Charleston Reporter

State Rep. Marvin Pendarvis is pushing a bill that would make it easier for tenants once hit with eviction proceedings to start to rebuild.

“I filed a bill last year that would allow tenants who have been evicted to be automatically eligible for expungement,” the North Charleston Democrat tweeted Aug. 11. “An eviction shouldn’t be the scarlet letter it’s become and it shouldn’t follow someone for years on after.”

Even with a stay on evictions in regions with high COVID-19 transmission rates now in place through Oct. 3, Pendarvis argues it doesn’t ban landlords from moving to file such requests, effectively causing much of the same damage the veteran lawmaker insists he is trying to prevent.

CNN Business reported that according to an estimate by the National Equity Atlas created by PolicyLink, upwards of 6 million households across the country are now in arrears more than $21 billion in back rent. 

Of those households, the Aspen Institute reports nearly one in five have children and that people of color are being disproportionately impacted by the urge.

With at least 29% of adults admitting they are behind on rent, South Carolina is now home to the most people finding themselves in such crisis. Across the country, nearly one in five, or 22%, of Black renters are now behind, along with 17% of both Latino and Asian renters.

Brian Grady, the chief research officer with the state Housing Finance and Development Authority, places much of the blame for the widening crisis on the same issue that has long plagued the state.

"A quarter of renter households are severely cost burdened, meaning they spend more than half their income on rent and utilities," Grady told CNN Business. "There's a lot of low-wage service jobs in South Carolina and those are the kind of jobs that were most hard hit by the initial impact of the pandemic."

In June, in an effort to compel more residents to return to work, Gov. Henry McMaster in a statement from his office officially ended the state's participation in federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits programs.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project Executive Director Zach Neumann, who co-authored the Aspen Institute study, sounds as if he agrees with Pendarvis about expungement of eviction notices.  

"That would mean they don't have to drag that anchor around for the next seven years," Neumann told CNN Business. “More broadly, I think you can talk about changing the way you do credit reporting in America."