga County Rent Relief Fund was launched to combat housing instability due to the pandemic.

• The Relief Fund provides up to three months in emergency rental assistance to income-eligible tenants.
• Payments will be made directly to landlords.
• Households who are at 120 percent of median income (e.g., a family of four with an annual income of around $90,000) are eligible.

The Relief Fund is a partnership between Cuyahoga County and the Cities of Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, East Cleveland, Euclid, and Lakewood.

Call 833-377-RENT (7368) for more information, or click here.

Click here for a one-page document explaining the program. 

For more information, click here for a flyer in English and Spanish. 

Written in News 5 Cleveland by Joe Pagonakis on 07/01/2020

The United Way of Greater Cleveland reports the city dealt with 9,000 evictions in 2019, and unfortunately, that number is expected to grow significantly over the next year with the COVID-19 pandemic a major cause for the increase.

In response, the City of Cleveland, United Way, and the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland launched Right to Counsel Cleveland on July 1, a program that will provide free legal representation to qualifying families facing eviction in housing court.

Augie Napoli, CEO of United Way of Greater Cleveland, said Right to Counsel will help to provide better housing stability for families, at a time when the agencies 211 Helplink system took in more than 1200 calls for housing assistance issues just last week.

“Right to Counsel Cleveland aims to level the playing field for families facing eviction,” said Napoli.

Napoli said he expects eviction filings to triple over the next year.

“It’s had a devastating impact on academic, health and economic outcomes, and can send families spiraling deeper and deeper into poverty,” Napoli said.

“Given the current local and national crisis and economic downturn caused by COVID-19, we expect a dramatic rise in eviction rates.”

Colleen Cotter, Executive Director with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, said Cleveland families can sign-up for free legal representation if they meet a few basic criteria.

“If folks are living at or below the poverty line and they have kids in the household they qualify,” Cotter said.

“This is historic, we are the fourth city in the county to establish a right to counsel for tenants.”

“Ensuring that they have a voice in the justice system, that they have access to justice, that they have the ability to appear in court.”

“To make sure folks can stay on their feet, stay in their house, keep their job, keep their kids in school, and create stronger neighborhoods.”

The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland and the United Way of Greater Cleveland has launched a website that allows residents to apply for Right to Counsel assistance and contains information and links to a dozen organizations that can help with housing issues.

Click here to read the full article in News 5 Cleveland

Written in LSC.gov on 06/30/2020

As Cleveland Municipal Court’s Housing Court reopened last Monday, June 15, after a three-month moratorium on evictions, a tidal wave of evictions could come.

Abigail Staudt, managing attorney with the housing group for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, says that before COVID-19, an average of 35 eviction cases were filed each day in housing court, but she says she expects to see that number increase now.

“We know some landlords that are proactively working with their tenants but there are others who [were] probably waiting for the courts to open,” says Staudt.

Legal Aid Society’s Staudt says her agency is significantly increasing its staffing—an initiative that started before the pandemic in preparation for Cleveland’s new right to counsel law.

Landlord-tenant mediation is another service that could stem the tide of evictions, Staudt says. Danielle Cosgrove, director of the Cleveland Mediation Center, says they plan to provide landlord-tenant mediation services to more than 500 additional clients, thanks to funding through the Restart CLE program.

Click here to read the full article in LSC.gov 

Written by Laina Yost in The Chronicle-Telegram on 06/28/2020

ELYRIA — Several legal issues have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly evictions and domestic violence cases.

With unemployment up and people being encouraged to stay home, those two areas have risen. Jessica Bagget, managing attorney for Legal Aid Society offices in Lorain County, said the organization’s domestic violence intakes have risen since the pandemic began.

“These victims were pretty much forced, per se, with the abuser because of the virus,” Bagget said. “We’ve definitely seen an uptick in that. As many as did apply for our services in Lorain County, there certainly is the feeling that probably not everybody called to seek services out of fear for themselves, for their family and where would they go.”

