Landlords wrongfully acted to evict metro Phoenix renters during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite a federal law protecting tenants from losing their homes if they couldn't pay rent, USA Today reported. More than 900 evictions were filed against tenants who likely should have been protected by the federal CARES Act, according to an investigation by the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network. Most of those renters also were wrongfully charged hundreds of dollars in late and legal fees. Many had no lawyer to help them navigate the eviction process, no one to tell them about legal protections and nowhere to go when they were locked out of their homes. The CARES Act, passed by Congress on March 26 to provide fast economic help to people hurt by the pandemic, stated landlords with federally backed mortgages couldn’t evict tenants before July 26 for not paying rent. Nearly half of the nation's mortgages are federally backed. Tenants living in apartments, condominiums or rental homes with federally backed mortgages didn't have to prove they were impacted by COVID-19. Under the CARES Act, they were automatically protected from eviction for not paying rent. An Arizona Republic investigation into the more than 8,000 evictions filed in Maricopa County, Arizona's most populous county and home to Phoenix, during that period found more than 10 percent appeared to violate the CARES Act. Not all of those 900-plus tenants were kicked out. Some paid their rent in time to stop the evictions, even though they weren’t required to, and others had their cases dismissed for unknown reasons. However, the CARES Act should have stopped landlords from even starting the eviction process in court.
