Hosted by Ciriac Alvarez Valle of Voices for Utah Children, with guests Marcus Dugan – Utah Legal Services & Gretchen Lee – Mountain Mediation Center.

(October 15, 2020)

The post What is Happening with Housing? appeared first on Mountain Mediation Center.

Article by Leslie Thatcher for KPCW (August 13, 2020)

The Mountain Mediation Center, a local conflict resolution nonprofit, has hired a new outreach coordinator for the area’s Spanish-speaking community and is preparing for the possibility of mass evictions after the expiration of federal and state moratoriums on the issue.

The Mountain Mediation Center for Summit and Wasatch counties operates with just four part-time staffers and several volunteers. Its mission is to serve the residents of the Wasatch Back by helping prevent and resolve conflict outside of a courtroom.

Its work came to a halt when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March. But executive director Gretchen Lee says when small claims courts started to see a backlog of cases, the center restarted its work in mid-May with free mediation sessions via Zoom on Wednesdays.

Lee said that the number of requests for family mediation services started rising about a month ago.

A shortfall of the center has been in difficulty helping the community’s Spanish speakers, so the center recently hired Lirio Sanchez – Park City native just received her accounting degree from the University of Utah – to work about 15 to 20 hours a week.

“My community and especially helping my Latino community has always been really important so I was really excited about this position,” Sanchez said. “And as I got to learn more about Mountain Mediation and the services that they provide I felt like this was something that could be very beneficial for the Spanish-speaking community.”

On Aug. 22, the center is hosting an online discussion with the Spanish speaking community on reimagining the justice system and restorative justice. Sanchez says they hope to bring more awareness to the Latinx community and answer questions that viewers may have. The event will be held live from 10:30 a.m. to noon on the Mountain Mediation Center’s Facebook page.

Two panelists will participate including a policy analyst for Voices for Utah and a counselor at East High School in Salt Lake City.

Lee says the Park City community has done an incredible job helping people in need of rent assistance. And so far, she says they are not yet seeing many evictions filed at the 3rd District Courthouse.

The state’s moratorium on evictions expired in May and the federal eviction moratorium expired at the end of July. But Lee says landlords have to wait 30 days before they can file an eviction – so Lee expects to see more by the end of the month and is preparing for it.

“So we don’t know really what’s going to happen, but in the meantime we’ve been preparing our – we’ve got a small group of small claims court mediators who are interested in landlord-tenant mediation and some of them have real estate backgrounds and so we as an organization have started some roundtables with them,” she said. “You know, just to make sure that they are up and running if and when we’re called upon at the court to need to help mediate those cases.”

The mediation center also offers its services to smaller landlords.

“We can help landlords, particularly smaller landlords, that deal with tenants more on a one-on- one basis, help renegotiate leases with their tenants so you know they’re workable leases on both sides recognizing that the landlords have bills to pay and perhaps the tenants aren’t in any position to pay their full leases,” Lee said, pointing potential landlords and tenants in need of service to the organization’s website. “And then if they have problems from there, we have got mediators ready to go and thanks to some funding from our other community organizations, we are able to do this at no charge.”

A second bilingual conversation on reimagining justice, she says, will be held in September.

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Click here to read/listen to the article on the KPCW website

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Article by Annie Knox for the Deseret News (August 2, 2020)

SALT LAKE CITY — Jasmine Stanley checks her bank account several times a day to see if an unexpected payment has shown up. Any extra cash will help.

She and her boyfriend are short on August rent after they got the coronavirus last week and couldn’t work.

If the Midvale couple had fallen sick earlier, moratoriums on pandemic-related evictions would have bought them more time to catch up. But a statewide freeze ended in May, and protection for Stanley and other renters in buildings with federally backed mortgages ran out last week.

“It’s pretty overwhelming. It causes a lot of anxiety,” said Stanley, 22, who estimates she will fall hundreds of dollars short of her roughly $900 rent. “We had one of my friends take our coins to Coinstar to see how much money we could get. She got about $50, so that was cool, but still not enough.”

