Landlord says he’s out $34,000, slams ‘crazy’ evictions moratorium
Connecticut landlord Michael Sullivan on suing the Biden administration over eviction ban.
A Connecticut landlord said on Thursday that he is part of the coalition of housing groups suing the Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to challenge the latest eviction moratorium.
"This is a huge problem. It actually is drowning myself as well as landlords," Michael Sullivan said on "America Newsroom." So there is a program that is set up so when the governor came in and tried to help all the tenants by putting this eviction hold on, he is killing the landlords. Then he came in and said okay, we’ll help them out and we’ll put in the rental assistance program.
"There are a couple of flaws here, Dana," Sullivan continued. "One, I’ve got to have my tenants go ahead and do their paperwork as well. So, if the tenant is not in favor of assisting me to get any back rent, they aren’t going to file the paperwork and therefore my filing is mute. It is not going to go through."
Sullivan said he tried to evict a tenant who owed him $20,000. However, he expleined that pursuing the eviction was a challenge.
"He refused to file the paperwork. Therefore, I can’t recoup any of the loss there," he said. "I have also filed my paperwork on April 26th. Today is 101 days. I’ve never been contacted, never saw my case go through, had an auditor assigned, nothing. And every week I call to see the status of it, and it is going nowhere. So, right now just in rent I’m out $34,000 and now all the repairs for the damages and things they did to my property."
PELOSI SAYS HOUSE DEMOCRATS 'READY' TO WORK WITH BIDEN ADMIN TO EXTEND EXPIRED EVICTION BAN
A coalition of housing groups led by the Alabama Association of Realtors on Thursday filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., challenging the latest eviction moratorium, calling the Biden administration's action "nakedly political" and "unlawful."
"[T]he CDC caved to the political pressure by extending the moratorium, without providing any legal basis," the emergency motion says. "In substance and effect, the CDC’s latest action is an extension of the same unlawful ban on evictions that has been in effect since September 2020."
"Justice Kavanaugh’s controlling opinion was clear that the CDC could not extend the moratorium past July 31 absent ‘clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation),'" the real estate groups also said. "This Court has already concluded that the CDC lacks authority to issue or extend an eviction moratorium."
The lawsuit comes after President Biden initially balked at extending the eviction moratorium on his own. He cited an opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh from June saying any further extensions of the moratorium would have to be done by Congress.
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Sullivan said that the eviction ban is "crazy." While tenants are not "working, collecting unemployment or state unemployment," he suggested that housing should be left between the "tenants and landlords."
"A lot of them are making more money now through unemployment than they made when they were working. You have to be able to pay something towards your rent. Work it out with your landlord. Let the landlord and the tenant go through it and go forward. Then follow your process and see where it leads you," Sullivan said.
"But, to just sit there and say don’t worry about it right now, we’re going to put a freeze on it, you are killing any landlord that has worked to buy their property and get them up and going."
Fox News' Tyler Olsen contributed to this report.
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