Reading Human Relations director says evictions in the city are rising

Sep. 25—The number of tenant evictions in Reading is on the rise, the city's Human Relations Commission director said.

"The number of evictions has started to climb," Kimberly Talbot said, "and it's alarming,"

Talbot said her office handles cases of discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations. The HRC also runs Reading Area Water Authority's hardship program, landlord-tenant mediation and homeless prevention and fair housing programs.

She also serves as case manager for the commission's Eviction Prevention Project that can help qualified families with serious rental and utility bills.

The project is spearheaded by Talbot, District Judge Tonya A. Butler and Donald F. Smith Jr., former executive director of the Berks County Bar Association.

Headquartered in Butler's courtroom at 2312 Fairmont Ave., it provides city tenants facing eviction with free legal aid from MidPenn Legal Services and volunteer attorneys from the Berks County Bar Association.

Recently, Talbot said, the program was expanded with the help of MidPenn to District Judge Carissa L. Johnson's courtroom, 1150 Muhlenberg St.

The program helps the landlord and the tenant, Butler explained.

"If the tenant qualifies, the landlord is assured of rental income owed," she said, "and the tenant gets his or her rent paid."

The program often helps to resolve misunderstandings between the parties, too, Butler noted.

Smith volunteers in Butler's courtroom one afternoon a week and works with a minimum of 10 cases each week.

"That is a minimum," he said recently. "Monday, we had 16, and two weeks ago we had 17."

And that is in just one district, he noted.

Butler's and Johnson's courtrooms are the only two out of the 17 in Berks, five of which are in the city, to have an attorney on-site during eviction hearings, Smith said.

"We don't have the manpower, and we don't have the funding to do that in every magisterial district court," he said.

The program was initially funded by $2.2 million in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, or CARES, awarded to the city in 2020.

Post-pandemic the need hasn't tapered off, Talbot said.

And while the program is now supported in part by a grant from the Wyomissing Foundation, an increasing number of people and families are finding themselves at risk of losing their homes due to rising rental rates.

The increase in those needing services is alarming, she said.

"At this point with all the requests we are getting from people needing rental assistance," Talbot said, "it is probably at the highest that I've ever seen since I started working at the HRC, which is like 16 years ago now."

The HRC director spoke recently during City Council's committee of the whole meeting at the request of Councilwoman Melissa Ventura.

So far this year, Talbot said, HRC received 278 applications for rental assistance and 42 additional applications for utility assistance.

Using a variety of funding sources, the commission was able to assist more than 175 families. But at the rate applications are being made, she said, the money will likely run out in four to five weeks.

Meanwhile, the number of people, including children, who are homeless and living in their vehicles or motels is climbing, she said.

"I just got an application today from a family of seven that are living at a hotel," she said, "and because they cannot afford more than one room there, they are all in one room."

Frequent moves and homelessness have a detrimental impact on school-age children, who are often shuffled from school to school and fall behind, Talbot said.

"It just rips me apart when a family of several kids is evicted," Smith said. "These aren't deadbeats. People think, 'Oh, these tenants just aren't paying their rent.' But that is only true in about 1% of the cases."

There are many reasons why people fall behind on their rent, he said. For example, injuries or illness many result in medical expenses and missed work. There could be a temporary lay off or permanent job loss for the family's main breadwinner.

Though wages rose during the pandemic, Talbot noted in an earlier interview, earnings are not keeping pace with the highest inflation in decades.

"The price of everything is going up," she said, "but people's wages aren't going up at the same rate."

For too many, she said, the discrepancy means there is a daily choice between putting food on the table and paying a utility bill or rent.

Another factor is the current housing market, she said.

A lot of tenants lose their homes when their landlords decide to sell, Talbot said. New owners are not required to honor the lease, and they raise the rents, sometimes as much as double, she said.

"Our tenants are not able to come up with that type of money," Talbot said. "They are also not able to find another place within the limited time that they have (to move out.) So they are being turned onto the street or whatever they can find at that point in time."

The problem has become chronic since the pandemic, Councilwoman Marcia Goodman-Hinnershitz said, and is occurring throughout the country.

Goodman-Hinnershitz said she does not foresee a drop in the high rental costs.

Fair market rents in the Reading ZIP codes range from an average of $1,526 for a four-bedroom apartment to an average of $894 for a one-bedroom unit, according to rentdata.org, which compiles rental price data across the U.S.

Set by HUD each year, fair-market rents are slightly below the median.

That means some city rents are even higher.

"We're going to continue to have housing that's available," Goodman-Hinnershitz said, "but people aren't going to be able to afford it, so it's not affordable housing."

Councilman O. Christopher Miller, a real estate agent and owner of several rental properties, agreed that rental rates are not likely to go down anytime soon.

What is happening, he explained, is that the price of the properties on the market has increased considerably over the past few years. Part of that has to do with the low inventory.

"There just are not a lot of properties that are for sale, which is driving the prices up," he said.

Another issue, he said, is the number of investors looking to buy investment properties in Reading, where prices are still lower than in surrounding counties. Add to that the inflated costs of construction materials and labor along with high prices for other products, he noted.

"For people who are buying properties and renovating, those costs are factored into the rent," he said.

With rents rising, Miller said, he expects homelessness to increase in the coming months.

"We have to have a serious conversation about how we're going to deal with it," he said.

Goodman-Hinnershitz asked Talbot if there is a way to address the problem with the Berks Coalition to End Homelessness and other stakeholders.

Talbot said she meets monthly with the coalition and has discussed creative ways to help maintain rental rates, but the HRC does not have the power to control rates. And because Pennsylvania has no statewide legislation regarding rent control, landlords can increase rent as much as they see fit.

"We need to get together as a community and figure out what we are going to do with the people who will be living in their cars and on the street," Talbot said. "If not, we are going to be looking at some serious issues with people being on the street in the wintertime."