More NJ landlords are suing tenants for missed rent payments during eviction ban – NorthJersey.com

When Gloria Soyangco won close to $7,000 from New Jersey’s rental assistance lottery earlier this year, it seemed like a saving grace.

At the time, she owed her landlord months of rent after the person she had relied on to make the payments stopped making them. Her Rutherford landlord of more than a decade filed papers to evict her — and filed a lawsuit to recover a little more than $6,000 for five months of missed rent and fees. 

Because the grant covered what the landlord said in court filings that the 45-year-old single mother owed, the judge dismissed thelandlord’s suit, but without prejudice, meaning the landlord could file another one at any time.

And while Soyangco’s application was chosen for a second round of possible government help, her rental debt continued to rise, now close to $10,000.

“I’m doing the best I can, and tried to offer a payment plan, but they refused,” Soyangco said of her landlord. “I’m having a really hard time finding somewhere else to go. I can’t afford these rents. Where am I supposed to go?”

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When a tenant misses a rent payment in New Jersey, landlords usually have two options, which they can pursue simultaneously. Option one: File a landlord-tenant case to evict the tenant. Option two: File a case in civil court to recoup the bills the tenant didn’t pay.

But because of the COVID pandemic, since March 2020 New Jersey has been under an eviction and foreclosure moratorium, meaning that while landlords can begin filing eviction paperwork, no tenants can be kicked or locked out of their homes through at least mid-August.

Without the eviction option, tenant lawyers say they’re seeing an increase in lawsuits against renters, such as the one filed against Soyangco.

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“In the past, if a tenant owed rent and was evicted, it was very rare for the landlord to follow up with a claim for the money, probably because that suit is more complicated than an eviction case, takes longer and in many cases doesn’t really result in the landlord getting money,” said Gregory Diebold of Northeast New Jersey Legal Services. “The person they evicted disappears, or doesn’t have the financial means to pay.”  

And there is a good chance New Jersey will see a sustained spike in such civil cases as lawmakers debate a deal to end the eviction moratorium. 

Political leaders are struggling to pass comprehensive legislation to stave off a wave of evictions, foreclosures and homelessness. The state and localities are scrambling to pass out hundreds of thousands of dollars in rental relief, the one major solution currently available.

But for Soyangco, an eviction case and the threat of another lawsuit still hang over her head, even after securing a Department of Community Affairs grant.

Landlords must agree not to evict a tenant for any period for which the DCA has paid full rent, said Lisa Ryan, a spokesperson for the agency.

In a notice announcing $100 million in rental relief, the Department of Community Affairs said it “will encourage landlords to agree to a reasonable payment plan” for any overdue rent, not to evict for any overdue rent accumulated before the start of temporary rental assistance and “not to evict due to unpaid rent for six months after the end of assistance.”

Larry Sindoni, Soyangco’s lawyer at Northeast New Jersey Legal Services, said, “Before COVID, most agencies wouldn’t pay that type of money unless there was a guarantee to make sure tenants could stay in their home” — but that was not the case for this state grant. 

Soyangco’s landlord “refused to agree to a settlement,” Sindoni said. “She offered to give them basically all she is getting in child support, and they wouldn’t budge, unless she could pay 75% of her remaining balance within 30 days. Those are draconian terms.”

The landlord declined to be interviewed for this story. 

Some nights, Soyangco can barely sleep, dreaming that she comes home to find a padlock on her door. She imagines becoming homeless.

“And you live this every single day,” she said through tears. “I’ve never been apart from my son since he was born, and to think that way really kills me.”

Two landlords’ remedies

Under normal circumstances, an eviction case can take around two weeks from start to removing a tenant, though the courts are currently examining ways to rework the landlord-tenant process. 

Civil cases for collecting missed rent payments require more steps than eviction cases: A tenant gets to file a written response, and there is time for evidence-gathering. 

If the court rules in the landlord’s favor, there are a few ways they can collect the money if the tenant has it, Diebold said. Through wage execution, a tenant’s employer is ordered to deduct money from the tenant’s wages and turn it over to the creditor. Or the court could grant a bank levy, essentially an order to freeze a tenant’s bank account and turn money over to the landlord.

