Large landlords aggressively moved against renters in the pandemic, a report says.

A House subcommittee investigating landlord eviction practices during a pandemic said the four companies engaged in “abuse” tactics to drive renters out of their homes, despite a federal moratorium. He published a bitter report.

The report is Released on thursdayAfter a year of research and committee hearings, he investigated the business practices of so-called entrepreneurs and petitioned tens of thousands of lessors to evict peasants during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Commission focused primarily on four companies, including single-family home leasing company Invitation Homes and weekly leasing company Siegel Group. According to the report, between March 2020 and July 2021, four people filed about 15,000 peasant eviction cases.

Princeton University’s Eviction Lab said in the tracked market, all landlords submitted 495,216 eviction actions during the period investigated by the Subcommittee.

“The abusive peasant eviction practices described in this report are condemned under all circumstances, but are not conscientious during the once-in-a-century economic and public health crisis,” the subcommittee said. , In the statement.

According to the report, Invitation Homes “misleadingly downplays” the impact of pandemic eviction practices on Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored mortgage lender that funded Invitation Homes $ 1 billion in 2017. Was there. Invitation Homes is one of the largest singles in the United States. -A family rental company that operates over 3,000 properties.

The Siegel Group, which operates under the name Siegel Suites, was chosen as “unique and terrible.” Under the Moratorium, the company, which operates about 12,000 apartments in eight states, “has deceptive and potentially illegal practices to prevent tenants from understanding eviction protection,” the report said. I was engaged. ” The Commission also found that Siegel used harassment tactics to expel the renter without filing a peasant eviction proceeding.

Clyburn wrote to a federal agency about Invitation Homes and the Siegel Group and asked them to review the company’s behavior.

A representative of Invitation Homes said the committee had found nothing illegal about the company’s behavior.

“It’s a shame that the Commission chose to pursue a defect-finding mission instead in an era when it should focus on adding a coveted supply to the country’s housing market,” said spokeswoman Christie Desjaret. Said.

Siegel representatives did not immediately return a request for comment.

The Commission also investigated the eviction practices of another large single-family home operator, Premium Partners, and Ventron Management, which operates 8,000 apartments in 26 states. In a statement, Pretium adhered to the federal moratorium and “has never been kicked out of the house due to non-payment of rent.”

Ventron was not immediately asked for comment.

It was widely believed that the eviction moratorium of peasants prevented millions of people from losing their homes during a pandemic. However, they often did not prevent the landlord from initiating peasant evictions during the pandemic. This gave some landlords the ability to move quickly and expel renters after the federal moratorium ended last fall.

Filing has created another problem for lessors, as they often leave permanent marks on court dockets that may be used against them in the future. Sometimes referred to as the “scarlet E,” the landlord may use it as a reason to refuse to rent simply by filing an eviction proceeding against a person, even if the proceeding is dismissed.

Some states have sought to address the issue by sealing the peasant eviction proceedings filed during the pandemic.