Howard Southern started 2020 as a busy sales manager making enough money to support his family. Then the pandemic struck, and 12 months later he found himself in a Houston court building on the brink of losing his home.

While his fiancee waited in the car with their infant and three young sons, Southern sat on the court’s wood benches between blue painter’s tape that marked off areas for social distancing. He was hoping to win a reprieve from an eviction after being one month late in his rent.

Ever since the coronavirus rattled real estate markets, many cities, states and even the federal government have taken steps to place a moratorium on evictions. But such protections are no guarantee. There's paperwork to fill out and myriad rules to follow. What sounds straightforward can be very complex, and tenants and landlords throughout the United States are struggling to find a balance.

For Southern, 41, relief required a trip to a county courthouse, an aging cement building with a slow elevator and a rusty flagpole where an American flag hung limply outside. He is one of millions of renters across the country who filed an affidavit declaring their inability to pay rent because of the pandemic under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium, which was extended by the Biden administration through March 31, 2021.

While advocates say the federal moratorium is critical to protecting renters, critics say it is just kicking the can down the road and postponing a looming crisis of evictions and foreclosures once various moratoriums expire and back rent is due.

Across the nation, renters already owe between $34 billion and $70 billion of back rent, according to estimates from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a tenant advocacy group. The coalition estimates between 30 million and 40 million renters are at risk of losing their homes when the CDC moratorium expires.

In turn, landlords are feeling the pressure of falling revenue as they continue to have to pay their mortgages, utilities and property tax bills. They have been advocating for more federal financial assistance and renter relief to help fill the gap as unemployment and economic constraints continue.

The federal moratorium on evictions hasn’t stopped thousands of landlords from filing for evictions. In many cases, if the tenant doesn’t fill out the right paperwork or show up to court, they’ll get evicted despite the moratorium. And landlords can still evict tenants for violating a lease for other reasons not related to nonpayment.

After a historic drop in eviction filings across the country at the beginning of the pandemic, they have been climbing since the summer, reflecting the growing stress on landlords.

"Landlords are becoming more aggressive in their willingness to file new cases,” said Peter Hepburn, a research fellow at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, a research group seeking to promote housing stability and end poverty.

Many feel they have little choice but to seek eviction. Ric Campo, CEO of Camden Property Trust, a national apartment real estate investment trust, said the vast majority of landlords don’t want to make tenants homeless. Campo said most apartment owners approached the coronavirus the same way they would approach a hurricane or other natural disaster and weren’t looking to evict anyone. But as the economic crisis continued and federal unemployment aid dried up, renters struggled to pay rent and the smallest landlords felt the biggest pinch.

Camden has about 80,000 residents in luxury apartments with an average household income of $100,000, so most of its tenants are not in low-wage, retail or hospitality jobs that were hardest hit by the pandemic, Campo said. Only 200 of Camden’s residents filed to take advantage of the CDC moratorium across the company’s portfolio of 57,000 units mostly in the Sun Belt, he said. Camden was able to set up deferred payment programs with struggling tenants and created a $5 million renter relief fund. But thousands of landlords, particularly smaller ones, did not have those resources. They're feeling increased pressure from declining revenue and need renters who can pay rent so they can pay their bills.

“It's the mom-and-pop landlords that are small, that are living hand to mouth as well. They say, ‘You know what? I've got to try to find somebody who can pay because if they can't, then ultimately I'm going to go broke, too,'" Campo said. "That's the real challenge."

To assist property owners, some counties have canceled foreclosure hearings during the pandemic, postponing what some suspect could be an inevitable wave of actions later. Meanwhile, the federal government is allowing owners of multifamily properties with federally backed mortgages to postpone payments until March 31, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. However, Campo said most multifamily owners with mortgages from banks are still expected to make payments on time.

“You have this complicated situation where if you let everybody stay in the apartments for free forever, then all those owners are going to go bankrupt. So how do you balance it to make sure that people are not being evicted who are the most vulnerable? It’s a societal issue that needs to be dealt with by the federal government,” said Campo, who also serves as co-chair for the Houston Housing Stability Task Force. “Ultimately, the bottom line in all of this is that we need funds for people to pay their rent. And if they don't pay the rent, then the landlord is going to lose their property. And then what's going to happen to banks?” Campo said.

The challenges facing tenants and landlords alike are on full display in Houston, the fourth-largest city in the country. Unlike other places, there are no local or state moratoriums on evictions in the Texas energy capital, and as a result Houston has been among the leaders for new cases filed per week out of the 27 cities tracked by Princeton's Eviction Lab.

Still, even in Houston, tenants are eligible to seek relief under the CDC moratorium, but some struggle with navigating the process.

