The pandemic is still threatening livelihoods and access to housing. In response, legal aid societies have hired additional staff to help clients navigate the state's rent relief program. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
More than a year and a half since COVID-19 hit Virginia, Elizabeth Coltrane is still seeing clients who are at risk of losing their homes because of the pandemic's impact on their income. She's an attorney at Blue Ridge Legal Services in Harrisonburg.
ELIZABETH COLTRANE: They have jobs, they're employed, they're just for whatever reason, either they had to miss work because of quarantine, or they got COVID themselves … I'm starting to hear in court more defendants who aren't able to come because they're on quarantine, or the biggest thing is their kids are in quarantine from school.
In response, Governor Northam announced in February that $524 million in federal stimulus funds would go to the Virginia Rent Relief Program. The program provides money to landlords whose tenants have fallen behind on rent due to the pandemic. Then, in August, Northam signed a bill that extended eviction protections through next June. The bill requires landlords to apply for the rent relief themselves before evicting tenants for nonpayment.
COLTRANE: By the time the landlord gets to the unlawful detainer stage --
That's the legal term for initiating an eviction.
COLTRANE … they have started to run out of patience. So if we can get the rent before that, then everyone seems to do a little better.
Coltrane's office, as well as the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville, have hired additional staff to help tenants navigate the rent relief program. Carrie Klosko, a senior supervising attorney with the center, said the application process can be daunting, but the program is effective.
CARRIE KLOSKO: I was sort of cynical about it because I first started practicing in 2009, and that was when the Obama administration HAMP program came out to give relief to people with mortgages that were behind because of the economic crisis, and it was horrible. People got foreclosed while they had outstanding applications. … I thought this was going to be like that but it wasn't. Once the application is in, it does get processed, it gets processed efficiently, and landlords get paid.
The Legal Aid Justice Center hired rent relief assistants who spoke Spanish, because their office is the only legal aid provider in Charlottesville that can legally work with undocumented people.
