VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — In mid-July, April Debrow said she and her family were in quarantine, trying to keep their distance from each other as they packed up to leave their South Daytona rental.

Their eviction case, originally halted by a nationwide moratorium, was moving forward again, after the family’s landlords amended their original complaint to indicate they were no longer seeking compensation for the past due rent — just a termination of the Debrows’ month-to-month lease.

Debrow’s 17-year-old son tested positive for the coronavirus on July 3, according to test result records filed with the court. On July 15, a Volusia County judge ruled in favor of the family’s landlords, removing their temporary protection from eviction under the national moratorium.

“Daily I have been contacting local shelters, 2-11 and a list of other resources for help, and they either aren’t taking any families or they ran out of funds,” Debow wrote in a plea to the judge, filed in court just days before she lost her case. 

She’s created a GoFundMe to raise funds for their relocation expenses. 

The Debrows’ story is just one example of many evictions that were able to move forward in Florida even while a nationwide eviction moratorium was in place. Now, after the Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling against the moratorium enacted by the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, housing advocates fear the country could face an unprecedented wave of homelessness.

‘Smarter ways’ to stabilize housing?

As housing advocates decried the loss of “a lifeline for millions of families” amid the surge of the coronavirus delta variant, property owners celebrated the high court’s Thursday ruling as a major win. 

“[The ruling] vindicates everything we've been arguing all along,” said Luke Wake, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which previously filed federal lawsuits on behalf of landlords against the moratorium in Ohio and Louisiana. 

“These landlords were being deprived of their property rights, being deprived of their constitutional rights, because the executive branch was making law,” he said.

Wake said only Congress should be able to approve an eviction moratorium, and that if so, landlords should be “compensated 100%” for the rental payments tenants aren’t able to make.

He emphasized, Congress could still enact additional legislation to expedite the distribution of emergency rental assistance, which continues to lag in most places across the country. As of Wednesday, state and local governments had only distributed 11% of the $46 billion Congress has allocated for emergency rental assistance.

“(Congress) chose to do this complicated system,” Wake said. “They could streamline it if they wanted to.”

He added that eviction bans have made many landlords feel more apprehensive about renting out their properties, causing them to increase security deposit requirements and conduct more stringent credit security checks. Indeed, many landlords — particularly those leasing units on a smaller, individual basis — say they’re selling off their properties.

That could spell trouble for the nation’s already-strained affordable housing supply.

“(The CDC) never stopped to consider the impact on housing affordability, the unintended consequences to landlords,” Wake said. “There’s probably smarter ways to get at what they were trying to do.”

‘Impossible to quarantine if you don't have a roof over your head’

Since losing their housing, Debrow and her son have been staying at a hotel, paid for by the Volusia-Flagler County Coalition for the Homeless. It wasn’t easy to find temporary housing toward the end of their eviction case, Debrow said, since she and her son both had COVID-19.

“Nowhere would accept us because we were COVID-positive,” Debrow said.

It wasn’t until a local health department worker “went beyond her job” and called around herself that the family secured temporary housing, Debrow said.

Ethan Johnson, communications and performance management director for the Florida Department of Health in Volusia County, confirmed the department referred a COVID-positive family to the homeless coalition in the same timeframe Debrow provided to Spectrum News.

Johnson said in July that while the department hadn’t seen too many cases of COVID-positive residents being evicted or losing housing, the true number is likely underestimated.

“When you're dealing with issues related to meeting your basic needs, it’s likely that you won't be going to get a COVID-19 test,” he said.

Johnson said health department staff routinely refer people experiencing homelessness and housing instability to local resources, including shelters and the county’s community assistance program. 

“It's impossible to quarantine if you don't have a roof over your head,” he said. 

Expiring eviction moratoriums were linked to 10,700 excessive deaths during the pandemic last year, according to research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

For her part, Debrow’s focused on seeking stable housing for herself and her son — a tall ask, given the eviction on her record. She said she recently told her story at a city council meeting, where county staff gave her a commitment letter to show potential housing providers she’s been approved for up to 12 months of rental assistance. 

But no place will accept the promised funds, Debrow said. Emails and photos provided to Spectrum News indicate she’s tried giving the letter to at least a dozen housing providers.

The U.S. Treasury has issued guidance urging state and local governments to create these types of commitment letters, to help already-homeless people — like the Debrows — secure new housing.

“Due to the recent changes regarding the eviction moratorium, we anticipate more ERA (emergency rental assistance) applicants will be in need of these types of commitment letters, which we will issue as needed,” a spokesperson for Volusia County wrote in a statement Friday.

GoFundMe.com, or any other third-party online fundraiser, is not managed by Spectrum Bay News 9 or Spectrum News 13. For more information on how GoFundMe works and its rules, visit http://www.gofundme.com/safety.

Molly Duerig is a Report for America corps member who is covering Affordable Housing for Spectrum News 13. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.