Legal Aid Society can help victims file civil protection orders and help them figure out what the next steps are, whether that be a divorce or a continued protection order. Bagget said Legal Aid partners with Genesis House to help victims.

Bagget said getting a Civil Protection Order can ease victims’ fear and give them a sense of safety from their abuser. Legal Aid has started offering an online intake process people can fill out since their offices are closed to walk-ins.

“That’s definitely a need and it hasn’t decreased at all in Lorain County,” Bagget said.

Since the shutdown started in March, Bagget said her office knew it was just a matter of time before eviction cases would start to rise.

“Rent wouldn’t be able to be paid, many would lose their jobs,” she said. “Eventually it’s going to come to a head and we’re going to have all of these people potentially homeless and not able to find new housing.”

If landlords file for eviction for no rent payment and they succeed, Bagget said that can hurt renters’ credit report, which is often what potential landlords check before renting.

That’s why it’s important to call, Bagget said. No matter what the issue, she said Legal Aid can provide guidance for those situations.

Under the federal CARES Act, a moratorium was placed on some types of evictions until July 25. It restricts landlords from filing for evictions for nonpayment of rent, including fees or penalties.

Covered properties include federal housing rental programs covered by the Violence Against Women Act, properties with a federally backed mortgage loan and properties with a federally backed multifamily mortgage.

“A lot of people don’t know they are in these types of properties and it’s important that they know their rights,” Bagget said. “We want to talk to them, want them to call. We definitely want to avoid families being evicted and not having incomes because they’ve been laid off. There are opportunities for us to advocate.”

Legal Aid also covers other issues, including offering an unemployment hotline and issues getting benefits from the Department of Jobs and Family Services. If people contact them, Bagget said they can either help or provide other resources, like United Way, El Centro and other local organizations.

Legal Aid’s website is lasclev.org/ and its telephone is (888) 817-3777.

“Information is power and a lot of people don’t have the legal information,” she said. “And when you have it, you have power.”

Click here to read the full article in The Chronicle-Telegram. 

Written by Karlynn Wells in Spectrum News 1 on 06/27/2020

In April, the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland set up a worker information line to answer community questions regarding employment and unemployment during the pandemic. Managing Attorney of the Legal Aid Society’s economic justice practice Katherine Hollingsworth says they’ve received over 350 calls and counting.

Legal Aid Society attorneys say they receive many calls about technical administrative issues dealing with the department of jobs and family services. They’re also hearing from people about applying for unemployment compensation, and even more who are now being called back to work and want to know what their rights are.

“A lot of workers still feel hesitant to go back. They’re worried about their safety, they’re worried about their health and questions about do I need to return to work or can I refuse an offer and still collect unemployment compensation?” said Legal Aid Society Staff Attorney Mason Pesek.

Workers’ rights attorney Mason Pesek says Governor Mike DeWine recently signed an executive order allowing some workers under certain circumstances the right to refuse returning to work while still being eligible for unemployment compensation.

“And those include if a medical professional recommends that the employee should not return to work because they’re considered high risk. If that employee is 65 years of age or older, if there is, again, tangible evidence of the health or safety violation, and if the employee has been potentially exposed to COVID, and is subject to a quarantine period,” Pesek said.

Hollingsworth says as workplace safety continues to be a concern, it’s vital that workers keep documentation for themselves.
“If you’re having any problems, keep a record of what’s going on and who you talk to. When you talk to those people and keeping copies of any documents, that is gonna put you in a much better position to potentially prevail if there is a legal case that arises,” Hollingsworth said.

Pesek says for workers who have already returned to work or have never stopped working, knowing their rights is not only vital for their health, but for the livelihood of the economy.

“The workers we represent, I believe, are the backbone of our economy, those are our service industry workers. The workers who are being considered essential and being called back are the ones who are going to be on the frontlines of the reopening of this economy. So, our information that we give, I believe, is critical and keeping them and keeping workers knowledgeable about what their rights are in the workplace, how to remain safe, and how to keep their families safe and maintain their income as we get through, I mean, essentially an unprecedented pandemic,” Pesek says.

