Some landlords got a piece of Texas’ $2 billion in rent relief money — and evicted their struggling tenants anyway

It's unclear whether landlords face any penalties from state agencies for improperly evicting tenants while receiving rent relief dollars intended to help those tenants stay housed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When Cherice Scott received a notice last September that she, her husband and their four children would soon be kicked out of their Katy apartment, she said employees at the complex told her not to worry about it.

Scott and her husband had fallen behind on rent in June after Scott stopped working to take care of her youngest daughter, who has Down syndrome, and the medical bills piled up.

The next month, their landlord started the eviction process, even though Scott, 37, had taken the rental office staff's advice and requested help from Texas' $2 billion, federally backed rental assistance fund. Scott said she spoke to the office staff and walked away believing she didn't need to worry about eviction as they waited for the relief money — or to bother showing up to court.

When the state sent the rent relief check to the wrong address, Scott said the staff assured her they were working to get the money re-sent.

"I trusted them," Scott said. "I shouldn't have."

Scott had landed a new job as a dietician at a local hospital when she returned from work one afternoon in early October to find most of her belongings spread out on the lawn and the locks changed. Thieves had walked off with their electronics.

Jeff Williams, a Harris County justice of the peace, had approved the eviction without Scott present in court — a typical outcome in eviction cases when tenants don't show up to their hearings.

Scott wanted to know: What happened to the rent relief money?

After weeks of phone calls, a Texas Rent Relief program staffer told Scott that her former landlord had indeed received the rent relief money in mid-November — more than $11,000, enough to cover the six months' back rent they owed.

"They were very well informed that that money was there and it was coming to them," said Scott, who's now living in a short-term rental in Missouri City with her four kids. "Yet they still pushed us out."

Scott's former landlord — Blazer Real Estate Services, a Houston property management company — did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment. An employee at Blazer's office who answered the phone declined to answer questions.

The federal government and the state of Texas both had people like Scott and her family in mind when they hurriedly created a safety net for struggling renters amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Texas received more than $2 billion out of the American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion federal stimulus package President Joe Biden signed into law last year, to set up the Texas Rent Relief program, designed to help such families stay in their homes as the pandemic triggered a tsunami of business closures and hundreds of thousands of layoffs.

But The Texas Tribune interviewed tenants from across the state who were approved for federal rental assistance and were evicted anyway.

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When Congress set aside more than $46 billion for emergency rental assistance, they intended for that money to keep people in their homes, said U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat from Houston. The idea of landlords taking rent relief dollars and still evicting tenants is "outrageous," she said, and could warrant investigation.

"I think any landlord that accepted money or got money directly for rent absolutely should not have evicted anyone," Garcia said. "And if they did, it should be audited and reviewed by [government investigators] so that we can recoup our funds for the misuse of the dollars."