A tenant advocacy organization, Building and Strengthening Tenant Action (BASTA), says they’ve seen an increase in evictions since March. They say evictions are at the level they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.
No one knows this better than Joseph Blunt, who was evicted out of a South Austin apartment last month.
“We had ended up falling behind on bills because we had a few deaths in the family take place," Blunt said.
Now he lives in his car with his two dogs.
“With an eviction on your record that makes the red tape just a little more," he said.
On March 1, the last pause on evictions expired. And Travis County rental assistance ran out of money. The number of evictions has spiked since March.
“It’s been about a month and a half where we’re hitting over 200 eviction filings every week,” said Mincho Jacob with BASTA.
That’s about how many there were before the pandemic. According to The Eviction Lab, evictions have been increasing since December.
“While numbers may be way down, a lot of people who lost work, who lost hours, or who maybe had a family member that was sick or they themselves were sick, they’re just barely getting on their feet right now,” said Jacob.
For those of you struggling with evictions, you can go to this website for more resources on how to protect yourself.
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