If you have questions about your employment rights or the Legal Aid Society’s Worker Information Line, visit their website.

Click here to read the full article in Spectrum News 1.

Written by Ian Cross in News 5 Cleveland on 06/25/2020

News 5 and the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland teamed up with the United Way to host a housing help phone bank and Facebook Live to help Northeast Ohio rebound from COVID-19.

News 5’s phone bank was made possible with the help of United Way 211 Helplink System, with navigators working remotely to take dozens of calls from concerned tenants.

Jennifer Sheehe, Supervising Housing Group Attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland told News 5 the inability to pay rent and tenants requesting rent assistance are the two biggest issues facing tenants during the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.

Sheehe said too many landlords were illegally throwing out tenants when the City of Cleveland temporarily suspended evictions due to coronavrus concerns.

“We call them self help evictions, meaning landlords are with shutting off water, changing locks, they are taking measure into their own hands,” Sheehee said.

“It’s completely illegal because only the court has the ability that they have to move, and in order to do that there is a process.” (8

Sheehe was pleased to announce the start of “right to counsel” legislation on July 1, an effort legal aid successfully promoted, allowing qualify tenants to obtain free legal representation during an eviction in court.

“There are some qualifications, you have to have a child in the home and be below a certain percentage of the poverty line. But we really think we’re going to reach out to a lot of tenants because it gives them a right.”

Sheehe said tenants must remain active if they’re in a dispute with a landlord, they must make sure they appear for all court eviction proceedings, and they should not withhold rent on their own.

Sheehe said tenants can only suspend rent payments if they participate in a court approved rent escrow program.

“You have to give a notice to a landlord in writing, give them a reasonable time to make that repair,” Sheehe said.

“And then if you’re current with your rent, then you can go ahead and make that deposit with the court.”

If you would like to apply to get help from a Legal Aid attorney, you can visit www.lasclev.org to apply online anytime.

The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland has increased its services due to the coronavirus pandemic. Many people are facing legal issues with shelter and economic stability.

Each year, approximately 20,000 residential eviction actions are filed in Cuyahoga County, of which approximately 9,000 are in the City of Cleveland. More than 60 percent of eviction cases filed in Cleveland include households with children. Many families living in Cleveland are housing insecure. Cleveland families move at least five times more than the national average. Families with children who face eviction have increased levels of disruption in school and higher rates of absenteeism.

Tenants often lack knowledge and awareness of their legal rights. The fear of being evicted and being forced to seek housing, in a limited housing market, discourages many Cleveland tenants from fighting eviction actions. Additionally, many tenants live in uninhabitable living conditions due to aging housing stock. Often, tenants fail to report substandard housing conditions because they fear eviction.

Evictions have an economic impact, often leading to loss of employment, health problems like more frequent hospitalizations, lower educational achievement and higher dropout rates for children, increased use of all social service systems and unstable communities.

Click here to read the full article in News 5 Cleveland

Written b Taneisha Cordell in News 5 Cleveland

The Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies conducts studies on poverty in Ohio annually. While it’s too soon to know the exact impact of COVID-19 on Ohio’s poverty rate, the coalition’s Executive Director Philip Cole says more families are struggling.

“Many people in middle class are suddenly poor and they’re struggling,” Cole said. “Some of our agencies were seeing increases and phone calls and people coming in asking for assistance by four and 500% so if you saw 1,000 people all of a sudden you saw 5,000.”

Under the 2020 federal guidelines, a family of three with an annual income of less than $21,720 is living in poverty. This year’s study found one in 20 people in the United States match the criteria. It found six out of every 20 people struggle financially at least two months out of the year.

