Columbus City Council will take up legislation Monday that would make sure landlords would have to accept rent from third parties such as family members or social service agencies who are paying for tenants.
It also will consider a proposal called "pay to stay," allowing tenants who pay past-due rent with late fees before their landlord files an eviction action to use that as a defense during the action.
Columbus City Councilmember Shayla Favor said these tenant protections aren't eviction silver bullets, but will help as the number of evictions in Columbus and Franklin County remain high after the COVID eviction moratorium was lifted, and rents continue to skyrocket.
"Ohio has some of the most aggressive policies when it comes to evictions," Favor said, meaning if tenants are a day late in paying rent a landlord can toss them out.
That's why third-party and "pay-to-stay" is important, Favor said. Third-party means that landlords must accept rent payment from agencies such as the United Way of Central Ohio or IMPACT Community Action, she said.
"If it makes you whole at the end of the day, what does it matter?" she said.
But she said some landlords have not accepted third-party payments, using that as a pretext for getting rid of tenants for other reasons, Favor said.
Jyoshu Tsushima, managing attorney of the Tenant Advocacy Project for the Legal Aid Society of Columbus, said pay-to-stay legislation will have an immediate impact.
"What this does is, it makes it a lot easier for tenants to get caught up," Tsushima said.
"My impression is that it will encourage landlords to take rent then, to be more flexible in making it more possible for tenants to tender their rent," he said.
Larger complexes often have automated systems that refuse rents if they are paid late, he said.
As for third-party payments, Tsushima said that doesn't affect landlord rights. "It's really just common sense," he said. "If money is offered, the landlord should take it."
This all comes when evictions are up significantly, here and nationwide, Tsushima said.
According to numbers that City Council provided, 2,144 people were evicted in Franklin County Municipal Court in June, up from 1,992 in May, and 1,617 in June 2022.
In the last two full years, the number of evictions filed in Franklin County jumped from 15,537 in 2021 (when the moratoriums were in effect until August of that year) to 20,897 in 2022.
From January-June 2023, the highest number of evictions filed − 1,054 − were filed in the 43232 ZIP Code, a part of eastern Franklin County that includes the Eastland Mall area with its many apartments. The second-highest − 829 − was in the 43213 ZIP Code that includes Whitehall and part of Columbus' East Side.