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.