In Ohio, 14% of Ohioans had annual incomes below the federal poverty level in 2018, which is a two percent decline from five years ago. Yet, it’s still slightly above the national average. Cole says Ohio ranks 16^th among states with the highest poverty rates.

“It’s because of the living conditions, lack of healthcare, people having to go to work on these buses, you know when you’re packed together tightly it’s hard for low-income people you know to maintain social distancing and those kind of things,” Cole said.

The reality is making it hard for families to afford basic necessities like food and housing. In Cleveland, at least 9,000 evictions are filed every year, according to the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. In court, the group says tenants often lose their cases even with representation.

“It’s basically a human rights issue. Everybody deserves housing,” said Cleveland City Councilman Kevin Kelley.

Kelley says it’s a new legal aid program will help city residents fight evictions filed before or after the pandemic.

“We will be representing all people facing eviction that meet the criteria, 100% poverty, children in the house. And we’re going to advocate on their behalf,” he said.

Kelley says the city is also allocating $11.5 million from the CARES Act to support those unable to pay rent due to either being furloughed or let go from their job because of coronavirus. He says residents can apply online starting next month.

Click here to read the full article in News 5 Cleveland

Written by Matthew Richmond in ideastream on 06/22/2020

There were far fewer new eviction filings in Cleveland Housing Court last week than the court expected, despite a months-long moratorium on evictions prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The court began accepting new cases for the first time since the start of the pandemic on June 15 and was set to enforce a daily limit of 125 filings. On the first day, the court received 129 filings. But the number decreased each day and by Thursday, only 32 new eviction cases were filed.

Housing Court Judge W. Moná Scott credits the city’s rental assistance program, which will disperse $11.3 million in federal money to Cleveland residents. The court has worked to get the word out about that assistance, she said.

“Not only is it talked about to the renters, but you also want to have that discussion with landlords,” said Scott, whose court has been holding virtual community meetings with landlords and tenants and distributing information about rental assistance. “I mean, everything was shut down and some landlords had a good rapport with their tenants.”

Scott said some landlords are content with waiting for money from the city when it becomes available. Cleveland starts accepting rental assistance applications next month.

“I really hope that that’s what’s going on,” said Abigail Staudt, a managing attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, who said she would have preferred the court resume evictions only after the rental assistance money was available.

“If it had been flipped, where that assistance was already available, maybe we wouldn’t see filings initially once the court did open,” said Staudt.

Staudt said her office saw a 25 percent increase over the same time last year in calls from people with housing problems the week before the court reopened. It’s hard to tell what exactly is going on at the court because hearings are being held online, unless a party in the case requests an in-person hearing, she said. And those online hearings are not streamed, as some other courts do, for the general public to observe.

“Normally, if there was a big change in what was happening at the courthouse, we would have a couple people over there — or at least one person over there — just to see what was going on and how it was working,” Staudt said. “Given the way things are now, we just haven’t been able to do that.”

The court is not livestreaming hearings and Scott said she is not convinced the court must make eviction hearings publicly accessible in the same way criminal cases are. And she worries about protecting the privacy of those facing eviction.

“Even the way the court was set up [for in-person hearings] was kind of personal. The podiums were really close to the bench,” Scott said. “And that was done intentionally so that people wouldn’t have to speak loud about things they thought were embarrassing, personal. You’re dealing with people in a sensitive area where they can’t afford to pay their rent.”

Cases are not streaming online, but Scott said public access still will be granted on a case-by-case basis. Those who want access to a hearing must ask the court the day before the hearing, and a Zoom link will be provided, she said.

It will be some time before new filings end up in the courtroom. The Housing Court spent its first week since re-opening beginning to address a 500-case backlog that built up because of the pandemic shutdown.

Click here to read the full article on ideastream 

Written by Eric Heisig in Cleveland.com on 06/15/2020

The Cleveland Housing Court on Monday will resume eviction hearings and start accepting new cases for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic forced it to shut down.