“Although the court will try to help you collect the money owed to you, it cannot guarantee your debt will be paid,” the New Jersey Courts wrote in a “collecting a money judgment” guide. 

“Many landlords are desperate after not receiving rental payments for well over a year,” said David Brogan, executive director of the New Jersey Apartment Association. “NJAA has encouraged landlords to work with their tenants, enter into repayment arrangements and waive late fees. Having said that, most of our members have tenants who have cut off communication for the past 14 months.”

Eric Harvitt of Landmark Companies LLC, which manages more than 3,100 rental apartments throughout New Jersey, said it is just beginning to pursue civil court cases. 

“Most of the people, let’s face it, if they haven’t paid, they don’t have the money,” Harvitt said. “But then we have a number of tenants who say, ‘I just don’t care, I’m not paying you, I haven’t paid you in a year, I’m not going to start paying you now.’ ”

Harvitt said he’s frustrated with the state’s rental assistance programs, and that the applications are “very onerous and hard to get through” for his tenants. 

“It’s imperative that New Jersey gets the federal rental assistance money out the door as quickly as possible … up until now they haven’t,” said Brogan, of the NJAA. 

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New Jersey has awarded more than $122 million in rental relief from mid-August 2020 to mid-May 2021, the DCA said.

Lawmakers are currently negotiating a bill that would specifically point to civil cases pursuing missed payments as the major recourse for landlords. 

Under S3691/A5685, the eviction moratorium would end early, on July 31, 2021, and while landlords would not be able to kick out tenants who didn’t make rent during the pandemic, the bill explicitly says civil cases to pursue the debt would still be an option. 

One of the Assembly sponsors, Assemblywoman Britnee Timberlake, D-Essex, said she was working to remove a central tenet of the bill: “I don’t think that it is fair for someone to have a judgment against them for debt that is owed.” 

The New Jersey Apartment Association pushed back against that argument. 

“Unless discharged in a bankruptcy proceeding, any rent that is owed … can be collected through a civil action,” Brogan said. “Under the U.S. Constitution and system of law, there is nothing that New Jersey can do to change that.”

‘I’m alone here in New Jersey’

Soyangco left her job at the convenience store at a Hackensack BP gas station in late 2019 because she wasn’t making enough to cover child care. 

Months later, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, schools closed. Soyangco didn’t have Wi-Fi, so her son’s elementary school provided them with a Chromebook that could connect to the internet, though spottily. She would sometimes have him log into class from her cellphone, or hot-spot his device. Soyangco’s son is repeating first grade because she thought he was lagging behind his classmates, she said. 

The court proceedings added another hurdle. 

Sindoni, her lawyer, recounts logging into the court hearing and seeing Soyangco on the screen. Calling in from her phone, she led her 8-year-old son up the steps to school as in-person sessions started back up, then turned her attention back to the proceedings.

“I try to keep a positive mind for my son, and keep upbeat and reassure him that everything is going to be OK,” Soyangco said. 

But each decision she makes is rooted in the fear that she will lose her home. 

She visits the Rutherford food pantry twice a month, collecting four bags of canned goods. She received ShopRite gift cards from her case worker to buy other essentials like shampoo, milk and chicken. But she doesn’t buy or collect too much food at once — she doesn’t want the food to go to waste if she were ever to be locked out by her landlord.

Her apartment is filled with boxes — her family is ready to go if she is evicted. Some are untaped after she had to dig out her son’s raincoat or boots or toys.

An unopened package holds a brand-new bike that an anonymous donor gave her son for Christmas through the Rutherford pantry. Soyangco refuses to put it together or let her son ride it in case they are displaced and they have to give it up. She doesn’t want her son to be crushed losing his first bike, she said.

“I’m just so scared one day they will show up at my door and tell me to leave,” Soyangco said. “I’m alone here in New Jersey.”

Ashley Balcerzak is a reporter in the New Jersey Statehouse. For unlimited access to her work covering New Jersey’s Legislature and political power structure, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: balcerzaka@northjersey.com 

Twitter: @abalcerzak