In cities and states “where there isn't strong policy to protect renters, we're seeing people fall through the cracks," said Zoe Middleton, co-director of Texas Housers, a nonprofit organization that supports low-income Texans. CoStar News interviewed Middleton on a day when there were 214 eviction hearings scheduled in Houston's Harris County, the third-most populous county in the country. “Those are people who will probably lose their homes."

Instead of local protections, Houston relies on a patchwork of programs disbursing renter assistance. The city's and the county’s renter relief programs have provided a combined $65 million in assistance to Houston-area renters, according to Baker Ripley, a local nonprofit group that administers both programs.

But landlord and tenant advocates have been ringing the alarm bell that the assistance isn’t enough to meet the need. A federal coronavirus relief bill passed just before the new year provided a critical $25 billion in additional renter assistance that is expected to funnel through to states. Texas is estimated to receive roughly $1.9 billion in renter relief, according to estimates from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Texas is known for its landlord-friendly laws. The state doesn’t regulate how many fees a landlord can add to a base rent and doesn’t cap the amount a landlord can charge for a security deposit. If landlords want to evict a tenant, they can provide just a three-day notice to vacate, or sometimes less depending on the lease, unlike other states that require seven to 30 days' notice.

Without tenant protection laws, some major Texas cities such as Austin and Dallas temporarily put into place special protections for renters during the pandemic. Houston did not.

Houston also doesn't have an “opportunity to cure” mandate, which allows tenants to avoid eviction by paying rent up to 30 days late, something that other states and some cities in Texas offer.

Earlier efforts to get Houston to expand tenant protections have failed. Over the summer, the Housing Stability Task Force, a group formed during the pandemic to address eviction and housing issues, recommended the city put into place a so-called grace period ordinance to give tenants more time to get caught up on rent. But Mayor Sylvester Turner rejected the recommendation and later withdrew city representatives from the task force. The group still exists and meets regularly, but it has fewer resources to protect tenants, said Texas Housers' Middleton, who serves on the task force.

Layered on top of local programs is a statewide pilot program called the Texas Eviction Diversion Program, which provides tenants with up to six months of rent and removes an eviction filing from their record. Other programs will probably emerge as the new round of federal rent assistance trickles into Texas, creating new systems for landlords and tenants to maneuver yet again.

Sitting in eviction court hearings, it’s easy to see how one can get lost in a maze of local and federal laws and programs. Only about 4% of tenants served eviction notices in Harris County have legal representation, which is an improvement from about 1.4% a few months ago, said Dana Karni, managing attorney at Lone Star Legal Aid, a nonprofit group that provides civil legal services. But many tenants are unaware of their expanded rights under the CDC moratorium, she said.

A Spanish-speaking tenant at one hearing, for instance, had no idea there was a CDC moratorium until a court clerk hastily translated an explanation muffled by his fabric face cover. Several English-speaking tenants were surprised to see they may qualify for financial assistance. And several tenants phoning in on grainy videoconferencing software or sitting in the sparsely populated courtroom said they didn’t know they had to keep paying rent — or trying to — even as the order persisted.

Many tenants miss the CDC affidavit document in the stack of papers attached to their eviction notice or they don’t fill it out correctly, said former Judge Jeremy Brown, who previously oversaw a precinct in south Houston and who co-chairs the Housing Stability Task Force. For example, a woman living in south Houston filed a CDC affidavit but forgot to sign and date the document correctly. Brown delayed her case another week.

She was hardly alone in her confusion. Another renter, a woman living in Houston's Pasadena area who video called into the hearing, filed the CDC paperwork after she lost her job when she was pregnant and couldn’t afford to pay rent since August. At her December court hearing, she told the judge she had no idea she was supposed to be making rent payments, even if partial, during that time. Another woman also living in Pasadena wasn’t aware she might qualify for the renter relief program, but said she was struggling to pay rent and for child care while she spent her days looking for work.

“There’s nothing I can do until I get a job. I’ve been applying. As soon as I get a job, I’m definitely going to get caught up,” she told Judge Molly Smith via video. Smith postponed, or abated, both those Pasadena cases, giving the tenants more time to fill out the paperwork or catch up on partial payments.

Smith turned to her computer’s camera to face the landlord, who was remote. “This is the reason for these programs. I’m sorry.”

Smith told CoStar News she abated the cases because she felt they involved the type of vulnerable people the programs were designed to help. But she wasn't optimistic about the mounting number of postponed cases.

“When you get in court and these people have no jobs, it feels like there is nothing anyone can do. It’s not like everyone is going to get a job tomorrow,” Smith said.

Even with more renter relief programs than ever before, hundreds of eviction cases automatically go into default judgment against the tenant because tenants don’t show up to court or fill out a CDC affidavit, said Brown. For example, one afternoon Brown moved through a half-dozen cases in 15 minutes because nearly all the tenants didn’t show up to defend themselves. He said there is only so much he can do within Texas state laws.