The court, which hears the most housing cases of any in Cuyahoga County, stopped evictions in March when it became apparent that having many people in a room together for hearings at the Justice Center presented a public health hazard. Since then, the economic fallout from the pandemic led many to predict that the nation will see staggeringly high numbers of families thrown out of their homes for not paying their rent or mortgage and large number of eviction cases filed in the local court.

People out of work who cannot pay their rent can also affect landlords, especially small business owners, as they continue to owe taxes and other fees for their ownership of the property.

“This is going to be a real crisis for our community,” Legal Aid Society of Cleveland managing attorney Abigail Staudt said. “We are going to have a lot of people who need our help.”

A reporter on Thursday requested to speak to somebody from the Housing Court to talk about what they expected next week. A court spokeswoman did not fulfill the request by the time this story published.

Housing Court Judge W. Mona Scott wrote in a June 4 order that the clerk would only accept 125 new eviction cases a day. The court will then schedule hearings for 30 days later.

Cases filed after the clerk hits its limit will be held over for the next day. A single landlord or firm can also only file 25 a day, including no more than five for reasons other than a tenant not paying rent, according to the order.

The court, which has a backlog of about 1,000 cases, also plans to hear 125 eviction cases a day, with the bulk occurring virtually via Zoom, Staudt said. Those without access to Zoom can inform the court, and the court will hold the hearing in person the day after it was originally set, she said.

Court staff has also set up a system to submit evidence before a hearing.

Staudt expressed concerns about how tenants may fare with the new restrictions and adaptations the court undertook.

Chief among them was the court’s use of Zoom, a necessity in the age of social distancing. Judges in many courts have expanded their use of online hearings during the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean it will go smoothly, especially for people not used to it, she said.

Online hearings may also impede the ability for them to be public.

Staudt said she feels the court will be receptive to issues that may arise. However, “I think it’s going to be a painful growing experience,” Staudt said.

The state said in May that the unemployment rate for the previous month was 16.8% and that the state lost 823,000 jobs as a result of the pandemic. It said Thursday that it had received more than 1.3 million traditional unemployment claims over the past 12 weeks.

Staudt noted that the Legal Aid Society has fielded inquiries not just from lower-income families, but clients who face eviction from higher-end apartments because of this recession’s unpredictability. Some programs offering rent assistance are in the works in Cleveland, though advocates feel that won’t be enough.

“Even careful people who have some savings, they can’t maintain it when industries haven’t opened up again,” she said.

Click here to read the full article in Cleveland.com

Are you currently working or recently unemployed with questions about your rights at work or unemployment benefits?  

Call Legal Aid’s Worker Information Line to learn about Ohio’s employment laws and unemployment benefits.

• Call 216-861-5899 in Cuyahoga County
• Call 440-210-4532 in Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake and Lorain Counties

Some common questions Legal Aid can answer are:

• How do I apply for Unemployment Compensation (UC) benefits?
• What information will I need to apply for UC benefits?
• How many weeks of UC benefits can I receive?
• Do the new laws passed because of COVID-19 apply to me and my employer?
• How long does my former employer have to give me my final pay check?

Workers can call and leave a message at any time. Callers should clearly state their name, phone number and a brief description of their employment/unemployment compensation question. A Legal Aid staff member will return the call between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Calls are returned within 1-2 business days.

This number is for information only. Callers will get answers to their questions and will also receive information about their rights. Some callers may be referred to other organizations for additional help. Callers who need legal assistance may be referred to Legal Aid’s intake department.

How to File Your Weekly Job Search Claim Related to COVID-19:

1. Select “Yes” that you were able to work.
2. Select “Yes” that you were physically and mentally able to work.
3. Select “Yes” that you completed two work-search activities
   1. For the first “Work search activity completed,” answer “COVID-19;” for “Location of work search activity,” answer “Executive Order – Home;” for City, State, and Zip Code, use your home address.
   2. Select “Internet” as the method of completing the work search activity.
   3. For “if you applied for a position, please list it here,” answer “COVID-19 Executive Order.”
   4. Select any date listed.
   5. Select “Unknown” for the outcome of the work search activity.
   6. For f-j, repeat your answers from a-e.
4. Answer the rest of the questions (4-7) truthfully and remember to report any earnings.

