First of the month is crisis for renters, landlords in Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula

The rent’s due tomorrow. Who is going to pay it?

It’s a question that keeps landlords, as well as tenants, awake at night, as the pandemic shutdown keeps thousands of people out of work for a second month.

As the first of May approaches, aid agencies are seeing increasing panic.

“Our requests are way up,” said Jan Coen of the Gig Harbor-Peninsula FISH Food Bank, which also offers rent and utility assistance. “Everbody is scared.”

Many of the people laid off because of the coronavirus shutdown were restaurant employees or other low-paid workers who live paycheck to paycheck in rented apartments. Now they are scrambling.

“We hearing from people who have never needed assistance before,” said Gina Cabbidu at the Children’s Home Society on the Key Peninsula. “They don’t know how to apply for food stamps, how to get on Medicaid, how to get help paying the rent.”

Although Gov. Jay Insley has ordered evictions suspended — and his attorney general last week sued a Tacoma apartment complex for defying it — rent at some point will still have to be paid.

“You may still have a place to live, but in the meantime, those bills are going to pile up,” said Cabiddu. “Our concern is that families are going to get way behind.”

Lordlords worry, too

Tenants are not the only ones worried. Landlords have mortgages to pay, too, said Chris Dobler, whose family-owned company manages about 300 rental units in Gig Harbor and several big apartment complexes in Tacoma.

“Some people in our position can weather a financial crisis for four or six weeks,” she said, “but going on eight or ten weeks, it gets dicey, especially for small owners who may have a duplex or a fourplex and a big mortgage.”

Dobler sent out an e-mail query to her company’s tenants on March 25, asking if anyone needed more time to pay the April rent. She was shaken when she got back more than 500 requests for late payment plans.

“A lot them couldn’t give definite dates,” she said, “because they didn’t know when they would be able to go back to work.”

Ironically, she said, the tenants in greatest distress are not the very low-income, but those in the middle who, up to now, had good jobs.

“Those on subsidized housing, their aid will continue,” she said. “But it’s the people who had a job and were buying a car, or paying off a college loan — it’s those people who are in trouble now.”

Overall, the delinquency rate is not as big as landlords feared, said Brett Waller, director of government affairs at the Washington Multifamily Housing Association.

“Historically, it’s 5 percent or so,” he said. “It’s closer to 10 percent right now, but May and June are going to be problematic. We might see anywhere between 10 and 20 percent delinquency if this goes much longer.”

Waller’s organization is backing a bill introduced by Rep. Denny Heck (D-Tacoma) which would provide $100 billion to states for emergency rental assistance through the Community Development Block Grant program. The bill, HR 6314, would lower the qualification threshold to 80 percent of the local household median income — or about $41,000 in Pierce County. Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Gig Harbor) has signed on as a co-sponsor.

Looking for the rent

Tom Seferovich is one of those renters who is not sure where the May payment is going to come from

Until the construction shutdown, Seferovich, 65, had a busy concrete contracting business, which he runs out of his Gig Harbor apartment.

“I had managed prior to this,” he said. “I was saving money, even paying my rent a little ahead. I managed to save enough for April. But now there’s no money to pay May, or maybe June bills.”

His landlord suggested he “might one to get some help.” Taking the hint, Seferovich applied to the FISH Food Bank, which he said gave him “a decent chunk” of the money he needs to raise for the rent. He’s looking for the rest.

Seferovich said it was “a true blessing from God” to be able to turn to someone for help.

“I’ve had worse times, and the people there helped me then, so I know about them,” he said. “And when I can work again, I want to pay it all back and then some.”

Families in need

On the Key Peninsula, Gina Cabiddu and her co-workers at the Children’s Home Society work with about 250 families. She estimates that in the coming months, about 100 will need assistance with rent.

“We try to be pro-active about that, because in the long run it’s much cheaper to pay a month’s rent that to try to get a homeless family back into housing,” she said.

The organization recently received a $10,000 grant for rental assistance, she said, but that will be gone quickly, since rents run to $1,000 a month these days, even on the semi-rural Peninsula.

The CHS has also hooked up with the Gig Harbor-Peninsula Food Bank, to act as sort of a scout and paperwork processing agent for families in need on the Key Peninsula.

“It makes a lot of sense, because of our on-site knowledge and our home visitations,” Cabiddu said. It will also relieve Key Peninsula families from making the long trip to Gig Harbor to apply.

Housing a mixed bag

Housing on the Key Peninsula is a mixed bag, Cabiddu noted, with only one big apartment complex but lots of single-family houses and duplexes scattered over a large area.

“We still see a lot of families, many of them immigrants, sharing housing — two extended families, maybe, living in one rented house. If there is a problem with rent, that’s a lot people without shelter.”

Some landlords are great, some not so great, she said.

Since evictions for late payment have been temporarily banned, Cabiddu said, “landlords are suddenly being pushy about other issues, like kids being loud, or hygiene being poor.” The CHS has begun connecting tenants with legal aid societies who can help.

Most landlords will work with a tenant in distress, said Dobler, the Gig Harbor property manager.

“No housing provider wants to lose any tenants,” she said, not least because marketing an empty apartment can cost up to $3,500 a vacancy. Even when eviction is legal, she said, “it’s a last resort.”

Dobler also points out an unanticipated consequence of the current crisis. With tenants effectively frozen in place, there has been little turnover in rental housing. That, together with the freeze on new construction, is going to lead to a housing shortage in a few more weeks or months, she predicts.

This story was originally published April 28, 2020 at 12:00 AM.