“We don't have a lot of tenant protections as other states do. Housing is treated more as a commodity than a right. If you don't have your rent, you gotta go. And there is not a lot of defenses for nonpayment of rent,” Brown said.

Some landlords are hesitant to sign up for relief programs if too many strings are attached or they aren’t confident in their tenants’ ability to stay afloat once the assistance runs out.

In early December, Harris County reallocated $10 million in assistance away from the renter relief program administered by Baker Ripley because the money couldn’t be spent fast enough by the time the assistance money was set to expire.

It wasn’t for a lack of need, though, said Fredrick Goodall, a spokesman for the nonprofit Baker Ripley. Instead the process was slowed down because tenants and landlords struggled to provide the right paperwork quickly or faced other challenges.

Access to the internet, printers or computers can be a barrier for some tenants. One landlord, in a survey of small landlords conducted by the Housing Stability Task Force, said his low-income tenants in Houston's Third Ward were excited about the county and city programs, but it was “difficult for them to apply sometimes because most do not have computers. Some people’s cellphones are too small, they can’t read them. Gave the wrong answer and was denied.”

Some landlords did not want to participate because the funds from Baker Ripley initially prevented them from evicting the tenant for 60 days after the payment, said Howard Bookstaff, an attorney with Hoover Slovacek law firm who represents the Houston Apartment Association, which has members comprising 90% of ownership of Houston apartments. Landlords could also be hesitant about the program requiring them to waive late fees, penalties and interest on past-due payments, and give a 10% discount on past-due rent.

For the state's Texas Eviction Diversion Program, Jonita Wallace Reynolds, CEO at Gulf Coast Community Services Association, said her agency thought it would run through an initial $600,000 in rental assistance within a week when the pilot program launched in mid-October. But processing hundreds of applications was time-consuming, and it took longer than expected to disperse the funds. Although the pilot program was the most generous — providing up to six months of rent — there were more hurdles to jump through. For example, the funds were only accessible if a court case had been filed and both the landlord and tenant agreed to a plan moving forward.

Other landlords are too frustrated to deal with the hassle of waiting for the application process to run its course, then wait another 14 days before getting the funds after they’ve already been waiting nine months for rent, said Amanda Shelton with Gulf Coast Community.

While every bit of assistance does help, some landlords say six months of payments won’t be enough to cover the hole. Even though six months of rent is unique and helpful, it is not always enough, said Bookstaff.

“If a resident hasn't paid since March and they're 10 months delinquent, landlords probably are going to be less likely to want to deal with that resident and take the rental assistance,” Bookstaff said. And because it’s a court-referral program, the landlord has to file an eviction case just to be involved.

Even with the challenges, Bookstaff said, the apartment association thinks rental assistance is the way to help rather than the CDC moratorium, which can lead to the tenant accumulating significant debt.

“The CDC order has had the unintended consequence of kicking the can down the road and creates substantial debt for these residents that will create credit problems and rental history problems in the future,” Bookstaff said.

For Southern, traveling to court to seek a CDC abatement was a critical step in buying his family more time.

After all, he was gainfully running an office in Charlotte, North Carolina, selling high-end meats to restaurants before the coronavirus arrived in the United States. Last March, his world shattered when the pandemic caused meat prices to spike and demand fell as restaurants tried to save money or closed their doors because of lockdowns.

Southern’s company closed the Charlotte sales office and asked him to relocate to Houston to sell door to door, which worked at first, but sales slowed as the city's coronavirus cases rose and customers became hesitant to answer the knock of a stranger.

His commission-based salary dropped significantly even though he was putting in the same hours. He was forced to skip a family member’s funeral to avoid missing work. His fiancee signed up for food stamps, but it wasn't enough to cover all their expenses and rising utility bills. Rent makes up about 85% of their monthly budget, he said.

“You feel like you’re not doing enough. But I’m doing the same thing I do regularly. It’s just this situation," Southern said.

Southern certainly wasn't alone in his struggles that day. Dozens of court cases followed after him and before him. And outside the courthouse, a long line of cars snaked out of the parking lot with people waiting for food from a local YMCA chapter.

Eventually, though, Southern won his reprieve. By the time his eviction hearing ended, his fiancee had joined him in the lobby wearing a silver face mask with their toddlers and baby in tow. Southern snagged some sheets of paper in the lobby about the Texas Eviction Diversion Program, and his toddlers waved goodbye as the elevator doors closed. He still didn’t know where next month’s rent would come from. But for now, he was satisfied to not be one of the families that fell through the cracks.

“It’s a blessing,” Southern said.