Hello, and greetings from Colorado Springs. My name is Lance Kohler, and I'm the president of the Cornerstone Real Estate Team.
Today, I'd like to talk about the Center for Disease Control Moratorium on Evictions, which went into effect on the fourth of September of 2020. I'd like to give you a brief summary of the moratorium, and talk about what it does do and what it doesn't do.
So, as I said, it's a moratorium set up by the Center for Disease Control. It provides a temporary hold on residential evictions to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. It was effective on the 4th of September. That's when it was approved. And it runs through the 31st of December, 2020. What started this? The director of the CDC signed a declaration determining that evictions of tenants could be detrimental to public health control measures that are fighting against COVID-19. The intent of the moratorium (or the intent of this temporary halt to evictions) is to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and to support response efforts to COVID-19.
If you read the actual document, it will discuss in there how evictions could cause homelessness. Homeless folks are not well protected from COVID-19. If states or municipalities are giving shelter-in-place orders, then displacing tenants would counteract that act. So the intent of the moratorium is to mitigate the spread.
What it does do is prevent the eviction of tenants for non-payment of rent or utilities. So no evictions for non-payment through to December 31, 2020. What it doesn't do: it doesn't relieve anybody of the obligation to pay rent. So rent is still due, and tenants are still obligated to pay rent. You just cannot evict them for not paying the rent. It also doesn't prevent eviction or action from landlords in regards to other lease obligations. So, if there's criminal activity, you can still process for eviction. If there are activities that endanger the health and safety of residents or cause damage to the property or violate other rules and regulations of the lease, those are still able to be enforced.
In order to have the protection provided by this moratorium, a tenant must sign a declaration and provide that declaration to the landlord. If you search for the moratorium, there'll be a declaration attached to that. You can review that. But essentially, they've got to testify or swear to the following things: that they're using their best efforts to secure government assistance in order to pay the rent; that they're not going to earn more than $99,000 during calendar year 2020; that they're unable to pay their rent due to impacts of COVID-19 (impacts being reduced hours, reduced wages, lay layoff or extreme or high medical costs, for example); they’re making best efforts to make partial payments (in other words, they're paying as much as they can); and, if they were to be evicted, it would lead either to homelessness or put them in a shared living situation where they're in close contact with other families or other people not within their immediate family or something to that effect.
So that's a quick summary of the moratorium on evictions. Again, this is in effect until December 31st, 2020. I hope this information was helpful to you. Thanks for your time. Have a great day.