MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Shelby County legal advocates confirmed Monday they distributed $1.8 million in CARES Act funding to prevent eviction for 1,100 Shelby County households.
Heather Williams was one of the renters who benefitted. Williams became a mom of two this year, but her now-eight-month-old was born with breathing problems. Having her kids while working from home became difficult.
“Daycares are barely open and if they are it’s very scary,” she said. “The stress of having to make those sales, plus my post-partum, it was either I quit or they were gonna let me go.”
As a result, Williams became one of the millions of Americans who fell behind on rent. A month ago, she applied for help from the county’s Eviction Settlement Program. Officials have been working on this since the summer, using CARES Act funding that expires at the end of the year.
Williams got an email last week stating the program settled her case, paying off $3,800 worth of debt. The program allowed her landlord Adam Rudman to dismiss her eviction case and that of about 100 of her neighbors.
“I cried. I cried. I went to church and I cried,” she said.
“It was a hard year for everybody, in the industry of real estate, for the tenants. To come to a point that everybody can start fresh, it’s amazing,” said Rudman, director of Apartments Near Me, which manages Williams’s Whitehaven complex.
Memphis Area Legal Services worked with Neighborhood Preservation, Inc. and Memphis and Shelby County officials to settle the evictions by the end of last week, according to MALS CEO Cindy Ettingoff.
“That totals up $1.8 million in settlement money spent toward preventing eviction,” Ettingoff said. “Most people impacted are women with children, particularly persons with color but single moms with children.”
Ettingoff said she was “thrilled” to help so many of those families. But they still have more people on the waiting list and they’re hoping to get more funding from the next stimulus package in the new year. She expected that help would funnel through landlords, rather than tenants.