For a step-by-step guide with photos, look here: Instructions for Filing Weekly COVID-19 Claims

The website link described here will take you to a new website where you can get help preparing Ohio’s Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care and/or Ohio’s Living Will.  These documents, also known as “advance directives,” can assist health care providers if you cannot communicate because of a serious illness or injury.  A Health Care Power of Attorney allows you to name someone to make medical decisions for you if you are unable to do so. A Living Will allows you to state what type of medical care you want to receive if you are permanently unconscious or terminally ill and unable to communicate.  You can also indicate your wishes regarding organ and tissue donation in a living will.

The “Access to Justice” or A2J website will ask you to enter information in order to prepare your documents.  You will need the name and address of the person or people you want to identify in your Health Care Power of Attorney and/or Living Will.  After you complete the online interview and print your documents, you need to read them and make sure they say what you want to happen.  In some places, you can also add or omit certain instructions.  Also, you will have to follow the instructions for having your signature on the documents witnessed or notarized. Lastly, you should deliver copies to your physician and the people named in the documents.

Before you go to the A2J website, you may want to review this helpful information – click here.

Make sure your computer is attached to a printer, so you can print these documents.

** CLICK HERE now to access the A2J website and interview questions! (in English) **

** CLICK HERE now to access the A2J website and interview questions! (en Español) **

This information and the information provided on the A2J website cannot take the place of individual advice from a lawyer.  Each person’s situation is different.  You should contact a lawyer if you need legal representation or have questions about your legal rights and responsibilities.  

If you plan to come to a Legal Aid Brief Advice Clinic, remember to bring all the documents with you.  Attorneys will need the documents in order to advise you.

A durable power of attorney can be one of the most helpful estate planning tools a person uses, but it can also be very risky. A durable POA gives a person (who is called an “attorney in fact”) legal authority to act for another person in a variety of matters, including banking, benefits, housing, taxes, real estate, litigation, and more. (The durable POA is different from a Health Care Power of Attorney, which is the form used to appoint a person to make decisions about health care.)

A power of attorney can be limited or very broad in scope depending on what is needed. A properly written and executed durable POA can give someone a great deal of power over another person’s affairs, and should be carefully considered. Executing a power of attorney does not take away the ability of the principal — the person signing the power of attorney — to continue to conduct his own affairs.

When deciding who to name as “attorney in fact,” consider four things about potential people:

1) Trust. The person named in a POA must be trusted to do what the principal wants and needs. The “attorney in fact” must not use his authority to take advantage of the principal and cannot exceed the authority given to him.

2) Competency. The attorney in fact must be capable of handling the tasks the principal needs done. A person who must handle a complicated tax matter needs a different level of competency than someone who needs to make sure the rent is paid each month.

3) Capacity. The needs of the principal may change over time. The attorney in fact should have the time, energy, and willingness to help the principal as different situations arise.

4) Communication. The principal and the attorney in fact should be able to communicate clearly with each other. The principal needs to give directions about what she wants done under different circumstances, and the attorney in fact should be honest about what she is willing and able to do.

Ohio’s “power of attorney” form, along with tools and resources to help fill it out, can be found here. The POA form should be signed before a notary. The POA must be given to anyone or any institutions asked to rely on it, such as a bank or landlord. The POA lasts until the principal dies or says the power of attorney is no longer in effect. The POA must be recorded with the county if used for any transactions involving real property.

Older adults and people with disabilities or serious illness may apply to Legal Aid for help creating a durable power of attorney by calling 1-888-817-3777.

This article was written by Anne Sweeney and appeared in The Alert: Volume 33, Issue 1. Click here to read a full PDF of this issue!