During the first 16 months of the coronavirus pandemic, when the federal government imposed a ban on evictions, five corporate landlords engaged in “abusive” and, in at least one case, potentially illegal tactics to try to force people from their homes, according to a Congressional probe.
The report, released last week by the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, detailed efforts by corporate landlords to evict tenants in multiple states while a deadly virus, not yet slowed by vaccines, ravaged the country.
Invitation Homes, Progress Residential and Front Yard Residential, which almost exclusively rent single-family homes, and The Siegel Group and Ventron Management, which rent apartments, are the landlords named.
Between March 2020 and July 2021 – when the federal eviction moratorium was in effect – these landlords filed nearly 15,000 evictions at a time the federal government took action to keep people housed and healthy, according to the report.
The Charlotte Journalism Collaborative is supported by the Local Media Project, an initiative launched by the Solutions Journalism Network with support from the Knight Foundation to strengthen and reinvigorate local media ecosystems.
