WEST LEBANON — First it was masks. Now it’s the moratorium.
The day after Hanover reinstated the town’s indoor mask mandate, the state of New Hampshire placed Grafton County back on the list of counties where evictions are being paused due to a growing number of COVID-19 cases.
Grafton County, along with Belknap and Cheshire counties, was added to the list where evictions are on hold by the New Hampshire Circuit Court on Thursday, bringing the total number of Granite State counties with paused evictions to six. New Hampshire has 10 counties.
The move comes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday said evictions — which landlords were free to commence when the national moratorium expired at the end of July — should be paused in counties that are reporting a “substantial” or “high level” of COVID-19 transmission.
Sullivan County so far has not been added to the pause list, and a court news release said courts in such counties “will continue processing and holding hearings in all landlord-tenant cases.”
There were 54 new cases of COVID-19 infection in Grafton County through Wednesday, up 135% from the prior seven days, which designates the county as having a “substantial” rate of transmission, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Grafton County has a population of almost 90,000.
Sullivan County, with a population of 43,000, had 16 new cases, up 129%, designating the county with a “moderate” rate of transmission.
Five of Vermont’s 14 counties are under eviction moratorium orders, although neither Windsor County or Orange County are on the list. Both Windsor and Orange counties also were in the “moderate” category on the CDC map.
Housing advocates were bracing for an onslaught of eviction actions by landlords once the CDC-ordered national moratorium expired on July 31, but the CDC’s order this week has gone a long way to stemming the expected deluge in local courts.
“There was really no time for landlords to initiate new court eviction proceedings between July 31 and the new moratorium, so we did not see an uptick,” said Elliott Berry, managing attorney and co-director of the Housing Justice Project at New Hampshire Legal Assistance, which represents tenants in eviction cases, “quite frankly because the moratorium is doing what it is designed is to do.”
Landlords can evict tenants for reasons other than unpaid back rent, although data from the New Hampshire Judicial Branch, which operates the county circuit courts, shows just how much evictions have declined this year.
So far, eight months into 2021, there have been 19 “writs of possession” — evictions — issued at the Lebanon district courthouse compared with a total of 75 in all of 2019, the year before the pandemic.
“Most of the writs of possession issued this year were for cases filed for reasons other than nonpayment of rent,” Pamela Kozlowski, clerk of the circuit court in Lebanon, said via email. “So, generally speaking, 19 by this time of year is a low number but understandably so, given the pandemic and its ongoing impact.”
Three major Upper Valley landlords — Ledgeworks, Chiplin Enterprises and Purcell Properties — did not respond to requests for comment about how the eviction moratorium is affecting their business. Collectively, the landlords own hundreds of rental units in the Hanover-Lebanon-Hartford area.
Both New Hampshire and Vermont have received massive infusions of money from the federal government to help residents financially stressed by the pandemic to pay for rent and utilities, but each state — like all states — have distributed only a small portion of the available funds so far.
In Vermont, the Vermont Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which administers and processes rental assistant requests, as of Wednesday received 5,927 applications, of which it approved 2,906 and distributed $12.8 million to renters. The program, which began paying assistance in April, has a $110 million fund to draw upon.
Windsor County is currently ranked No. 3 in the state for housing assistance with 478 applicants, of which 254 so far have been approved, receiving $1 million toward rental and utility expenses, according to the rental assistance program. Orange County is ranked 12th in the state with 150 residents, of which 61 have so far been approved, receiving $288,000.
But the number of renters and amount of money requiring financial assistance may be much greater, according to Surgo Ventures, a Washington, D.C., health data analytics firm.
Surgo estimates that as of the week from June 23 to July 5 — the most recent data it had available — 296 households owed a total of $712,000 in back rent. In Windsor County, 786 households owed a total of $1.9 million, which accounted for about 12% of all households in each county.
The data is even starker for New Hampshire, where Surgo estimates 1,056 households owe a total of $3.2 million in back rent and 499 households in Sullivan County collectively owe $2 million.
So far, New Hampshire has paid out only $30 million of the $200 million in its federally funded New Hampshire Emergency Assistance Rental program. The average disbursement has been nearly $7,000, although about 3,500 applicants are waiting to be processed.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