After an initial dip in evictions in recent months, tenant advocates expect the number to swell. Many are ramping up services in English and Spanish to handle the anticipated surge, although a rental owner industry group says the fears are overblown.

The evictions threaten to amplify a longtime trend. Most Utahns who face eviction lawsuits — 95% as of last year — have no legal representation, while the vast majority of property owners — 91% — are equipped with attorneys, show Utah courts system data on the 6,300 cases adjudicated last year.

Unemployment benefits and an additional $600 a week in federal relief have helped other Utahns weather the pandemic, but the extra payments have now ceased. As of June, 85,700 in the state were out of work, according to the Department of Workforce Services.

And while many have found jobs as the state has gradually reopened, rising numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases make for an uncertain economy.

Stanley said her boyfriend, Vaitupu Collins, developed a fever and body aches after an infected co-worker at his manufacturing job came to work with symptoms. Soon Stanley struggled to breathe even while lying on the couch and could not muster the energy to work from home for her call center job. Within a few days, Stanley began to feel better, but Collins was too drained to speak with a reporter. Both tested positive for the virus.

The state has set aside $20 million and the US. government $4 million in rent help for Utahns like Stanley, although restrictions apply.

Stanley learned she may not qualify for a grant because Collins, staying with her to avoid infecting eight family members he usually lives with, is not on her lease. She got in touch with a property agent at her building, who said she would qualify for a break only if within $99 of the full payment.

She doesn’t plan to seek help from her family. Her father, a construction worker who remodels hotels, was laid off in July.

“I think it’s just important for people to see that just because the state isn’t shut down anymore doesn’t mean that people aren’t struggling,” Stanley said.

Marty Blaustein, an attorney with Utah Legal Services, agreed.

“This is not going to be pretty,” said Blaustein, whose firm is hiring three new advocates to work on eviction and debt collection cases.

The main industry group for Utah rental property owners sees it differently.

Paul Smith, the executive director of the Utah Apartment Association, noted June’s number of eviction court cases filed statewide — 332 — is down by about half. It did not rebound to normal levels after Utah Gov. Gary Herbert’s six-week hold on evictions lifted in May, a dip he attributes to landlords willing to work with tenants, government assistance, and financial contributions from churches, family members and charities.

Smith estimates that 30,000 to 50,000 apartments — about 10-16% of the state stock — have federally backed loans.

“The reality is it’s not a crisis,” he said. “So far, we’re doing just fine.”

Many of the state’s roughly 100,000 rental owners are senior citizens who rely on the income for retirement or to help support their families, Smith said.

As of late last week, no flood of calls had hit Park City’s Mountain Mediation Center. But a handful of mediators were already training in the nitty-gritty of state housing law, in part so they can inform renters of their rights, said executive director Gretchen Lee.

“In my mind, education is such a key component for tenants since the laws are not stacked in their favor,” Lee said.

Jeffrey Daybell, the executive director of the new nonprofit People’s Legal Aid, predicts several waves of evictions in coming months. His organization is Utah’s first to focus solely on representing tenants throughout the state, supplementing his job helping low-income clients at the Utah State Bar.

Daybell said landlords have largely allowed Utahns to defer rent and stay in their homes, “but if tenants haven’t returned to work in a way that allows them to make those payments in the future, we have essentially postponed a very large debt.”

Some landlords are seeking to oust those who can’t pay for other reasons.

One of Daybell’s clients recently fought and won a nonpayment eviction case after pointing out the home had a federally backed loan. The next day, the landlord served the man an eviction notice for nuisance, which is not blocked by the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. The landlord alleged he was talking, laughing and playing music too loud, in addition to leaving on porch and kitchen lights.

It’s not clear how many laid-off, furloughed or reduced-hour renters are facing similar nuisance claims but simply leave instead of trying to disprove them, Daybell said.

“I’m nervous that it’s happening outside of court and we don’t have an ability to catch it,” he said.

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Click here to read this article on the Deseret News website

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